worldview intelligence

Why Won’t You Just Meet Me Halfway?

Kathy Jourdain Leave a comment

Have you heard yourself ask this question, usually in frustration: Why won’t they just meet me halfway?! This often gets said when we are in a disagreement or a conflict with someone or another group and we want to make progress on an issue or mend a relationship. But, what do we really mean when we ask the question?

First of all, what is halfway? How do you know? If you imagine a road with point A and point B and you start at one point and the person you wish to persuade to meet you halfway starts at the other point, it is pretty easy to discern the halfway point. However, what if there are other roads connecting points A and B? Do you know which road you are each traveling?

In the case of a difference of views on an issue or circumstance, are you even clear on your own starting point? Have you really thought about it, clarified it for yourself or are you assuming? What about the other person (or group)? You may think you know their starting point … but do you really?

Another key question to ask yourself is, what do you mean by halfway? If there are more than one possible starting points or interpretations of starting points or if there are multiple pathways between the two, which is usually the case, then what is halfway?

More often than not what we mean when we say halfway is, here’s where I am, here is the road in front of me, meet me on my road. MY road. Not THE road. Not your road. Not some other road we may not yet have discovered. Meet me halfway on my road. Which means, come to me. Compromise something that may be important to you and meet me on my path.

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If this trip is important, then determining starting points and the willingness to find the intersection that represents “halfway” is worth the time it takes.

What steps are you willing to take to meet the other person (or group) at some other point that may or may not be the “half way” you think you are asking? What might you need to let go of or be willing to compromise to get to this point? What curiosity are you willing to bring to your own motives and to the motives of the other person?

Worldview Intelligence offers the opportunity to discover your own starting point (or that of your organization or community) on issues that matter enough to involve other people. It invites you to imagine what the other person’s (or group’s) starting point might be and then allows you the opportunity to invite a conversation that may evoke a very different pathway than the one that is directly in front of you or the other person; a pathway that has greater potential to meet at the intersection of worldviews, where both or all views make an important contribution to solutions you may not have thought about or considered, each on your own.

Join us in Halifax on November 30, 2017 to learn more about starting points and meeting halfway.

There Are No Simple Solutions to Complexity

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We want it to be simple. We groan under the weight of the increasing complexity we are experiencing – at work, in life, in our communities and in political environments. We bemoan the fact there are no silver bullets even while we continue to search for them.

Not only do silver bullets or simple solutions to complex issues not exist, but when we try to apply any we have come up with, they do not work. We end up in a situation where fixes fail or backfire loops emerge. Fixes that fail is when the solution we apply backfires and the problem or issue still exists either in its original form or worse. Unintended consequences spin off increasing the complexity of the circumstances we have been attempting to address.

Examples of unintended consequences abound but one example from our Worldview Intelligence work is with a health care client we work with in the US. The client piloted a new approach to patient care in six of its more than two hundred clinics across three states. Including one of these clinics in the pilot put its relationship with two other nearby clinics in jeopardy – a relationship they had invested years in building to create a common patient experience – because the one clinic was now operating differently.

So, if simple solutions do not exist, how do we find our way forward? One way is to illuminate the complexity, the relationships and the underlying patterns. Working with a Nova Scotia client recently that has a strong reputation Nationally and Internationally for the work they do, where they work in numerous coalitions and collaborative relationships to accomplish their mandate, they were invited to map their system and relationships.

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Mapping shows the messiness and the complexity of the system. It illuminates what people try to hold in their heads, resulting in less stress and greater capacity to address issues and plan.

The map showed the dynamic complexity of their work. A surprising outcome to them was that in making the complexity visible, it reduced the sense of overwhelm and stress many of the staff felt, untangling the complexity and offering clear ways forward in their work planning, including identifying meetings, who needs to be involved in which conversations to which degree.

Worldview Intelligence explorations do not necessarily reduce the complexity, but by illuminating it, shows ways to address it and then change the outcomes.

