TRANSITION

The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.

 –Jeremy Rifkin

We are on the brink of a new year—a time when many look back on what has been and forward to what might be. It tends to be a time which can seem both festive and suspended—that space between the exhale and the next inhale amidst the celebrations. The transition upon us also holds a certain sense of possibility and hopefulness, when we consider what might be different in our lives and in our world in the year to come.

 

While moving into the new year can allow us a feeling of starting over, there are a host of transitions that we are always navigating regardless of the time of year. Each season brings some change in our lives, each day brings new perspectives and opportunities. And transitions don’t merely happen on the individual level, but we are faced with shifting circumstances in our workplaces, our communities, our world.

 

There is a tremendous opportunity as we move forward in a world more conscious of the issues of interconnectedness, and increasingly committed to finding the solutions to some of our most pressing problems. Indeed, we still live in a world where the gap between what we imagine and current reality is significant. And there is the very real risk that we can be carried in the wrong direction by transition, as Rifkin laments in the quote above.

 

But if there is anything that we can resolve to do in the year ahead, it is about continuing to seek for solutions, to reconnect with “the ecological choreography of the planet” in whatever small way, so that we may inch closer to a more sustainable and more just world. One of my own resolutions—at this time of transition, and in the transition of each day—is to ask where I might be of service and then act upon that.

 

It is clear that the world is beginning to embrace the concept of sustainability—that we are beginning to build a bridge to more socially just, economically vibrant and environmentally sound communities. And there is still much work to do. This is the spirit of transition, of moving from one state to the next without quite knowing how we might get there, or when we might arrive. Yet faith and hard work are not the only engines that carry us forward as we seek to make changes in our own lives or a larger scale. The support of community is essential, and I hope to make this more of a hallmark of my work in the year to come—to not simply work in building community, but doing that by working in community and more collaboratively with other individuals and organizations.

 

William Bridges is a well-known management consultant for his work with individuals and organizations around transition and his work has now been adopted for work in social change (see more in the Resources section below). Bridges defines different stages of transition—from realization and readiness for change, through the confusion of the transition itself, to arriving at the new beginning at the other side of the process. In looking at sustainability and social change transitions, we are late in the first stage or early in the second, still in the initial reckoning with the changes needed and directions to take.

 

Transition can often be overwhelming and confusing, particularly because we might not land where we expect, even with a clear picture or intention of where that might be. Dogen, a 13^th century Buddhist teacher and philosopher, observed: “Meeting one thing is mastering it. Doing one thing is practicing completely.” In times of transition, this focus can be helpful—not in shutting everything else out, but in seeing that the work we are doing to affect a transition in our own work or in the world holds some connection to efforts elsewhere and supporting the broader transition we are beginning.

WHOLENESS

When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.

 

—Meg Wheatley

 

It’s very easy to see the fractures in the world, the places where things are broken or not going right. Many of us committed to social change have become expert at this practice, which is a vital skill for encouraging cultural transformation and supporting social justice efforts.

 

However, this sensibility which is so essential in a world desperately in need of healing can sometimes become the lens that filters all that we see. And even with a clear focus on achieving meaningful change, the constant striving to fix what is broken can hold us back from deeper change—in our own lives, in our relationships, and in our world.

 

Wholeness relies on seeing a complete spectrum of experience—the bright and shadow sides of our lives, those who agree with us and those who disagree, that which lifts us up about the world and that which we find abhorrent.

 

Thomas Merton shares that “compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.” In my own work around sustainability and social change issues, I am constantly wrestling with this idea and my relationship to it which creates the gulf between the way I’d like the world to be and the way the world actually is. It’s my sense that, especially among social activists, we need to build our skills more completely in this arena. We must see the connections between people, organizations and issues both as a way of designing more realistic and relevant strategies and to feel the power of joining with others to create more impact through our work.

 

There is a Japanese concept known as wabi-sabi which seeks to draw out both an aesthetic and personal philosophy of seeing beauty in imperfection. The fallen leaves seen in so many places during this time of year are an excellent illustration of this concept. There is an embrace in nature of complete cycles, of the importance of defeat, death and decay as an inextricable and essential piece of supporting the continuation of life.

 

This absolutely does not mean that we should simply accept things as they are, and see the incredible injustices that exist as a given or as irreparable. But seeing the wholeness of the world may allow us to draw strength from the positive to support our work when the road seems to have lengthened before us or the prospect of ever seeing change becomes overwhelming.

