Yesterday I was on a commuter flight from Toronto to Montreal. For those of you not in North America, these two cities are the biggest two in Canada and the flight is full of corporate looking people who are wearing ties, nice trench coats, shiny shoes, power rim glasses, and carrying leather portfolios. In short it was a flight of business travellers, mostly men, mostly white.
What struck me as I watched people coming on was how grim everyone looked. Everyone looked deadly serious. They were quiet, travelling alone for the most part and quickly avoided making eye contact with others. It seemed as if most people coming on were worried or fearful. It was as if people were moving with a kind of forced confidence but what was so clear from the outside was how afraid everyone seemed to be of appearing to make a mistake.
At one point a man sat down next to me after expertly throwing his rollaway into the overhead bin. He mumbled a forced “good morning” without looking at me and then cracked open his newspaper. A minute later a woman appeared and showed him her boarding pass which indicated that he was sitting in her seat. The man looked mortified, stuttered out an apology to me actually tried to defend himself and justify his mistake and very nervously and clumsily moved across the aisle.
I was filled with a wave of sadness in that moment. I wanted to say to him “Hey, I won’t be the one that yells at you today for that little mistake.” I looked around the plane. People were so scared of making an error that everyone sat clenched in their seats quiet and grim. I was shocked…it became clear to me that some part of our society – let’s say “Corporate Canada” in this case – was gripped by fear. People actually looked traumatized or abused. They looked like people I know who are residential school survivors or who had survived a bad and abusive foster parenting situation. I can imagine them being yelled at for little things that have happened. It looked like the most risk averse group of people I have ever seen in one place. Risk averse because somehow each of them had paid a dear price fro sticking their necks out, a personal price.
The temptation to generalize is great. But let me say that most airports on a weekday morning during the fall and winter are full of faces like this. Business travellers, corporate sales managers, directors of HR, regional market analysts, associate finance directors, senior planning officers…all these middle management corporate positions staffed by people so full of fear that they shake with nervousness at the smallest mistake in their day.
I don’t work much in the corporate world, but maybe I should more. Maybe a little honest conversation, a little tolerance for exploration and creative problem solving, a little space opening could go a long way to softening the lives of those who wear a hard visage.
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Lovely quote from David Kundtz:
Stopping is doing nothing, as much as possible, for a definite period of time.
Many more great quotes at Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going.
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From my recent work in the labour movement, a quote to inspire you in your work for social change:
Howard Zinn: ”Ž”To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we… see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
I’m in Prince George today and tomorrow working with the BC Government Employees Union in a great regional conference that is looking at forging the links between unions and communities. There is much organizing capacity and heart based action in the labour movement and much need on the ground here in the north of the province. Putting one to work on the other is a huge and easy capacity building thing to do.
So today a cafe on where we can go to work in community to make a difference, and tomorrow a short Open Space for people to ground action and make some plans to get out there.
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October 19, 1990 in Peterborough, Ontario was a dark and cold autumn day with sleet falling and grim grey cloud. The only light at all was the fact that I met my beloved partner Caitlin Frost that day. Here is my anniversary poem for her.
On a sleet driven day
when the sky split into a million bits of darkness
and rained down on the groggy morning
I could never imagine
that what was falling
was me for you.
May you all know the love I have been lucky enough to be blessed with.
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Lots of travel this week. During the time I was away in Ontario working with labour educators from a number of Canadian unions I heard a great line from a Canadian Auto Workers educator that sustains him when he is challenged while doing good work: “You don’t always have to like th emembers, but you have to love them.”
I was reflecting on that line this week after I hosted an Open Space on Bowen Island, in my home community to provide a space for my neighbours to discuss a proposal to turn some of Bowen’s Crown Lands into a National Park. The proposal has received a mixed reception among islanders, but there has been some outright hostility as well. This week, a guy I consider a “howyadoin’?” friend, lambasted me for running a meeting that appeared to be “a ruse to appease the public.” I informed him that I was hosting the meeting all on my own, without anyone paying me to do so that a variety of views could be heard. His response was still negative, but in the end, like my friend in the Auto Workers, I had to conclude you don’t have to like your fellow islanders, but you have to love them.
And God love them.