Child Soldiers – Changing the Nature of the Conversation to “Win”

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According to the Child Soldiers Initiative, “the use of child soldiers is one of the farthest-reaching and most disturbing trends in contemporary conflict”. It would be very easy to forcefully say that it is wrong and that the people who put children in the line of fire are cold, calculating and vile people. And that might all be true. But holding onto that stance of judgment not only will not save those children, it will not solve the plight of child soldiers.

Retired Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, a celebrated humanitarian and outspoken advocate for war-affected children, and Jonathan Somer, an expert on the engagement of armed non-state actors in the protection of children, were in Halifax the evening of July 5, 2017 for the first in a series of lectures. This one was titled “Bridging the Divide: Engaging States and armed non-state actors”. It was moderated by Dr Shelly Whitman who took up the post of Executive Director of The Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative in January 2010, an engaging speaker in her own right and strong moderator. They spoke about the roles that states and armed groups have to play in respecting international humanitarian norms and supporting child protection.

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Retired Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire and Roger Soper

More than that, they spoke about the necessity of changing the conversation with states and armed groups to expand the possibility that something can be done to alleviate the plight of child soldiers.

It was fascinating to listen to a couple of the stories. Dallaire told a story about child soldiers in the Sudan. He talked about the eventual release of 300 child soldiers into the care of his organization. This only happened by establishing dialogue with a willingness to listen, to ask questions and to learn.

There are underlying circumstances or conditions – history and reality – that lead to the tactical and strategic use of children as a weapon of war. We heard about the reduced population of older people through both war and the ravages of AIDS, leading to a much higher percentage of children in the population. And we heard about poverty and few options for children or families. Ironically, becoming part of an armed initiative can provide a sense of safety for children or a sense of belonging.

Ultimately through establishing a dialogue with this armed group in Sudan, Dallaire and his team were able to ask a different set of questions – not questions of accusation or blame. They asked questions like, are these children winning battles for you? Will they win the war for you? Are they able to sustain conflict over a long period of time? Are you able to sustain them as a group of soldiers? What about the International reaction to the use of child soldiers – does this help your cause?

The answers to the questions were ultimately no, they don’t win battles or wars and we can’t sustain them the way we can an adult army and the impact of international scrutiny because of child soldiers is not helpful. They asked questions that invited a closer look at an expanded reality. This is what ultimately led to the surrendering of those children.

Canada is playing an innovative and leading edge role in raising awareness of child soldiers, in understanding the underlying patterns as well as the tactical and strategic uses, that lead to the ongoing use of child soldiers. They are changing the nature of the relationship and the conversations to find new ways forward and make progress on a disturbing and challenging trend in some conflict zones. This is essentially a worldview exploration and we know that applying the skills of Worldview Intelligence changes outcomes. While there is a long way to go on this issue, there is hope.

You’re Just Too Stupid To Know …

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Well, that Heineken commercial – the Worlds Apart #OpenYourWorld video – is certainly garnering attention – positive, excited, provocative, and outrage. I have to admit, the outrage part caught me by surprise. And seeing a headline that says it is worse than the Pepsi commercial, but “you’re just too stupid to know” does not feel like an invitation that welcomes me into an exploration of why that might be.

Heineken commercial photo

I saw the Heineken video about a week ago (have not seen the Pepsi one) and it resonated for me in relation to the work we are doing with Worldview Intelligence. The biggest challenge people seem to have is about how to have conversations with people who have very different worldviews, perspectives, or opinions than they have. The kinds of conversations that usually shut down before they even begin. The kinds of situations that have torn families and friendships apart.

I see now that there are people pointing out that some of the people in the video are more at risk than others – a point which seems valid to me. Some of the scenarios were much milder and some much riskier – climate change believer and denier paired up versus a transgender woman and a man disgusted by the very idea. Some think it perpetuates the very situations and scenarios it is highlighting.

What I wondered after seeing the video was: how? How did they do it? What was the invitation that was made to the people who participated? How was the scenario of the exchange set up? How did they create “safe enough” conditions for participation? They clearly went to a fair bit of work in the preparation since they had videos of each person created prior to their meeting.

