Working for the

Most people describe working for the common good as memorable, and contrast this with their day-to-day work. They refer to their daily jobs as "the real world." The experiences that give them energy and hope are labeled as unique or different. What keeps us from seeing these experiences of human goodness and talent as real? Why do we take what's boring and destuctive and call that the real world? How did we develop such poor expectations for what's possible when we work together?

What if we used our experiences of working for the common good as the standard? We would stop tolerating work and lives that gradually dissolve our belief in each other. We might begin to insist on the conditions that bring out our best. If we stopped accepting the deadening quality of "the real world," if we raised our expectations, then it wouldn't take a crisis for us to experience the satisfaction of working together, the joy of doing work that serves other human beings.

And then we would discover, as the Chinese author of the Tao Te Ching wrote 2600 years ago, that "the good becomes common as grass."

If you want to be a leader ...
stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.

The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.

Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become human.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.
(Tao Te Ching, 600 B.C. China, Stephen Mitchell, translator)

-- from turning to one another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future, by Margaret J. Wheatley (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 2002).