Not paying attention to the dangerous three inches

Being clue­less can be dan­ger­ous. I am speak­ing of the psy­cho­log­i­cal black ice of pious self-con­grat­u­la­tion. Once you are con­vinced that you are right about some­thing (any­thing), you get on with your life, uncon­cerned with the con­fla­gra­tion you have ignit­ed around you.

I believe some of us are inno­cent­ly unaware of our behav­iors and how they affect oth­ers. We bop along, rein­forced by our tribes, our his­to­ries, our DNA. Once we put on the com­fort­able sweat­shirt of our deter­mi­na­tion, we stop lis­ten­ing. I think there are oth­er sit­u­a­tions when peo­ple are down­right mean and receive adu­la­tion for it. 

Fifty years ago, the “shock jock” phe­nom­e­non emerged on the radio. Today, that ear­ly out­ra­geous­ness is Silly Putty com­pared to the elec­tron­ic green slime of vit­ri­ol that erupts around us. Unfortunately, hate has currency.

In the Socratic spir­it of iron­ing out my own wrin­kles before dis­parag­ing another’s linen zoot suit, I offer a pre­emp­tive apol­o­gy. I know that when I am most stressed, in a hur­ry, or cov­etous of belief, bad things happen.

I walked two miles to work every day when I lived in Ukraine. On my way was a broad expanse of pave­ment in front of the region­al gov­ern­ment head­quar­ters (today full of memo­ri­als to the fall­en) called the “maid­an.”  Frequently, I was in a hur­ry to get to my office, think­ing about oblig­a­tions of the day, so wrapped up in my own pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that I ignored the lit­tle man ask­ing for change in front of the “Old City” Restaurant and the genius of the maidan’s architects.

The design­ers had lev­eled the undu­lat­ing plaza by installing a cas­cade of three-inch drops, which, from the direc­tion of my trav­el, made the expanse appear lev­el. There were many occa­sions when my feet, pow­ered by lack of inten­tion (espe­cial­ly when aid­ed by accu­mu­la­tions of snow and ice), hit one of those lit­tle cliffs and sent me to the ground like a sand­bag tossed to ward off a flood. The flood that inun­dat­ed me was pub­lic shame, bruis­es, and self-recrim­i­na­tion at hav­ing been so clue­less not to pay bet­ter atten­tion. It was only by prac­tice that I even­tu­al­ly changed my maid­an walk­ing experience.

The sit­u­a­tion relates to civic health and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Here in Winchester, we have done much work over the last decade to make our lit­tle city more wel­com­ing and less hateful—better at rec­og­niz­ing the sneaky three-inch drops that trip us up. It has been, and con­tin­ues to be, the result of efforts led by diverse coali­tions ded­i­cat­ed to being more inten­tion­al and less clue­less, what the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation calls “being turned outward.”

There are many attrib­ut­es to turn­ing out­ward, which have been applied here on our home turf. You can read about them on Harwood’s web­site if you are inter­est­ed (www.theharwoodinstitute.org). The consultancy’s sem­i­nal idea is that the more we lis­ten, the more we learn about oth­ers. Understanding and com­pas­sion forge to cre­ate rip­ples of com­mu­ni­ty abun­dance, the exact oppo­site of self-dealing.

It is rare that dur­ing this age when foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of Western lib­er­al (not a polit­i­cal par­ty) democ­ra­cy are under siege, that our lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to gain pos­i­tive social momen­tum. We are blessed with rich­es, such as the recent ded­i­ca­tion of a long-await­ed mil­i­tary ser­vice memo­r­i­al and a new “high side.” Our abun­dance is not lim­it­ed to bricks and mor­tar. Our archi­tec­ture of civic will is also strength­en­ing, evi­denced by the increas­ing diver­si­ty of voic­es raised in this laud­able local news source.

Such advan­tages are not acci­dents. They hap­pen as a result of pay­ing atten­tion and prac­tice. When we learn to nav­i­gate lit­tle pit­falls of self-inter­est, the expanse of inten­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion uplifts us all.