If I already don’t like the video, I’m more likely to click on the stories that tell me it is dangerous, idiotic or harmful. It will confirm my perspective – confirmation bias. If I like the video, telling me “I’m too stupid to know …” makes me feel judged and does not make me interested in reading the post – which maybe I should be reading in order to expand my worldview.

For me, watching the video made me more curious about how to create environments where people who see and experience the world very differently can meet each other in exploratory spaces – something greatly needed and desired right now by many we encounter in our work. How to do it well in increasingly challenging situations – well, that is the question and the exploration at the center of much of the work of Worldview Intelligence.

Worldview Intelligence at the Geneva Model United Nations

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One of the joys of working with the Worldview Intelligence framework is discovering both the specificity and the elasticity of its use as it is applied to a wide variety of situations and circumstances. In November 2016, with Nancy Bragard and Rolf Schneideriet, we delivered the first full European Worldview Intelligence Program in Germany. Since then a lovely European Community of Practice has emerged. It was in Germany where we first met Stéphan Krajcik and where he became quite enthused with the possibilities for Worldview Intelligence.

Stephan KrajcikStéphan left the Worldview program and immediately contacted the Model UN in Geneva where he lives and in which his children participate. During the Model UN, participating students from many different countries are asked to represent another country as a member of the UN. Stéphan was pursing an idea he fleshed out during an open space exploration while in the Germany program. Having watched his children participate in the Model UN, he held a curiosity about how students from around the world prepare to take on their role, carrying in the views of a country they are assigned but do not know. He saw the Worldview Intelligence exploration as a way of preparing more personally and deeply to represent the views of that country.

Stéphan adapted the Worldview Intelligence materials to be used by the student participants and proposed to the Model UN that they add the materials to the students’ preparation. It turns out that the timeline for bringing new material to the Model UN was shorter than imagined, so there was not time to introduce a full blown Worldview Intelligence approach – that is next on the agenda. However, the framework was made available to students online and those that voluntarily chose to use it found it helpful.

Seeing students discover new ways of exploring different worldviews is an exciting application of the framework, as we also discovered when we brought students and employers together in Grand Rapids to think together about the future workplace, and we are looking forward to further evolution of this opportunity with the Model UN.

If you are interested in seeing Stéphan’s adaption, you can view it at the Model UN site.

Worldview Intelligence Expands Horizons – Jan 2017 Program Harvest

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“In the heart you are welcome to feel everything that you are feeling. Together, the heart created here is capable of anything”.

 

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Not just humans showed up – January 2017

January 2017 saw the launch of the first of three two-day Worldview Intelligence community programs for Itasca and Cass Counties. These programs are part of a larger project around workplace and welcoming community, intended to explore possibilities to address the growing need for workers.

The Worldview Intelligence framework was shared along with strategies for working with different perspectives. Participants entered personal and cultural worldview explorations using personal reflection, small group discussion and art.

Personal Worldview Exploration Reflections

At the end of the first day, which focused on the personal exploration, the common themes that emerged were around curiosity and how we can bring it more fully to differing worldviews, the power of stories and how they can quickly create connections between people, the importance of good questions in learning about and understanding someone else, and the possibilities that emerge when we question our own stories and the perspectives we bring.

People found themselves more curious about what connects us and what makes us different, noted that how worldview collisions are perceived was already changing, some were already feeling less likely to be a participant in any next potential conflict and that our worldview influences how we see ourselves and each other in exchanges.

LeMoine LaPointe, an elder from Rosebud Nation, offered the metaphor of ‘body as medicine bag for the soul’ and it resonated deeply with participants. The idea of impermanence was raised: impermanence of the human being but also impermanence of our worldviews because shift, change and expansion is always possible. Genuine engagement leaves people different.

The next morning, people were expressing hopefulness and optimism, expansion of horizons with a group of beautiful hearts and gratitude for the acknowledgement of issues in the community.

