By Wayne Vriend

Mike, whose energy reminded me of a slick Amway promoter, was the recently hired Western Canada Regional Manager for a company boasting to be the largest of its kind in Canada. While driving home, I reluctantly picked up his call after having just pulled up stakes mid way through on a paint job for this company. This is something that I had never even thought of doing in my previous 23 years long subcontracting relationship with the company.

Earlier in the day, I had decided and informed the company that I would not complete a big deadline job unless some reasonable payment was made. I also made this decision after hearing that many other subcontractors and even material suppliers were getting paid very late. Due to this, the job was poorly coordinated, running behind, and contained an energy of chaos, anxiety, and disconnect.

“Hi Wayne, it’s Mike. I also have Darren on the line,” he said, in a voice too loud, too smooth, and too enthusiastic for the situation.  “I said to Darren, let’s get Wayne on the line and see if we can clear this up. I think your invoices just have some dates confused in our system and that should take care of things.”

I sighed inwardly at his assumption. “No, Mike, I checked all of our invoices over carefully with your accounting department months ago. They are correct in your system and they do, in fact, go back over 4 months”

Then, he changed his tack. Softening his voice a little, he said, “Wayne, I’m going to see if I can get you all of this money from our treasury department right away. It may take me a few days though. Would you be willing in the meantime, in good faith in our company, to continue so we can get these people moved back into their home?”

It wasn’t so easy to find my words inside of this barrage of tones and words: a promise to go and get my money from the difficult and elusive treasury department; an appeal to my sense of good faith; and care for others: getting the homeowners moved back into their home.

I managed to find my response after fumbling at first around with my words. “No, MIke, I’m not comfortable with that and it just doesn’t feel self loving to do that. It’s been several broken promises.”

The job was going sideways fast anyway. Material suppliers, subcontractors and employees alike waiting on the sidelines for a corporate nation-wide general contracting company and it’s opaque layers of management and hedge fund ownership to find some heart and soul, and actually lead, or actually care.

When the Titanic hit the iceberg a 101 years ago, there were two precious hours of choice and action time before it finally sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The gravitational pull of denial, and buying into the status quo answer of ‘this ship is unsinkable’, were in fact what caused a much greater loss of life. Those who came to their senses early in the first hour made all the difference, for themselves and for others.

We are in such a time. It is evident wherever you look. My story from this week is not unique.

Our grand capitalist systems; our social systems; our religious and spiritual systems: these that are so dear to our false selves and have enjoyed such huge buy ins from so many, for so long; all these have struck an iceberg. These systems, that once felt so much like home, that animated us, are now in slow motion collapse. Make no mistake, as Captain Smith said so plainly in the movie in response to Rose’s inquiry about their fate; ‘The ship will sink.’

It gets real clear, on a sinking ship, once you’ve accepted what moments ago felt unbelievable even to you, that your first responsibility is to save lives, including your own. What are you choosing today? What are you trusting in today? How do you propose to care for anyone else while denying your first responsibility; to truly care for yourself?

The iceberg is not the problem. The poor design is not the problem. It is all a huge and unexpected gift to us, if we can only surrender to the point of the collapse: being prepared by the circumstance itself to enter our next phase of life.

Our most authentic self is mid stream in the birth canal, between the collapsing story and the rise of a new story, waiting to be born. In order for that to happen, we are being invited to leave the false self systems that we once held so dear and enter into an arising birthing process.  We can’t know what our new self will look like, we can only trust that what we were previously invested in is now complete in it’s purpose to bring us to a deeper choice point and truer reflection of who we were meant to be.

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