Imagine yourself in a village in Nepal, the second poorest country in the world, where most years even the farmers go hungry for a few months.
That's where Tricia Lustig, a British consultant, found herself several years ago. She'd been invited there by the village headman to work with the villagers, and began her work by asking them if they wanted to tell stories of times they had achieved something together in the village.
"The villagers did not understand what we'd accomplish by talking about what had gone well (instead of things that were wrong)," says Tricia. But then she asked them to dream: What kind of a village do you want for your children and grandchildren?
"That began to get great excitement going," Tricia says. "As soon as we started to talk about how we might do this ourselves, the energy started to dissipate. There was some reluctance to commit to doing things themselves--to move from being victims to being leaders."
Then Pasang Lama, a subsistence farmer with but a few acres--a man who could neither read nor write--stood up to address the villagers.
"We've been bloody lazy," he proclaimed. "For the past 40 years we have been holding our hands out for aid, and what do we get? I'll tell you what we get: We get fights. We can't agree on anything, and we don't feel good about our village or ourselves.
"Forty years ago we did a lot together because there was no one else to help us, and you know what? We were proud of what we did! We were proud of our village!"
Silence.
"Are any of you proud now?" he concluded. "No? Well, let's work together and be proud again!"
"After Pasang spoke, it became amazing," Tricia says. "People stood up and offered the most impossible things. One man, Mr. Bal, was blind and could not provide for his family himself. But his wife ran a teashop. He said she made 600 rupees a month and he would pledge a whole month of her wages to building the new school. She was there too, nodding enthusiastically. He cried as he said, 'our future is our children.'"
Three years later, Tricia returned to the village and saw that the school they had reckoned would take five years to build was already finished and in use. Today there are eight teachers, two paid for by the villagers themselves. There's even a village bank.
All from a shift in the dialogue.
When I bring up these kinds of ideas with folks, they often nod in agreement, and then sometimes gently tell me that their situation is so bad that it has to be an exception. "Jim, this all sounds good," one person said. "But you've got to understand that the problems in my community truly are terrible and just have to be confronted head-on."
I've heard much the same from others about their organization, cause, or even the world.
And yet, my experience has been that even in systems that seem "dysfunctional," the patient is still alive. In every situation, we have the opportunity to wonder: What animates this place, these people? What sustains their life, perhaps in what seems like a small way? ("To see things in the seed, that is genius," wrote the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism.) If people rigorously and systematically focus on their health and vitality, what path might they find to enliven themselves even more?
The choice to take this stance is always available to us. But more often, we feel pressed for immediate action and quick results, so we fall back on our habitual patterns. We rush to get to the problem and pass by opportunities to foster the greater awareness that inspires greater action.
What happens if we slow down (just a little)? What if, as we prepare for our many meetings, we made an inspiring dialogue part of the agenda? Might we start to legitimize conversations that are positive, personal, reflective, and genuine--the kind of discourse that energizes people, connects them with others, and nurtures the seeds of human potential?
That sounds attractive, at least to me. And yet, having said all of this, I've found that people often shrink from applying these ideas.
It takes courage to break from our routines and bring our ideals, hopes, and dreams out into the open; to make them legitimate topics of conversation; to shift our sense of what is and what is possible by changing the way we talk about it.
It takes courage to reclaim our power to change the world.