Cultural Worldview Exploration Reflections

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Using the Worldview Intelligence framework to spark cultural worldview explorations and art

The culture we grow up in guides our life and choices, often more significantly than we know. Culture is deeply engrained; it can be insidious, so creating the cognitive space to think about it brings it into awareness offering the opportunity to make changes if we wish. Culture does not happen in a vacuum and it is a constant force. It can be as invisible as the air we breathe and it is very difficult to disentangle personal and cultural worldviews but helpful when you can do so.

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“With all I know, I still don’t know if I know what to do, but I keep remembering we know together ~ which is why it is important to engage.”

 Worldview Awareness Helps Discern Starting Points

The importance of starting points – understanding our own and someone else’s – in providing new ways through conflict or conflicting points of view was noted. Starting points are influenced by reality, history, future, values, practices and knowledge. What might be true for a lot of people from the same or similar culture, might not be true for individuals from that culture ~ and that’s okay. Different is not wrong.

Any one can fall victim to their own or anothers’ judgments or assumptions. To be able to bring curiosity when that happens is a practice to be cultivated. It is easier in some situations and harder in others.

People like predictability, even when the underlying assumptions may no longer be valid. This is one of the reasons people hold tightly to their worldviews, their perspectives and decisions made along the way.

What’s Different After Two Days of Worldview Exploration?

In addition to identifying “increased personal awareness of my own worldview, the stories I tell, how I tell them and what triggers me”, participants identified immediate shifts and actions they intend to embrace. These include recognizing responsibility in stepping up rather than avoiding potential conflict, start with the positive, pause and remember someone else’s experience may be very different, step into situations where people may not share my own worldview, to be less afraid to approach someone when there is difficulty and figure out how to have that conversation, focus on reflective questions. In conflicting situations, the “truth” often lies somewhere in the middle – you are not all right or all wrong so look for where the person you are in conflict with might be right and use that as an entry way into a more helpful conversation.

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All this reflection, connection and expansion can be exhausting.

Tolerance is Insufficient

Kathy Jourdain 1 Comment

It is not enough to tolerate something or someone. We cannot tolerate each other into connection, understanding or belonging. We will not tolerate our issues, concerns and challenges into progress or tolerate our way into finding paths forward on issues that matter to us all.

Say or think the word. Feel into it. Roll it around in your mind or on your tongue. Feel the energy of it. Tolerance is not generous or expansive. It is elitist. It suggests, I’ll put up with you or with your opinion even if I think it is wrong or misguided — because — I’m tolerant?

Medical definitions of tolerance are about the capacity to endure pain or hardship; it is about endurance, fortitude, stamina. How long can I hold out? How much do I have to put up with?

Eventually the veneer of tolerance cracks. We give in or give up. Whatever causes us to be dismissive of other views or another person’s experience as if it was not valid, also causes us to go from tolerance to annoyance to frustration to anxiety to fear and even to hate. It causes us to justify our own sense of superiority, experience, knowledge – the reasons my beliefs, my values, my faith are true. I am right. You are something less than right all the way to completely wrong.

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Candle Light Vigil and Halifax Grand Parade post the Quebec City Mosque Killings – connecting to share sorrow and grief with others

So, if tolerance is insufficient to find ways forward, what do we need? The capacity to suspend judgment. To be genuinely curious about another person, their experiences and how they have come to see the world the way they have. To bring humility and generosity to truly engage in a conversation of discovery. To honour not just the other person’s perspective but also our own and any number of other ones that might exist.

From a point of connection, we can explore differences and discover the vibrancy that exists in another person’s experiences. From understanding we can empathize with each other and discover the humanity that exists in each of us. From these we can create places and spaces of belonging. This causes us to move past the fear that holds us in the place of tolerance that often becomes intolerance.

