The DART
"Iron Cows"
by Jay Larsen
9/4/00
I survived a week of business meetings in Texas and followed it up with a week of relaxation in British Columbia. The family and I decided to take advantage of the swiftly fading North West summer and took a vacation in and around Vancouver, BC. Take a look at the vacation pictures, if you are into that sort of thing. A good time was had by all.
In my reading I came across an interesting Zen koan. Koans are perplexing puzzles that traditional Zen masters give their students to ponder. By evaluating the student's "answers" to the koan, the master is supposed to be able to evaluate the student's current state of mind.
"At the top of a one-hundred-foot pole an iron cow gives birth to a calf."
What does it mean? I don't know, but it reminds me of work for some reason.
It appears to me that very little of what goes on in corporate America is about working together for common goals or even about profit. Most of the effort expended in the working world has more to do with deflecting blame and looking busy than about actually doing business. Modern corporations have become as absurd as that iron cow balanced on top of the one-hundred-foot pole. The evidence is there: infighting, office politics, bosses pitting employees against each other, coworkers who do not pull their own weight, projects that are doomed from their inception. Most work places are a study in dysfunction. Most of the activity inside companies turns out to be about nothing.
Nothing? Then why are we all so busy? Why are we all so stressed out? Nothing? What about stock price? What about market position, branding, return on investment? What about the money?
Well there is money. No denying the money. For a small percentage of the participants in the corporate pageant there is money. But is money reason enough for maintaining this precariously balanced cow?
Money is boring. It is an abstraction of an abstraction that has become the measure of all things in our culture. But money itself is also nothing. You can't keep money. No mater how much you acquire, you will lose it all some how, some way. The only creative choice you can make regarding money is how you will set yours free.
When you quit treating money as a noun, a thing, and start treating it as a verb, an action, then you can set into motion interesting, creative, life-affirming actions. The things you build, nurture and grow with money can be something. But the money itself is always nothing.
So why are we spending so much money to balance corporate cows on top of one-hundred-foot poles? All that money is being used to generate more money, nothingness chasing nothingness. But the koan contains its own answer, awakening--the iron cow gives birth. What will we give birth to?
Time to go back to work. Busy, busy, busy...
Jay Larsen
Editor In Chief,
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