Following up a little

My last post got a lot of readers...I hope it served to inform rather than inflame. It helps me to remember that everyone has an opinion, and feels that it is equally valid. One of the main points that I hear from my fellow small business owners is that people with an economic stake in the issue ought to be the ones making the decisions. Visionaries are great to bring out the possibilities, and Dime a Dozen types seem to find endless ones, but the decisions should be in control of the neighborhood users, the ones who will live or fail to thrive with the results.

The Working Group, which is meeting regularly to talk over the possibilities, functions well. It's a tough process to take groups with essentially opposite views and bring them together into some kind of agreement, or at minimum, understanding of the entire picture, so that all stakeholders can have a voice. Representatives are one level removed, of course, so it is critical that the representatives don't get too fixed into position without regularly checking with their interest groups. That is, of course, difficult during the Market day, and practically impossible outside the Market day.

We were rocking all day on the west block, with no time for anything but what we came there to do, which was to offer our wares to the many wonderful tourists, track fans, students, graduates and their families, and local people shopping for themselves, their Dads, and their whims. It was pretty great for some, marginal for others, and mysterious in all the ways it always is. We didn't even have much time for our usual hi-jinks. Unlike the previous week, however, my side of the blocks was not all abuzz about the street closure. That was a relief.

We people who sell are natural family members, no matter where we are located. Our issues are more similar than different. Our affinity grows over the years and we get boundary issues...we fail to see them after awhile. We're close in an odd way, intimate for a day every week, but not having a lot of knowledge about each other outside of that interface, unless we make those efforts, and most of us have. It's rare to find someone who doesn't feel a part of the community, though of course for some it takes awhile, or they go away mad, never really getting the feelings.

I'm thinking that some of this plays into the issues some vendors seem to repeatedly have with our favorite Fair in the woods. We aren't there long enough to really feel a part of the life that goes on pre-Fair, and we don't always feel included. We work on the weekends when most of the volunteers do their volunteering. So often our "feedback" comes out of our frustrations and feelings that we don't belong, and it comes out as complaining.

I regret my part in this dysfunctional type of communication over the years. It's way too easy to complain and not do the further work of understanding the situation from other viewpoints. Even when you try to understand it, you sometimes come from the opposite side of the issue, and rarely do we have the time during an interaction to listen to other sides, to really feel them. Email, so often one-sided, can add to the distress. I apologize for all of the vendors who have fallen into this trap, who can allow the frustration to add up until it gets to the ranting stage, which of course prevents the next stages from happening. Tired, overworked people so often just lose patience and go to one of their defensive positions, generally the most familiar one. Feeling the victim is all too prevalent, and bullying can also emerge.These are not the better sides of our natures.

We all have to watch out for this. We all have to ask ourselves what would make us feel more a part of things, would enrich our experience, would help ease whatever problems we run up against. Pretty generally it is not something that can be done by the other, by "them." It has to come from "us". That translates to "I have to do it."

I started volunteering for OCF a few years ago when I felt that I wasn't "seen." I had some mishaps and some anger and worked through it to figure out what parts were mine to own. Pretty much all of it, I realized, had to be fixed by my own efforts, and by changing my attitudes. It has not been easy, but I did find that the response was positive whenever I offered to actually do something, or when I expressed my thoughtful opinions. People who pitch in generally gain a lot more respect than those who observe. There is always plenty to do, and you can find a fit for your particular talents.

The volunteers get tired of pointing this out. Everyone works hard to make it all happen, and everyone certainly has their level of self-interest, but to a true volunteer, the common good is always more important that the individual effort. People who love the Fair are really genuine about this. The social change, the economic opportunity, the chance to relax and have fun and be openly creative and enthused, the intensity of positive energy, all of these are real and essential to thousands of participants. Reducing it to a weekend of making money is way off from the real value of the giant spinning peach.

Yet money is made and should be. We can quibble about the details and we can certainly refine the process and the growth and the future possibilities, but we are all there for more than that, or we would be somewhere else that weekend. We can, and must, speak up about our experiences and our ideas for the refinement, but whenever we go to the "us vs. them" territory we need to back up and take a reality check.

If you don't feel part of the "US", then figure out what is holding you back. If you hear yourself saying "They did _____" then ask yourself who "THEM" are, and go further into what they might be trying to do or thinking about regarding the situation. You can believe that you are not being targeted for anything. Nobody wants to make your life harder for any reason. There is always a deeper goal, and with OCF and my other organizations, it really seems to be true that underneath there is the real, deeper goal of the common good. I believe this about all of the groups I am part of.

Really. And furthermore, I believe that this can be found underneath most movements for change, even if it is traffic change we are discussing. I think that is why people get so entrenched and offended. They do think they are working for the common good, and they are hurt when they are told they are wrong in whatever way this happens. If they have the crusader archetype working in them, they sometimes feel like they are the only one working for the common good. They sometimes fail to see what is really happening around them.

My feeling about the situation at 8th and Oak is that we must first really define the common good in detail, and then we can promote it. Next we have to learn to trust each other, and that is really hard until we find out our similarities and identify our differences. This takes research, and time, and words, and the physical presence of each other in the room together. And of course it takes honesty, some humbleness, and a lot of real work.

