“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”. Plato

Years ago when I was a teacher, I found that even my second graders sometimes got too serious. Once when they were all intense and upset about some test, I created the Esnesnon Club (nonsense spelled backward) and they were all members.  The rule was to create nonsense ideas that engaged all members.  Sometimes, what happened was brilliant, other times, just pure corn.  The Esnesnon Club continued throughout the year. Always though it brought fresh air into the room and lightened things up. 

Later when I founded the Learning Exchange, (1972) play was a healthy part of the process.  We had a large recycle department that stocked left overs and scraps from businesses throughout the city.  We would have contests to see who could think of the most uses for these items.  These items became reusable wealth and became a healthy part of the LX budget each year.  One of the things the LX spawned was an Invention's workshop for teachers and principals. Teams were asked to select ten to 15 items out of a barrel of goodies and then they were asked to invent something with them.  Non just anything, but a "timer that would run for exactly three minutes then send a signal to send a rubber ducky down stream"; or "a vehicle that would run on its own power for 90 seconds then emit an odor that would trigger something else to happen". Teams had to design, build, market, and sell their ideas.  We often had adults ... serious adults rolling on the floor with laughter.  There was a freedom in the room,  unencumbered moments where people became themselves ... curious, collaborative, playful, and active.  These were the years before anyone thought about the value of collaboration. But here they were seeing how different minds could see and solve different parts of the problems.  In the debrief there was always astonishment about how they all participated and because of that, created success.  In a three-hour module these adults who worked side by side each day - who counted on each other - got to know each other better than all the hours they had spent working, worrying about students and parents, playing politics, and acting adult. 

The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory is what it enables you to do. MG Taylor Axiom, 1983

I sometimes stare at the clothes worn by people throughout the ages and wonder what the motive was for such costuming. Corsets, pettycoat hoops around the feet, shoes that bind and distort, armour so heavy that one could hardly walk... and on and on. In the 1920's, Helen Willis, one of the world's greatest tennis players was the first to question the need for long dresses and corsets when playing tennis. She dared to undress in public by trading her dress for mid calf pants of a sailor type style. Follow swimming suits fashion through the ages and you will find the same questioning over time about the appropriate dress for the situation.  And over time, new images of what is appropriate dress comes into fashion. 

Today, another form of undressing in public is happening. This time it is not about clothes but about expertise. For years and years, we have sought to get our doctorates or other certificates signifying that we have the answers ... that our answers out-trump other answers.

"If you did not do what you did today, for example, the entire world would be in some way different.

Your acts ripple outward in ways that you do not understand, interacting with the experience of others, and hence, forming world events. The most famous and the most anonymous person are connected through such a fabric, and an action seemingly small and innocuous can end up changing history."
Jane Roberts, The Nature of the Psyche: It's Human Expression, 1979

Michael Ventura wrote a book about the 60's and 70's called Shadow Dancing in the USA. One of the concepts that fascinated me is his believing that many of us are awake at 3 AM in the morning ... wondering, worrying, playing with ideas, intuiting and creating our future.  At a gathering with some of my friends in Point Arena and Gualala, I shared this thought and from here an idea took form. Anne Kessler took the lead and has organized a really fun event. On April 1, 2007 we are hosting the first of what we think might be many...

WHAT DREAMS KEEP YOU UP AT 3 AM? 

Do you have an idea, a dream, a project, a vision? Our dynamic community is filled with brilliant and creative people whose ideas and projects will totally amaze you! Do you have a project that is community minded, or a plan for a business, or just a really wacky idea? Could you use some help? Would you like to let people know what you are thinking?  

"People don't resist change. They resist being changed."
—Peter Senge

Since the premier of the WorkSpace at the World Economic Forum 2005 Annual Meeting, it has hosted well over 50 sessions and workshops, traveled from the Alps to Egypt and South Africa, and brought several thousand participants into an unprecedented depth of collaboration and co-design. From climate change to the creative imperative, ending chronic hunger to ending intellectual property rights, tribal dynamics to information epidemics, WorkSpace sessions have taken on issues that touch about every individual, community and society on the planet.