Participants from the United Tribes Technical College and the North Dakota State University meeting each other in worldview explorations in support of hosting community conversations about Standing Rock, the pipeline and racism. Jan 2017

This is essentially the work and result of Worldview Intelligence and the explorations invited – whether personal, cultural, organizational or about a social system. Everywhere we go we hear, we really need this right now. It is why we care deeply about this work, why it is our life passion. Building connection in an increasingly fragmented and polarized world. Generating understanding in a time when the impulse is to cocoon away from the world and protect ourselves from “the other”. Because tolerance is not enough. Because true compassion and understanding requires meeting someone else in their experience.

The shortest distance between two people is a story. Can you be available to hear someone else’s story and share your own?

It Is the Multiplicity of Stories That Shape Who We Are – Individually and Collectively – And It Is Time To Invite Them All Now

Kathy Jourdain 1 Comment

Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories are how we make sense of our experiences. For each of us individually we have a multitude of stories. We know this and yet, it is easy to default to a single story when we think of another culture, another region, another country or even another political party – as is the current danger in many countries including the US. This leads us to more fragmentation and polarization and makes it harder to be open to the complexities that are true of any individual, culture, region or country.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In her July 2009 TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, Nigerian author and story teller  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, offers that stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. They can be used to empower and to humanize. They have been used to break a people and they can be used to restore dignity.

A single story robs people of their dignity, it makes recognition of equal humanity difficult and it emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. Some of our greatest learning comes from people the least like us.

For each of us, an impression will arrive in a nano-second at the consideration of any of these words (or others): America, Canada, France, Europe, Africa, man, woman, child, immigrant, refugee, Brexit. The lines that enter our heads are often of a single story, easily and quickly told. And this single story does not capture the whole of the story. Ngozi Adichie speaks of how she bristles when people describe Africa as a country. It is not a country. It is a continent full of countries. There is not one singular African experience, just like there is not one singular American or Canadian or European experience.

She also shares how we significantly change the story depending on what we identify as the starting point. When we start the story at “secondly”, as in, when we start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans not with the arrival of the Europeans, we have an entirely different story. When the story starts with the failures of the African States and not with the colonialization of the African States, we have an entirely different story. Starting point matters.

Focusing on negative stories flattens the experience of individuals, cultures and countries. It ignores the totality of the things that have shaped them. A single story is not untrue, but it is not complete.

Power lies with the people who tell the story about another. Showing a people as a single story creates a power imbalance that can only be brought back into balance by sharing and examining the multiplicity of stories that are also true – the “ands” rather than the either/or’s. And, different versions of the same story is not a multitude of stories.

Worldview Intelligence asks that we invite a multiplicity of stories to exist in the same space. One story does not negate another story – individually, culturally, region wise, in a country. The many stories make visible the interweave of all that is true, of all that influences how someone, or a culture, has come to see and experience the world the way they do.

It is only in opening up our willingness to see this multitude of stories that we will learn from each other, connect with each other and find ways forward that do not currently seem to exist.

In the words of a very good friend and colleague, Lemoine Lapointe, “we have forgotten how to visit with each other.” It is time to visit again with our neighbours with curiosity, compassion and an open mind, open heart and open spirit – not to negate our own worldview or even to change it, but to allow for an expansion that leads to the possibilities of the very different experiences that have shaped we are – individually and collectively – today.

Not On My Watch, Although I Am Still Deep In Shock

Kathy Jourdain 7 Comments

It’s been seven weeks since the American election and I, like so many people I know, am still in shock. I find myself going through the motions of my life, living into the moments as they appear while at the same time there is a niggling little curiosity that tugs at the corners of my mind. Is this what it was like in pre-war (pick any time period) Germany, France, Austria and so many other countries? Were there people who wondered at the inanity of it all, who feared for the future, who could see disaster lurking around the corner and felt powerless to stop it? Did they think the things my mind turns to as I wonder what the future will hold? As on a daily basis there are choices made that seem incredulous? Like all the cabinet picks who couldn’t be more opposite than the intent of the portfolios they’ve been assigned to or the focus of the President elect’s tweets as he seems intent on not actually running the country he is not qualified to run in the first place. Glibly uncaring about the impact of his actions, behaviours and words.

