Middle School Lunch Room, Take Two: Build Relationships, Don't Destroy Them

Yesterday I wrote a blog piece talking about the general dismal state of political discourse. A day doesn't go by without at least one public mention of an "us versus them" statement that breaks relationships rather than builds relationships. I've been squirreled away at home most of this weekend reading various original narratives about nonviolence. This quote is yet another to serve as a good reminder of the importance of building relationships and unifying people. So much of our discourse (any side of the political spectrum, and topic) is locked in an us versus them mentality. Let this serve as a call to action

And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. 

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Our God is Marching on!
--March 25, 1965
Montgomery Alabama

The next time you find yourself in a polarized discussion and locked in a battle to determine who's right, think of this quote. How might you chart another way and build relationships rather than destroy them. When you hear our political leaders speaking relationship destroying words, think for a moment on how they  might do it another way.

Is Your Life Folding or Unfolding?

The other day I became fascinated by a comment that someone made in passing. They were talking about how a particular situation was unfolding. What fascinated me wasn't really about the content about what was unfolding (though, that was interesting too). I became transfixed by the image that appeared in my mind of a life unfolding and reveling itself from birth to death.

A nice image. Not anything particularly life-altering. This notion of a something unfolding is a pretty common figure of speech. A Google search of "unfolding experience" results in about 11,800 items. The first three search results:

• A blog entitled "The Unfolding Experience" that opens with this Kahil Gibran quote: "The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. 

• A book for sale entitled Homeopathic Education: The Unfolding of Experience

• A sample of the book "Becoming a Reflexive Practitioner" that says that "The narrative intends to capture the unfolding experience of working or journeying alongside a patient through their health-wellness experience. 

This still isn't what caught my interest. What really distracted me that hour--and for the last couple of weeks--is that generally we don't have lives that unfold. Overtime our lives become folded and compressed. Possibilities of what might be shrink. Our emotional ranges are limited. We become smaller rather than expansive. The world of opportunity that youth and innocence offer us becomes replaced by cynicism and regret.

Whoops.

This might not be the right direction to be moving in, no? I'm becoming much  more aware of how we use language that limits the possibility of what might be--and inviting those I work with to find ways to open their language up more and unfold into something larger. 

Try it out.