Bridges and Communities

Earlier this week I took a solo day away.  I intended to walk from our house to Forest Park, a very large park in N/NW Portland with many hiking trails.  It's about 2.5 miles' walk just to get to the park, including crossing the St Johns Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Johns_Bridge), a tall suspension bridge over the Willamette River.

As I walked through the neighborhoods on my way to the bridge, it occurred to me that I didn't know the people who lived in most of the housing units.  Over the past year plus I've been heavily involved in doing community organizing work, yet I still don't know most of the people in my community.  This sparked several reflections:

• I noted the size of most of the homes I was passing. Recently it has been bothering me that we all live in such large houses, and I've been attributing quite a bit of it to our attachment to stuff.  We can't think of moving to someplace smaller because we can't bear the thought of parting with our big-screen TVs, couches, and other furniture and gadgets and toys.  (Been recognizing my own attachments in slowly moving toward 100 personal possessions.)  This time, though, something deeper occurred to me.  We hold on to our big houses and possessions because by them we believe we can be independent. We have everything we need unto ourselves.  I get to choose with whom I interact ... which means I choose what they see and know about me ... which means I can hide from real relationship and even from being forced to confront my own self and its issues
• How can we pretend to help a community if we don't really know that community, and know it honestly?  I think most programs and individuals fail in their endeavors because they don't truly know the community -- the people, the culture, the customs, needs, and wants -- in which they are operating.  This could be because they keep too much distance (bullet #1) or because they are too close and unable to see what the truth is.  In my local context, there are a lot of people who have been in the community so long that when they want to "make the community better" they usually mean take it back to the way it used to be.  We need to recognize the warts and challenge the community to be all it really can be.  And if the makeup of the community changes, then our definition of who we are needs to change rather than just trying to make the new pieces fit into "our" community
• This becomes exponentially more important -- and difficult -- when you're talking about bridging (yep, the bridge got in there) between cultures.  That's what I typically end up doing: serving as a bridge between generations, races, nationalities, income levels, genders.  But to speak with credibility and sense the connection that can be made between those distinct groups, do I spend enough time listening to each that I understand?  Or do I simply "do the work" that I or others want to accomplish?  Do I skimp on the listening and relationship to get 'er done, or do I recognize that the real "work" is the relationship? Does the world really need another policy, process, structure, or similar?  When will we realize that those things don't heal the world; they simply provide us with the illusion that we are "solving" things, which mainly just serves to insulate us from what is really happening.

Next blog post will cover what happened when I reached the bridge.  (teaser alert)

To change or not to change?

I've been hearing a lot lately about people not wanting to change or, more specifically, not wanting others to try to force them to change.  The line that accompanies this (everyone say it with me) is "I am who I am."

Now, Popeye the philosopher to the contrary, I've come more and more to believe that this phrase is bunk.  Let me explain.

There are times, clearly, where we are what we are, and it is unreasonable for others to expect us to be other than what we are.  I am a thinker, and to expect me to instinctively feel instead of thinking, well, let's just say you'll be disappointed almost always.  Others are spontaneous, or serious, or detail-oriented.  If we can accept that, and learn how to work with it, we'll all be better off.

But there is a key phrase there, and a key concept hidden behind it.  "Learn how to work with it."  Having managed groups of people many times, I know that it's imperative to understand who they are as individuals: what they value, what motivates them, how they like to operate.  If I ignore these things, my group fails.  But if I adapt the way I work to set them up for success, we all win.

So I adapt.  I know I need to.  We do it all the time.  When we are interacting with a 3-year-old on a playground we talk and act different from our behaviors and speech in a corporate meeting or when we're out for dinner with a group of old friends.  We do it consciously at first but it soon becomes unconscious; we just naturally adapt.  Another word for adapt?  Change.

So we can change, and we don't expect to say "I am what I am" in every context.  So when do we use it?

When we don't feel like changing for the other person.  At least sometimes, then, it's not the other person who is the issue, but our own choice to stay the way we are.  We are often more committed to being who we want to be, how we like to be, than to being in healthy relationship with the other person.

And of course it's also ludicrous to think that we don't or won't change.  As we learn and grow, as we live, we become different from who we were.  The old bromide "You can't go home again" refers to the fact that we change, and others change, and we can't just go back to the way we all used to be.

As you are confronted with opportunities to change today, remember that you do have a choice.