 

I was recently taking some time in my garden to prune back some plants and do some overdue clean-up. As I was trimming back several herbs that went unused and untended for several months, I reflected on the idea of utilitarianism—that human tendency that sees resources or relationships as simply meeting a need we might have. It truly deepened the concept of wholeness for me, recalling Robert Aitken’s reflection that “watching the gardeners identify their plants, I vow to practice the old horticulture and let the plants identify me.”

 

Ultimately, wholeness helps us both see the world and see ourselves in the context of endless connection. And this can only enrich our work—whether or not we consider ourselves in the sustainability and social change arena. It provides a profound perspective on our relationships with ourselves and with others which can serve us in many instances.

 

Simone Weil captures the practice of wholeness in this way: “What we love in others is the hoped for satisfaction of our desires. We do not love them for their desires. If we loved them for their desires, we would love them as ourselves.”

 

 

 

COMMITMENT

My satisfaction comes from my commitment to advancing a better world.

 

—Faye Wattleton

 

 

Most everyone is familiar with the Goethe couplet “Whatever you can do—or dream you can—begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” The role of commitment in our lives—on a personal, professional or societal level—cannot be underestimated. When we set an intention or make a commitment, we create the opportunity to affect change for ourselves and others.

 

Our commitments come from our deepest values and are exemplified in the world by how we live our lives. The promises we make ideally are the promises we keep as individuals, as organizations, as communities. Commitments create trust, both of ourselves and for others, and are at the core of building stronger relationships and communities.

 

This can be challenging in a culture where we are asked to over commit in many instances. In his book about the many layers which make up and often complicate our lives, In Over Our Heads, psychologist, educator, and behavioral theorist Robert Kegan points out that we tend to live with many competing commitments at the same time, some of which are irreconcilable. The tension between our work, our family life, our individual pursuits and our community engagements—particularly within the context of a culture focused primarily on speed and results—can leave us feeling overwhelmed.

 

To truly honor commitments, I’ve often found it essential to step back and reflect on how much time or energy what I’m asking of myself (or others are asking of me) will take. I also find that making declarations in writing or spoken publicly also can help frame what’s most important to me. An article from about a decade ago appearing in Fast Company provides some similar guidance, although many of us likely experience the overwhelm of multiple commitments regularly.

 

In a community or business context, it sometimes becomes even more complex as individuals come together to make commitments for a larger group. I’ve worked recently in community settings where there was not alignment on a certain set of commitments where key stakeholders were not involved from the start in framing these guiding principles and actions. And there are countless businesses who make commitments to social responsibility, environmental stewardship and sustainability, yet are still struggling with creating a culture and changing practice to align with these noble goals.

 

T.S. Eliot quipped that “ours is in the trying, the rest is not our business” and in the work of social change and creating a more sustainable society, this couldn’t be more true. It’s vital to embrace thinking for the longer-term, to make the big commitments and take the small steps that result in positive change over generations. We have come so far, and it always seems that there is much farther to go. But commitment can serve as our compass and determination as our inspiration.

 

Ultimately, powerful commitments require a return to what is important, a stripping away of distraction, a focus on what is both meaningful and accomplishable. This is not to say that we shouldn’t dream and challenge ourselves, our organizations and our communities to redefine and reach for what is possible. But we do have to take the time to create the space and clear the path for following through on what is most important.

 

LIVING the WORK

 

Work is love made visible.

 

—Ama Ata Aidoo

 

Honor the work, and the work will honor you.

 

—Omowale Satterwhite

 

According to writer Annie Dillard “the way we live our days is the way we live our lives.” Those small details of each moment can tell a larger story about who we are, what we value and where we are going. However, in the rush of our lives, it can often be difficult to align our actions with our vision for our work in the world.

In the process creating a more sustainable society, all we have is the daily work we do tied to a broader vision for success. The prospect transformation within our lifetime is deeply alluring, and many changes are already occurring which illustrate the need to shift the ways in which we live. Although the promise of change feels like a horizon drawing closer, it is always coupled with the awareness of ongoing suffering and the need to craft a more humane world. We must be prepared for what legendary activist Myles Horton referred to as “the long haul.”

How this is reflected in our work and in our daily choices is critical.

