GAMACHE

My wife is in love with a man named Gamache. She has been for a while. One-sided love, that is.

Armand Gamache is a fictional character of the series (18 volumes so far) as Chief Inspector Gamache created by Louise Penny. This unusually lazy morning while in bed, my wife and I were talking about this and that. In passing but congruent to our conversation, she mentioned four things that lead to wisdom spoken by Chief Inspector Gamache written by Penny.

“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?'
She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.
"They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. I was wrong'.”

Louise Penny, Still Life

It is midday now and the wisdom statement has not left me. When I first heard the statement, I immediately and viscerally knew them to be true wisdom in my life. During the course of my life, I have said all four statements from time to time. There were times that were more difficult to admit and verbalize than the others. Sometimes I was pushed to a corner where I was essentially forced to wave a white flag and uttered any one of the four statements. There were also times when I fully owned my desperate and helpless state and said them in complete transparency and honesty.

While all four statements are challenging to admit and verbalize, my most challenging statement has been the first one, “I don’t know.” While it is one thing to say “I don’t know” regarding rocket science or home improvement, for example, (because I really don’t know) it is another thing to say “I don’t know” regarding my supposed expert areas including missions and some of my vested and interested fields of knowledge. Occasionally, I see myself disguising “I don’t know” in silence. While it may communicate the vibe that I don’t know but it still functions as a passive act of saving my face. Or I have carefully changed the topic ever so slightly to an area where I can give “my answer” so as to disguise my lack of knowledge in some other areas.

I know the fact of the matter is that I cannot know everything. That need to know is an ego’s way of protecting oneself. To what end? I ask my ego.  The end is a recognition and protection against shame, my ego confesses. The greatest and most heightened arenas for the four statements above take place in the immediate family including the couple's relationship setting as well as in the leadership setting.

I lost count of how many times I have said “I am sorry” to my children. I was a first-time father for infants, toddlers, pre-teenagers, teenagers, and now adults, so forth and so on. I can never graduate being a first-time father through various stages of life, both my life stage as well as my children’s life stages. I am still a first-time father at this stage of my life. Without failure, every time I said I am sorry, their love for me and my love for them grew exponentially, experiencing grace, freedom, and God’s unconditional love.

As a leader, we live in an environment where it is exceptionally tough to say I am sorry and I don’t know. There is an unfounded assumption that you are a leader because you are supposed to know and not make mistakes. I discovered the assumption to be ludicrous and damaging for the leader as well as for the organization, entity, community, and even the nation that the leader represents. I have pretty much ignored the assumption and broken all the rules. To be sure, there were times when I tried to defend myself by articulating my intent to be innocent. Invariably, what I often heard was that my unintended intent had a damaging and unhelpful impact on others. I have learned sometimes painfully that a leader must own both the intent and the impact. While my intent may be innocent and pure, the impact of my decisions may have a life of its own. While I can control my intent, the impact is something I have no control over.

When one has very little to protect or to lose, then the four sayings above flow more freely. Not only do these four statements do the say-ers good, but they also create and give permission to others to embrace the wisdom that emanates from owning and saying, “I don’t know. I need help. I am sorry. I was wrong.” If wisdom is “knowledge deepened by love,” then this wisdom is an act of accepting and loving oneself. Wisdom boasts of transparency inside and out whereas mere knowledge can function as a smokescreen to hide and puff up one’s ego. One loving oneself prepares the ground to be fertile for others to embrace the wisdom and acts as an empowering and graceful agent for the world to see. It is grace because divine kindness rules the day, not human perfection.

I ask the world today including myself, what if the world or our respective small worlds would embrace these four wisdom practices? What if fathers, mothers, elders, and leaders would embrace such practices today?

Now, that would be revolutionary. . . because the grace of God would permeate and flow freely and be everywhere.

I think I am in love with Gamache, too.