On the one hand it seems laughable. Until I pause and think about the possible ramifications of it all. Which then has me, in the back of my mind, wondering with each normal activity, with each dinner, with each celebration I am part of, how close to the brink of disaster, or even planet wide annihilation, are we? And do I even want to know? The whole idea is not that far-fetched. Not as far-fetched as it may have seemed six months ago.

‘I wish it need not have happened in my time’, said Frodo.

‘So do I’, said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look bleak. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it. We should be very hard put to it, even if it were not for this dreadful chance…”

This is how I feel. Like I am about to witness an age I did not imagine possible in my lifetime. And I wonder what my role in this time will be, what the role of my children will be, what the role of all brave hobbits will be, as events unfold.

well-informed-or-sane-comicI struggle to know what well-informed means these days given the propensity of fake news, my knowledge of how our worldviews influence the information we pay attention to and how social media creates bubbles of like minded, like values people. I am drawn to read articles in my desire to understand and to look for any rays of hope. Some days I just want to shut it all off – like two decades ago when I stopped watching the news with any regularity and stopped subscribing to the newspaper. Those days you could watch a news story or read an article and maybe you chatted to the people you lived with or were next to and that was mostly the end of the story.

 

With social media, our “news” and our social connection are entwined. A news story gets shared with all our social media friends, it doesn’t stop at the breakfast table. Turning off the news now also means, for many of us, disconnecting from social networks that are also life affirming for me and for many of us. And we have the opportunity to connect dots thanks to social media – an opportunity not available in the same way in previous eras. I am haunted by the thought, will we just notice what is happening or will we find ways to stand up to our own values, our own personal integrity? Will we keep finding the moments to be courageous and keep shining the light – we need this now as much or more as in any previous moment.

So much of what I read only fuels the uncertainty and anxiety I feel about the future. Looking for those stories that give me hope can almost seem like such a small drop in the bucket, to be almost futile. Almost. And yet, since I do not have influence in the political systems of power, what can I do and what can I influence? What can you do? What can you influence?

Look close to home. Hold loved ones close. Keep doing the work you are here to do. Look for opportunities to take a stand. Do not hide. Be a person who champions, supports and advocates for those who are more at risk. Learn about how other people see the world, especially those with very different worldviews than your own. Otherwise the danger of increasing fragmentation and polarization grows and it becomes increasingly difficult to find our way. Look for inspiration in all the places you can find it and surround yourself with people who encourage you. Look for and create new systems of influence.

I wish it need not have happened in my time, in this time. But, since it is happening in my time, in our time, we still have choice. Let’s exercise it as often as we can. Let’s keep our eyes open. Let’s stay woke. So in the times to come, we can say, “not on my watch. I did everything in my power to do the right thing, even when it was hard, even when I was challenged, even when I felt powerless, even when I did not know what to do.”

Chaos on the Other Side of Worldview Collisions

Kathy Jourdain 3 Comments

On November 9, 2016 we woke up to an upside down world where the impossible was realized and many people, communities and organizations were thrust into chaos. One thing that was increasingly clear throughout the very long US election process is that people became very attached to their worldviews – me and my friends included – and this set the stage for the collision of worldviews in the most visible fervent political and personal exchanges many of us have witnessed.

This showed up in deep attachment to candidates and hostility to anyone who wasn’t that candidate or supporting that candidate. People with varying worldviews were incredulous that others could actually support their candidate of choice. That was expressed in arguments and, increasingly, in attacks on people who supported a different candidate. There was a vehemence in the attacks. It happened amongst friends, calling into question friendships both new and longstanding. It fuelled more vigorous debates and sometimes divides within families. And people found themselves being attacked for their views by others they did not even know. There was more unfriending and blocking in social media than on any previous collision of worldviews (that I am aware of).

If there is anything we know now more than ever, we need spaces where we can be kind, generous, compassionate, generative and creative with each other to find ways forward when issues are challenging and worldviews collide. The work of Worldview Intelligence is advancing and we have created one such space with a new listserve – the WVI Global Forum. This is intended to be a space where we can support each other, ask questions, share resources and collectively imagine a future we all want to live into in. You can search it out and join it in Google Groups.