I’ve been doing a lot of traveling for my work this summer. It’s been said that a single cross-country flight uses up an entire year of one person’s ‘carbon budget’. From my own travel this summer along, I am years ahead of where I should be in terms of my ‘allowance’ of pollution and climate change-causing emissions. How can this justify my own commitment to supporting greater sustainability? I suspect many of us face similar challenges of how to align our vision and passion for creating change with the day-to-day reality of our current world.

We are in a transitional era which presents many contradictions of this kind. There may be temporary and insufficient, yet evolving answers such as carbon offsets which allow us to find peace within compromise. And we also must acknowledge that small changes are simply a bridge to something larger to address, as we exist within cultural, political and economic structures that place particular expectations upon us and challenge a new set of values as they emerge. We privilege the global over the local and the immediate over the long-term , two of many values which have implications for our personal, community and planetary sustainability.

Ultimately, the responsibility and accountability for our actions returns to each of us. As we move toward a more sustainable, humane society it is essential to be thoughtful about how we are living in alignment with what we believe, and seeing where we are not. Then, how do we revisit what it is that is most important to us and recommit to living our values—not only in our work, but in all aspects of our daily life?

A vision is something that is challenging, sometimes even unreachable. But it can serve as a proving ground in our lives, inspiring us to question what is and to seek a different path, to look deeply at what holds meaning and how we can best affect positive change as we move through the world.

RECONNECTING

 

The longest journey is the journey inward.

 —Dag Hammarskjold

Sometimes it’s too easy to miss what’s truly important. In the rush of our work, of our lives, of the expectations set by the culture or community of which we are a part, we may find that we’ve lost ourselves and need to reconnect.

It may be amidst the fullness of our everyday work, where we are wholly invested in what we are doing, that the desire for reconnection becomes most apparent, most necessary. When we are immersed in our lives, paradoxically it can be challenging to hold onto to our vision.

The process can replace the product if we become addicted to the pace at which we are moving and lose sight of our purpose and goals. Our work, whatever we do, has visited new demands as a result of resource constraints and new technology. E-mail and computers have become centerpieces of our work, once billed as labor-saving ways to stay connected but often producing a very different experience. In a short period of time, the impact that e-mail communications have had has been enormous, and we’ve not yet adjusted on an organizational or even evolutionary level. Many companies have gone to lengths to institute “e-mail free days” as colleagues just down the hall from each other were not leaving their desks to simply walk down the hall to ask a question.

Richard Louv, in his book, Last Child in the Woods warns of the implications of nature deficit disorder, as children are increasingly isolated from experiences outdoors. Driven by safety concerns and the advent of computers and video games, both our children and our society at large are suffering from an inability to connect effectively—with their places and with each other.

Beginning this year, I’ve adopted a practice which I’ve advocated for some time to clients and friends: taking a day to reconnect. Each Wednesday, I take the time to reflect on my work, engage in planning, do some writing and spend some additional time outside. I don’t schedule outside meetings or calls on this day, and I don’t respond to calls or e-mail. I usually don’t even turn on my computer until mid-day, and then only if necessary. This is complemented by breaks taken throughout the workday and time for reflection on other days as well.

This practice is available to each of us in our work, even if we carve out just a few hours each week. We can start by taking 30 minutes at the beginning of each day to reflect and get organized (not to check e-mail!) and by taking some brief breaks to get outside each day. It’s still work, and it improves upon our efficiency, effectiveness and peace of mind.

We’ve grown accustomed as a culture to delivering on results, to being reachable all the time, and by having many of our interactions mediated by technology of some kind. Truly reconnecting—to ourselves, to our co-workers and communities, and to what’s happening in our world—involves stepping out of the normal rush of our days.

By doing this, we are able to claim some time for ourselves each day and each week, and to see connections we are often asked to ignore. The food and fuel crisis we are currently experiencing is an excellent illustration of a failure to see connections—even in the process of trying to create a more sustainable world. While it is still speculative and there are many factors which affect the complex global food system, there is considerable evidence showing that converting production of food to growing stock for bio-fuels has made food scarcer and more expensive for the world’s most vulnerable populations. This isn’t an argument to defaulting to the still-troubled fossil fuel economy, of course, but one of many signs that we need to take the time to see connections more clearly.

