Last week I posted. A Nuanced Note on Outcomes. I’ve got one more to add.
Calm.
So, now it is Hope, Not Alone, Candor, and Calm.
Earlier today I was on a call with Quanita Roberson and a man who works much with educators. We were exploring work together that first would begin with the man’s team of 5-6 people, who then steward work with a bigger group of educational partners to create grounding and relational robustness in service to equity in education.
In a way, these outcomes fall to the category of “intangibles.” I need to re-language that a bit to “less tangible — part of the big work is changing the narrative to give credence to an expanded sense of tangible.” It’s not that unlike the conversations about “culture eating strategy for lunch…”
So, in today’s call, this man who works with educators shared in a check-out way that he felt more calm because of our call. That wasn’t the intent when we started. But it was sure sweet to again know the power of an inner feeling, intuition, authenticity, emotional intelligence. Calm in heart. Calm in questions. Calm in choices to move forward. Calm in trusting intuition.
That kind of change, inner, supported by community, makes a whole lot of other changes possible.
Calm.
I was struck by the term “less tangible.” I don’t like less of anything so I wonder, in the spirt of re-languaging, whether “birthing,” “uncovering,” unearthing,” “revealing,” “discovering” or “cultivate,” “nourish” or even a simple “grow” tangibles might work?
I realized a little later this morning that my first post might not have captured, and in fact, said the opposite of what was moving through me at the time. I still believe we have to “grow” the tangible. But that comes as a result of growing the “intangible” (which is not altogether an easy thing – growing that which can remain unspoken). Then it occurred that maybe the problem words were “tangible” and “intangible.” That might be where the deeper conversation for me exists this afternoon.
I appreciate your wisdom Allister. For me you are touching a place that gets to it. For example, I don’t want the things that are more obscure to measure (e.g., calm, hope, etc) to be considered “intangible.” I want the language shift (which seems to come with a consciousness shift) to include the obscure measures as “tangible.” I want “hope” to become welcomed in an obvious and accepted way. Words, words, words…. They serve well, until they don’t. At some point, the vibration of the heart becomes central in all of it. I think I’m trying to contribute in ways that “normalizes” such effort and aspiration.