As one metaphoric example, I rushed out of the shop to the WG meeting without getting the ink off of my hands, and the garden dirt out from under my fingernails. I worried about this until I looked around the table at the other hands, and they were pretty much all dirty hands, working hands. This wasn't the type of business meeting with suits and ties and expensive fountain pens. We had a lot in common, and it was the dirt. The land, and its fragments. 

We all need to remember what we have in common and look for more. The way we are going to find the elegant solutions is by working deeper, and the way we work deeper is that we follow the consensus-seeking process. I am so committed to this after a lifetime of learning it, that I will not probably understand someone else's need for majority voting or solutions that require a yes or no. I see that as cutting out the sometimes inefficient, ponderous process of listening to all of the people who will be affected. All of them, the ranters, and the thoughtful, the visionaries and the practical ones who just want to get to work. Everybody has to have a voice.

So if we are representatives, we need to know if we are speaking for our interest groups, and we can't just allow ourselves to get fixed into position. I knew last week at Market, by the many, many conversations I heard, that my position represented my interest group and had in mind the common good. I felt confident making that blog post, and carefully tried to make my point, but I hope I also conveyed that it was only a slice of the big picture.

The big picture and the elegant solution are not yet set. They are fluid. The spinning peach is not a rigid and unemotional thing. The streets downtown belong to everyone, the public. The users, even if we pay for the use, are not the final word on the matter. We need to know what the customers think, what the officials think, what the drivers think, what the property owners in the neighborhood think. We need a broad discussion, and we need to find the consensus. If we fail to go through the process, we will spawn the complainers, and we will fail to find the elegant solution.

It's a neighborhood, what happens there on Saturdays. Just go look at it on any other day, and you will see a different neighborhood. One of my issues is that I want all the people who use the blocks, including the drummers, including the cops, including the farmers and the hippies and the car people and the cyclists, to feel enough a part of the neighborhood that they will want to speak up about their experiences and will want to be part of the solution. It is difficult to speak for those who refuse to pitch in.

And so I come around to the complainers. I joke about my frustrations with my organizations and I sometimes lampoon and poke fun with my art. I've called it the Annoy-Again Country Fair and laughed loudly. I've tried, in recent years, to add a bigger portion of love into that formula. When I criticize, I am pointing out my failure to communicate in a more productive manner. I've tried to suppress my complainer and unleash my hard worker and pitch in and make the change I desire to see, in as loving and participatory a way as I possibly can.

So I type things, arrange tiny black marks into some kind of order to transmit some kind of thought into being. I organize, I witness and document, as impartially as it is possible for me to be, as imperfectly as I must. I presently take minutes for five different bodies. It's a hell of a lot of time, though thankfully most of them only meet once a month. I attend and participate in the meetings, and if they last two hours, that means I spend at least another two hours listening to the recording and trying to make it organized and communicate the sense of the meeting. Then send it out, make sure it is made part of the public record, and make sure it gets to all of those who want to know about it, if that is within my power. I humbly am corrected many times and often am helped to a more clear, more careful communication.

I only get paid for two of those groups, and my sacrifices include not having enough time for my creative writing, my weeding, my getting ready for selling, my relaxation and my life. This time of year I can despair about it, but I want to stop short of complaining and point out what many people do for others. All of those people who are out at the Fair site this weekend are working for me, and it makes me happy that they are enjoying it. Most of them have regular jobs for money and they work weekends for the common good. They bring their particular talents and they put them to the common goals of having a safe, happy event that promotes awareness, spiritual and human growth, highlight artistry of all kinds, and is a heck of a thing.

We all benefit. We all could pitch in a lot more. We all want to belong, to feel good about our work, and to make something wonderful with our efforts. Maybe we are envious of how fun it looks to drive a Gator or walk the eight endlessly, maybe on Saturdays downtown we wish we had strawberries to sell instead of earrings. We really have to learn to appreciate the efforts of others, to respect them, and to feel our kinship instead of our frustration. Step back and turn it around. We all need the relief this will bring.

Develop your trust for your own relief and happiness. Work around those you don't feel you can trust, check out what is preventing your full participation and see what you can do about it. You.

I know you are busy, or shy, or inarticulate, or frustrated, or cynical, or hurt. I hear you, I am trying to see you. Please trust that many, many people are trying to see you. Allow that, and express yourself as kindly and as respectfully as you can, and you may get your needs met. You might have to work a long time to make that happen, but the time will pass anyway, and the frustration hurts you a lot more than the participation will.

Let's all try a little harder, especially now that we are working so many hours and have such important deadlines. One of my favorite pitch-in people wears one of my favorite hats this time of year, one that she gets in exactly the way I created it. It says "Just keep working" on it.

Gotta go. Today I have three sets of minutes waiting, and about twenty steampunk with Jell-O Art hats to create. I'm dyeing two loads of bags and hoodies, and the raspberries need water but my foot hurts too much to drag the hose around the yard. This is my day off. I'm guessing not many of my readers are sitting around with their feet up. This is the busiest time of year for many of us.

So this is the time of year we have to have the most patience, the most compassion, and work the hardest internally as well. It will be worth it. There will be a lot to celebrate. Trust that.