Every Hour the Stone Sits Unworked

Show Notes

There is a particular kind of meeting most people have sat through without being able to name what went wrong. It starts with genuine energy, a real problem, people who care, and somewhere in the middle it slides from planning into complaint. Brian Mattocks, author of A Mason's Work, identifies the precise linguistic tell: the phrase "if only." The moment a conversation moves into if-only territory, it stops being about what you can do and becomes a meta conversation about the conditions that prevent you from doing it.

The meta conversation is not laziness. That is what makes it dangerous. The people most drawn to it are often the most articulate and most genuinely frustrated people in the room. It uses the vocabulary of systems thinking, creates real warmth, feels like collaborative diagnosis, and delivers the emotional satisfaction of insight without requiring anyone to do anything. The longer it runs, the more impossible the actual work begins to feel. Brian connects this pattern directly to the Hiramic legend in Freemasonry, where a grievance that was never illegitimate grew into something none of the men involved intended.

This episode sets up a week of practical work on recognizing and redirecting that pattern in lodge, at work, and at home.

• How productive conversation slides into complaint without anyone deciding to let it
• The "if only" signal and what it costs in terms of personal agency
• Why the meta conversation is seductive to intelligent, articulate people
• The Hiramic legend as a permanent record of where unchecked grievance leads
• What it means to move from describing a problem to working on it

The stone does not get worked while you are talking about why the conditions are wrong for working it.

Thanks to our monthly supporters

• Tim Dedman
• Jorge

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] if this has happened to anybody, I know it's probably happened to you and it's definitely
[00:05] happened to me, but imagine a meeting. It could be lodge. It could be work. It could be you and
[00:11] a buddy at a coffee shop, uh, having a beverage, whatever. Uh, and you start a conversation like
[00:18] we should do this. We're going to fix that. The, the world would be at a better place if
[00:28] everyone did this. And for a little while, it seems like that's going to make a change.
[00:38] There's a little twinge of utility. There's a little bit of behavior change potential. There's
[00:45] an option to start making it just a little bit better. And somewhere in there, it changes.
[00:55] It's not that anybody made a decision. It's more like the, the mind that you had that started
[01:06] the conversation shifts from talking about the way the world could and should be to complaining.
[01:16] And by the time that meeting ends, by the time that conversation concludes, you have two people,
[01:24] three people, a whole group of folks disenfranchised, kind of down, vaguely kind of malaise.
[01:36] And while it was productive at getting when everyone agitated, it was not productive for
[01:43] moving the conversation forward. You know, these meetings, I'm sure you've been in them. You may
[01:49] have even been in charge of one. There is a way to tell when that shift has gone from productive
[02:02] conversation about things you're going to do to a non-productive complaint session. And you'll hear it
[02:12] in two words. Typically, someone will say, if only, if only the leadership were different,
[02:22] if only this wasn't so political, if only we had more money, if only there were more people,
[02:28] if only the organization wasn't so resistant, if only there wasn't, you know, if people were more
[02:33] engaged, if only the system worked the way it's supposed to. Those sentiments are all on the other
[02:43] side of a phrase, if only. That problem that happens when you switch to if only is that it neuters
[02:55] all of the power. It takes away all of your agency and capacity. The conversation moves from,
[03:03] of a problem to a meta conversation about the problem. You moved from in it to around it.
[03:12] You're not working in the problem anymore. It requires people from outside of the problem in
[03:20] that if only kind of way to address it or fix it or alter it or change the conditions in some sort of
[03:27] meaningful way. It feels productive. It feels like analysis. It feels like insight. This,
[03:32] uh, this emotional satisfaction that comes with complaining and diagnosing these difficult things,
[03:37] but it requires absolutely nothing of the people saying it. It's seductive. It's alluring because again,
[03:49] it feels like progress. That meta conversation isn't quite laziness. It's important to understand
[03:56] the folks that fall into this are often really intelligent and really articulate. They're
[04:02] the most genuinely frustrated people in the room. The meta conversation is seductive precisely because
[04:10] it is sophisticated. It uses a vocabulary of systems thinking. It demonstrates awareness. It creates a
[04:16] real bond. It feels like a collaborative discovery. There's genuine, genuine warmth in the experience of
[04:24] that commiserating, that bonding, but it's not the work. And the longer it runs, the more it masquerades
[04:36] his work while quietly making the work more and more inaccessible. It makes it feel more impossible.
[04:45] Every time you have those, if only statements, and it may not be those words exactly, but it's that
[04:50] sentiment. The statement increases the distance between where things are and where they need to be.
[04:57] Every hour spent in the meta is an hour the stone sits unworked. And this is what makes it more
[05:07] than a productivity problem. It starts a pattern. This idea that complaining about the problem is part of a
[05:17] solution. That bonding is the solution. That bonding is the benefit. You get attached to the idea of the idea.
[05:25] In Fight Club, it was like they used the phrase, the copy of a copy of a copy. You are so many levels
[05:32] of abstraction away from the problem itself that you have essentially subtracted any opportunity you have
[05:39] to actually do anything. This is a very normal behavior, but it has some real meaningful challenges.
[05:52] The good news is we tell each other a story where this kind of behavior has the worst possible outcome.
[06:03] We have a lesson about what happens if these conversations go unchecked.
[06:10] They weren't villains when they started sharing their concerns about not earning the word of a
[06:19] master mason. They were craftsmen with frustrations and cares and concerns whose meta conversation took
[06:27] over. And by the time they understood the cost of the decisions they had made, it was too late to take them
[06:34] back. As you go through your everyday life, hold your radar high, your attention high for these kinds of
[06:48] conversations. They are the beginning of an outrageously slippery slope towards destruction.
[06:57] We're not here necessarily to put an immediate stop to it. We'll talk over the course of this week
[07:06] about what it means to pivot and to change from that meta conversation, to reclaim your agency
[07:13] from the commiserating and really make a meaningful change in the world. See you tomorrow.