Circles: more than ideas generated
In circle, it is not just that new ideas are generated, but commitment. And it is not to a project but, I am beginning to think, from a people. It emerges, it arises, from this congregating, roiling, steaming, working. You cannot get that by sitting at your desk alone; and you can only get a hint of it from a speaker or a panel making a presentation, particularly where they need slides to give power to their point.
People sitting together cooking stir up ideas and resolve. They hear stories, learn of pain and truth and opposition—and they get busy. Making a world needs at least those two things: a direction and a stomach-felt throwing of one’s self into the fray.
But this is a gift of the circle. Calling people together is a function of circle—working, turning. There is thus a mental element—the ideas, and an emotional one—commitment. Both are necessary to make anything happen.
There is more, too: collectivity, things arising from the group; right brain thinking for ideas, imagination, relationships, movement, body thinking; body and physical.
People today do not trust the emotions. We have tried to beat these out of us, and instill instead a respect only for the rational, logical, brain-oriented. But if we see someone without emotion, who has perhaps had a stroke and speaks in a monotone, we know something is not right, not whole.
Whole is what we need. Whole peoples at work. Whole people as essential parts of the whole peoples.
So is the commitment to these people in this circle?
I think it may be the seed of the commitment, but the larger resolve is to and for the tribe, humanity, all life.
:- Doug.