In fact, there is probably no better solution to creating healthier communities and organizations, and ultimately a more sustainable, humane world than to take the time to slow down and reconnect.
 

ABUNDANCE

Abundance is, in large part, an attitude.

-Sue Patton Thoele 

 
In a world of dualities, abundance is too commonly seen as a surplus of some kind, as the obvious opposite of scarcity. Within communities and organizations, it’s often challenging to see possibilities of abundance in the scramble for resources or while keeping an eye on the bottom line. Many organizations and communities frequently become mired in adopting a mentality of scarcity, inherited from both a culture in which ‘more’ is usually equated with ‘better’, and from an imbalanced history experienced by many social sector organizations and communities.

Looking at the world through a sustainability lens doesn’t erase the realities of abundance and scarcity, or the inequalities that we witness everyday—but it does ask us to assume an attitude of abundance, even if we are in an organization struggling with financial challenges or a community trying to address issues for which it seems there are insufficient resources.

In an article in the most recent issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review on “The Networked Non-Profit”, the value of creating abundance through networks, rather than individual organizational growth, is described. And in some cases, those organizations that relied on network partners actually grew more than their counterparts who tried to ‘go it alone.’ This is the kind of abundance possible in a world that understands sustainability and systems approaches to the challenges we face.

Often cited as the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug operated from a perspective that is was better to “wrestle with problems of abundance than problems of scarcity.” The Nobel laureate, who is widely credited for saving a billion lives through his contributions to agriculture in the developing world, has also been profoundly criticized for helping to institute practices that are environmentally damaging and socio-culturally inappropriate. While it’s challenging to argue with the depth of accomplishment evident in Borlaug’s work and the social imperative that drew him to it, such an example enables us to examine our perspectives on abundance when we attempt to solve challenges on any scale.

Kevin Kelley of Wired Magazine has written that “the only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.” In building the bridge toward a more sustainable, socially just world, perhaps the attention we bring to examining our work, our communities and our culture is the most abundant resource we might consider as we move forward.

MOMENTUM

Our intentions—noticed or unnoticed, gross or subtle—contribute either to our suffering or to our happiness. Intentions are sometimes called seeds. The garden you grow depends on the seeds you plant and water. Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of the intention behind it remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness.

—Gil Fronsdal
 

The idea of momentum, originally taken from physics, has gained a popular meaning which we see in sports, politics and now in the sustainability movement. For an individual or effort on a positive path and growing toward a point where a tipping point or critical mass is achieved, momentum can be a blessing which, appropriately enough, provides additional encouragement and energy.

With the increased knowledge and interest in sustainability issues, the momentum is palpable and also can serve as a cautionary benchmark—not to stop the arc of a movement as it evolves and broadens, but to explore the intention or seed that is being planted. As any movement builds in mass and energy (this is the physics part) it tends to gain speed. I’ve paid homage to cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien previously in this newsletter, who observes that “change takes place at nature’s pace—not in the fast lane, but in the slow lane.” 

In order for the sustainability movement to truly be sustainable, we need to draw more powerfully on lessons from nature about how our organizations, communities and broader efforts can develop in a powerful way, and in an intentional way. We often want to create or tap into a sense of momentum in our days and in our work, careening toward the completion of the week or a project with a sense of urgency. While this seems like a common experience in our culture, which is focused on results and ‘getting things done’ it can be especially challenging for those of us who work as activists, organizers, or advocates, where there is a pressure around the injustice we might see attend to or resolve issues now.  

Permaculture, the philosophy and practice of designing systems that model nature, carries a set of principles that I keep posted next to my desk. The first is ‘Observe and Interact’: a gentle and profound reminder to listen when we are engaging with any new system—an ecosystem, an organization, a community—rather than jumping right in. If we can truly listen, observe and interact with others who are connected to whatever we are doing, the momentum comes as a healthy seed of intention, which is more deeply rooted and can thrive. 

As momentum around sustainability grows, we also need to ensure that what we are seeing is what I would refer to as ‘authentic sustainability’—it’s easy for a popular concept to become co-opted and for the term to become meaningless. Unfortunately, in many places, the term sustainability is still conflated with environmental or green practices.

When we leave out the social issues nested in the concept of sustainability, we lose a critical element of building greater momentum: the people who we work with, or who are affected either historically or potentially in the future by certain policies and practices. 

