Vision, Character, and Change in 2008

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

-Helen Keller

A better way

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
–M. Scott Peck

It seems as if so much of what we want is designed to limit how uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled we are. The commercials on television sell products and procedures to bring comfort, happiness, and fulfillment (at least temporarily). It reminds me of "soma" from Brave New World.

But it is that persistent, undeniable unrest that is so important to forming a life worth living. Poverty has been fertile ground for growing leaders of change. Those who would prefer the status quo would seek to placate those in poverty, those hungry for change. Alcohol, drugs, mindless entertainment, and credit keep things as they are.

I see it elsewhere... a failing school is acceptable as long as the athletic teams are successful, students avoid challenging courses and get the same grades, and tradition trumps progress when progress takes too much effort.

So here's to never being satisfied, to always feeling unsettled, and to always finding a better way.

What does change mean?

In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
–Alvin Toffler


This quote, forwarded to me my a dear friend, captures my concern for this new generation of leaders. There is so much isolated information, poured nonstop upon the public, that they are drowning yet thirsty for something more. Context, connection, purpose... we need to make meaning from the bits and bytes.

Education here again could play such a vital role. History provides the backstory, Literature provides context, and Science provides critical analysis of cause and effect... but only when we see the grander purpose in education. Life is a series of choices and consequences - karma's cause and effect. When we teach in isolated bits and bytes, we hide the nature of life. Our ability to change is our greatest strength.

I continue to be amazed at the writing of Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest. It's a new view of system, of collective action, of forest for the trees. In the end, we cannot wait for others to make sense of it for us, we must be the makers of meaning.