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While it is still in its infancy, a discussion has already begun there, sparked by a question, “Is it a new worldview we need? Or the original?”

Which sparks another question about what is an original worldview? The answer is, that it is different for everyone. And it could be that we remember a past that is more romanticized than real. Some want the future to be an idealized remembrance of a better past, some want the future to be radically different and many just don’t know and we cannot see the way forward.

Where we get trapped is in believing there is one worldview, one story, one narrative that we either all have lived or we can all agree to. In advocating for that one worldview – which of course would be the one I’m advocating not any of the various others that exist out there – divides deepen. In a Duke Chronicle article Tears and Cheers, Julian Keeley, says these divides are accompanied by growing political animosity to the degree that in some families it is unacceptable to be in relationship with someone from the other party, even in families with a growing acceptance of being in relationship with someone of a different ethnicity. She advocates for familiarity which can lead to empathy and even love.

The work of Worldview Intelligence is to look for the new narratives that will help us all make sense of our experiences individually and collectively. This is not one story but an interweaving of a multiple of narratives until we begin to see the tapestry of these different experiences come alive in the same space. We will not be able to get to that place until we invite ourselves to step back, to take a breath, stop name calling and proliferating information that may or may not be facts. It is not to let go of our worldview or our preferred candidate but to reach out to truly understand why someone who supports another candidate or has a different worldview has come to see the situation or the world the way they do.

So many people are not feeling heard. Shutting them down does not change the way they feel, it only exacerbates it. It doesn’t go away as we have witnessed in this US campaign season. Finding the courage and compassion within ourselves to embark on the quest is part of what is needed to heal the rifts, to step out of our own rhetoric long enough to invite someone else out of theirs, to reach the human being who is acting out of fear, passion, determination and desire for a better life.

We each have our own notions of what that means and how to get there. Even as I write this I feel my own worldview and attachment rise to the surface wanting to be expressed.   But I will not come to understand why someone has come to see the issue the way they do if I cannot open the space to listen. After all, it is not about a candidate and all the data we can find to support our point of view. It is about something that is fundamentally important to each of us as individuals, about our sense of identity and the drive to survive in a world that does not make sense to us anymore.

Van Jones has done a brilliant job of reaching out to people, in a video series called #TheMessyTruth which you can find on his Facebook Page, who have very different views than his to try to understand what people are thinking and to create openings along the way for humanity to show up. He does not let go of his worldview. He asks compelling questions and he does not judge the people he talks to.

This is the challenge now for each of us. To reach out to someone whose views we do not understand, not to convince them that the way we see the world is the right way or that our candidate is the right one, but to dig into motivations, fears, desires and find the human beings under the easily spouted rhetoric and “facts” that are not always facts.

I know this is easy for me to say. I am not in danger. There are others who are. Many of my US based friends could well be in danger and I want them to be safe. And some people are more reachable and some less. But we have to start somewhere to change the conversation because the circumstances are already dire and urgent and lives truly are at stake.

As Otto Scharmer said in his Huffington Post article On the Making of Trump and the Blind Spot that Created Him, “We have entered a watershed moment not only here in America, but also globally. It’s a moment that could help us wake up to a deeper level of collective awareness and renewal—or a moment when we could spiral down into chaos, violence, and fascism-like conditions. Whether it’s one or the other depends on our capacity to become aware of our collective blind spot.” He advocates the need to lean in to what wants to emerge—and build architectures of collaboration rather than architectures of separation.

As another person on the WVI Global Forum said, “It is time for a new worldview that will begin with each of us as we journey inward to uncover our stories about who we are and how we are in the world.  I am choosing to reach for the spark that is calling me to show up in the world differently.  To have compassion, to love, to listen to understand and to be peace.”

If the US election has taught us anything it should surely have taught us that the impossible is possible. So, let’s begin now.

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