Momentum requires a slowing down and an attention in order to speed up. Consider the fable of the tortoise and the hare: it’s not necessarily about moving fast that gets us where we need to be; in fact, we might miss the important details, compromise our own health, or unintentionally exclude others.

A more sustainable and humane culture asks that we pay attention, take care of ourselves and include everyone.

MEASURING PROGRESS

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

—Indira Gandhi

In our lives, in our work, in our communities and our world, it seems that there are always questions of whether progress is being made. Many of us have been raised in a culture of growth and with assumptions and expectations about delivering on results and measuring performance. And while this perspective on the world has undoubtedly resulted in a certain level of material progress, we now found ourselves at the edge of confronting what this has meant from a sustainability and social responsibility perspective. 

Nature, as most have observed, doesn’t seem to adhere to the same rules we lay out for ourselves: in most cases, growth in an organism or ecosystem stops at the point at which it is able to best contribute to the overall health and equilibrium of its environment. Unless there is some kind of imbalance (which nature is usually fairly good at correcting), growth can’t occur in an unchecked or unlimited way in the natural world. If we think there is some wisdom in the way that the rest of life has evolved on the planet, we might consider applying these models to our own expectations of our lives and institutions. 

In several conversations over the past month, I’ve been speaking with colleagues and clients about the differences between growth and development. In our organizations—and certainly in our economic system—there is a premium placed on growth, rather than on the complexity and system of relationships that can develop if we think about development.

It’s also curious that we tend—in the international development arena—to conflate these terms, which has resulted in practices that aim to bring projects to communities around the world that might serve economic interests but don’t respect the underlying cultural and social needs of the community. 

The same can be said of our organizations, and the way in which we create expectations in our work around delivering on results for ourselves, our co-workers, or those investors or funders supporting our work. Increasingly, we are seeing the importance of working collaboratively—either due to funding challenges, and/or because we don’t have the capacity or expertise to accomplish our mission alone.

With a greater understanding of the way systems work, partially raised by issues such as economic and climate instability, the inherent value of a collaborative approach is also being seen. And we need to adjust to what progress means in such a situation—when working collaboratively or with community groups, there are often unrealistic expectations laid out for goals within a particular timeline. 

Even with adjustments in expectations, measuring progress can get confusing and overwhelming, as described in an article from last year from the OECD about understanding what we are actually measuring. In an even more recent New York Times article on The Preservation Predicament, expectations about protecting particular ecosystems are shown to be shifting because of the way in which global climate change is altering those systems.  

Given this sense of uncertainty about measuring progress, it’s no surprise that there has been increased talk about ‘eco-fatigue’ and ‘eco-anxiety’, as seen in the February 2008 issues of Outside and San Francisco magazines. Both suggest that we are simply overwhelmed by even knowing what to do to address the environmental challenges we face.

But it’s important that we don’t simply surrender: like the overwhelm we experience once we decide to stick to that resolution or take on a new project, this may be a healthy indicator of moving toward progress as our understanding of sustainability and social change deepen. This is part of what environmental and culture writer Bill McKibben refers to as “the inner culture shift” and is an essential part of making progress. 

One area where there has been incredible work around measuring progress on a community level is in looking at indicators, which help provide a sense of progress on a range of issues for communities and organizations. Yet even here, there is always room for improvement.

While working on an indicators project years ago, I surveyed colleagues about appropriate community progress indicators. I got the usual list of responses around using childhood asthma rates, percentage of tree cover in a community, and number of owner-occupied homes. But one colleague said: “I think we should measure how many people are smiling on the train every morning!”

BREAKTHROUGH

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your alone ness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

—David Whyte

I always find it paradoxical that during a time of year when everything else is slowing down, turning inward and building strength for future growth, many of us seem to be ramping up and at our busiest. It’s almost as if we’re running away from the darkness that comes earlier and earlier in the wintertime, filling our lives with a rush toward the end of the year. Nature simply embraces this energy, dropping leaves, allowing seeds to sit quietly, waiting. The essence of a breakthrough is not only a shift in perception, but a shift in behavior.

Many of us may have heard the time-worn and true (and slightly humorous) definition of insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results each time. As we move toward a new year, an opportunity exists not to simply make plans or resolutions, but to explore how we can do things in a fundamentally different way.