Individually, many of these sessions have been a highlight of participants' experience, and have done as much as any other session to shape the Forum's annual agenda. More importantly for the Forum, the cumulative impact of the WorkSpace has been a cultural shift within the Forum community.

O civili, si ergo,
Fortibus es in ero!
O nobili, deis trux.
Vatis enim, causan dux.

A very savvy communicator told me the following story. He was part of a 50 person group and they were in the 3rd of a five day process.  The group was divided into five ten person teams and each team was asked to select a word .... any word.  His group chose "love".  Once they chose their word they were asked to independently write ten words that expressed "love" for them ... synonyms  for love.  Then they were asked 1) to guess how many words they had in common and 2) to compare their words and discover how accurate their guess was.  The group guessed that out of 50 words they had at least 10 in common.  It turned out they had three!!! Three common words describing love!

I later tried this and the word our group settled on was "empowerment". We had two words in common!

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.” - Lewis Carroll

This coming Wednesday evening, twelve of us from the Redwood Coast (Mendanoma) are having a conversation.  We don't all know each other but we have one thing in common: we are hungry for real conversations. We're out of practice. We know how to instigate projects and fight battles. We know how to be against things and for things, but really we don't know the art of conversation.

 In preparation I have just finished reading a book named: Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin.  "Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: the transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards, it creates new cards."

Our first conversation will revolve around "What is conversation?" I guess this is a bit like an Escher design of his Drawing Hands.

What new cards will be created as our Redwood Coast community instigates and practices conversation?  What stories and ideas will unfold? What difference will this small effort make over time?

"...This sounds unnerving -- I haven't stopped wanting someone, somehow to return with the right answers. But I know that my hopes are old, based on a different universe. In this new world, you and I make it up as we go along, not because we lack expertise or planning skills, but because that is the nature of reality. Reality changes shape and meaning because of our activity. And it is constantly new. We are required to be there, as active participants. It can't happen without us and nobody can do it for us. Meg Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 1993

As the calendar turns from '06 to '07, I wonder, does a new year matter? And what is this measure we call 'time'? Keeping time goes back in time ... maybe almost as far back as humans do. Until recently, time was seen and experienced not a linear progression, but as cycles, continuously repeating yet always new. The word commencement signifies endings and beginnings. I like this. December 31st may be an artificial ending and January 1st an arbitrary beginning, but it commands (for me) reflection, digestion, exploration, reframing, ending, or letting go to make room for new emergent explorations.

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not as in fiction, to imagine things that are not really there, but just to comprehend those things that are there. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law

I get a kick out of my MacMail message as it searches for new emails. "Finding unseen messages" seems so easy for it to do. Within seconds it either reports that there are no new messages or that I have something in my "in box." How I wish my mind could work like this! Einstein's comment: "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education" certainly holds true with me. How is it that we become so trapped by our assumptions and what we have been told as truth that we often fail to see what is right in front of our face? I wish I had a reset button that would take help me see what's in my inbox ... differently!

"In those places where we're most alive, we are questions, not answers. These questions change as we age. One has to listen carefully, again and again, to detect new questions, which may announce themselves in a whisper. At any age, the questions we're asking define our growing edge. So long as we've got even a single question, we're not dead. If all we have are answers, we might as well be." Robert Fuller, Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank

I am often invited to provide quotes to people or for an event.  I love quotes. Note that each of my Journal entries begins with a quote. Each reminds me that I am not alone in my thinking; there are others musing over similar challenges and insights...  I have hundreds of quotes and each is an instruction or insight for me.  They are far more than words; they are ideas to build on and to take as instructive commands.  They give added voice to  my own thinking or to that of a group. I can remember many of the moments where "words jumped off the page" and introduced themselves to me.  Sometimes I have been lucky enough to meet the authors and thank them for their gift. Sometimes, the authors have been surprised and delighted with my insights into their words.  I have added meaning they never considered!  Good exchanges between author and myself  bring forth even more meaning.