Image by Joy Furnival

Last week ended on a joyful note. Along with over 80 Fellows I travelled back to Ashridge to celebrate the GenerationQ Leadership Programme as it reached the end of its 12 year run. I had been awarded a coveted Scholarship on Cohort 1 in 2010, graduating with an Ashridge Masters with Distinction in May 2012.

There have been a subsequent eight cohorts. Over the two-day event, it was a delight to make new connections and learn how the programme had unfolded for the Fellows that came after us. As with any bounded system, each cohort had its own history, character and rules of belonging. Yet there was no sense of exclusivity between the different groups. The GenerationQ magic connected us ensuring our place as part of the whole.

In a conversation about the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu with my husband this morning, he shared a YouTube video of the Archbishop with the Dalia Lama. A joyous collection of warm and colourful images that give us a glimpse of the relationship between these two spiritual icons.

The conversation moves seamlessly from death to joy and back again. Half-way through the 2-minute video the interviewer asks what it is about their friendship with each other that allows them to have this kind of extraordinary joy. The response from both men is playful to start with. “He’s always troubling me” Desmond Tutu jokes.

They become more serious and reflective, even holding hands at one point. “He’s there for us as a beacon” Desmond Tutu adds with a tone of reverence. I was captivated by the intimate display of spiritual unity. Then, just as the short video ends, the Dalia Lama turns to Desmond Tutu and says with utter conviction:

Maria Popova's newsletter (recently renamed ‘The Marginalian') brings to my iPad every week the most exquisite writing in easily digestible morsels. This quote by Joan Didion in a recent newsletter made me hesitate:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us….”

These words make a connection to the inner transitionary shifts I have noticed in my way of being as we travelled through the various stages of the pandemic. Sometimes the changes were decisive and dramatic requiring an immediate response, as in the need to rapidly up-skill in online facilitation; while others have been more meanderingly deceptive. Others still have been joyful and enriching.