Changing those things we do repeatedly—in our lives, our workplaces, in our culture—requires slowing down, sitting with the darkness and, like nature at this time of year, being with ‘the sweet confinement of your aloneness.’ But a breakthrough is also unexpected, and we rarely cultivate change that we can see in ourselves, much less in our institutions and policies, by simply taking some time alone. The reflective time which we often promise ourselves or prioritize in our organizations is often sacrificed when we need to get things done. And then things happen the same way again.

I often advise individual and organizational clients to weave in even a half-day of evaluation, planning and reflection each week. Others advise a day, which can seem downright impossible or heretical to some. Doing this in an intentional way helps to inform our work, grant perspective on our lives and foster change that we may eventually see as a breakthrough—although we were building toward it all along. Many find it useful to go away, find some place in the woods or the mountains where the mind can be cleared, the breath full and relaxed. This is an important experience, but much like drinking water after you are thirsty and dehydration has already set in, it can be too little too late to just “go away.”

To cultivate a breakthrough, we need to weave time for reflection for ourselves and time for dialogue, planning and evaluation for our work teams into our days and weeks: we must normalize a different way of doing things that will allow something new to emerge. 

Changes and breakthroughs happen—ways of seeing and doing shift after a concerted effort by individuals, groups, entire institutions, nations, movements. We are in the midst of a significant transition now, not only to a more sustainable, socially-just society, but in the ways in which we communicate with one another, resolve conflict, create innovative systems for working together. And these changes support one another, and are in turn supported by the clarity and commitment we bring to fostering such breakthroughs.  

On the heels of recent talks in Bali on climate change that some saw as incredibly successful and others as yet another failure, we need to see that such events are signs of a broader shift that is happening, of an imminent breakthrough already taking shape. Maya Angelou, in her poem A Brave and Startling Truth, speaks to a perspective that might help us realize this—here are the last few stanzas: 

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

 

PERSEVERANCE

If you want something very badly, you can achieve it. It may take patience, very hard work, a real struggle, and a long time, but it can be done. That much faith is a prerequisite for any undertaking, artistic or otherwise. 

—Margo Jones 

Success is moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

—Winston Churchill

In his 1984 book, Normal Accidents, sociologist Charles Perrow asserted that we should expect catastrophes because of the way in which our technology has outpaced our organizational ability to handle complexity. In numerous cases, including last week’s spill of nearly 60,000 gallons of oil in San Francisco Bay, we have seen this theory play out in our culture and around the world. Since this book was written, we have also seen a culture of sustainability emerge, first in specific circles and slowly growing to be embraced by various sectors and the broader public.

Perseverance is a quality that we can cultivate and apply to the transition that we are witnessing taking hold. Particularly in response to industrial accidents which require clean-up such as oil spills, there are countless individuals and agencies focusing their full attention on trying to limit the damage done. But there are also persistent threats that communities everywhere face where we must engage in consistent efforts to change practices and restore human and ecological health.

When we think about the answers that a sustainability approach might provide in cases where traditional industrial processes are still used, our ability to persevere-in both proposing alternatives to current practices and in working in partnership to develop solutions-is critical. The way in which we do this is also essential.

The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius wrote: “The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.” Perseverance also requires that we conserve our energy for the long haul, that we work tirelessly, but wisely so that our energy and ideas will last as we answer the challenges we face in creating a more sustainable, humane society. Working with others is central in this quest. We still exist in a culture that values the primacy of individual initiative and organizational boundaries.

While respecting the unique gifts that individuals may bring, and the contributions of specific organizations, a commitment to working in a “trans-organizational” framework is critical, as author and organizational behaviorist Joan Roberts writes in her excellent book Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships. As a response to Perrow’s thoughts from nearly a quarter-century ago, working together in a cross-sector and interdisciplinary fashion may be an essential step in handling the complexity of the challenges we must address. It also uses the wisdom of the natural world many of us try so hard to conserve, protect and restore by applying ecological principles to human organizations. Rather than straight lines, we might imagine webs of accountability in our workplaces and communities.

Whatever the solutions are that we are beginning to design that reflect the deeper intelligence of nature in our own systems of organization, commerce and community, the spirit of perseverance helps to inspire us and encourages each of us to seek help and partnership in our work. If we are open to it, it can also focus our efforts and build new connections. And, equally important, perseverance also helps us to forgive ourselves for transgressions large and small, as we discover new ways to create healthier communities.