…are sitting across from one another at a local café, having our usual Saturday morning business breakfast.
Wendy started the conversation:
“Last week I was walking to the train station, through the car park and I came across a council worker repairing the parking signs. So I took the opportunity to ask this council worker for inside information about how to get the blocked drain in the car park fixed, so that I and the other pedestrians on the way to the station didn’t need to wade through an ankle deep mud bath.
I opened the conversation by informing him that there was a drain under all the mud left after a heavy storm. He said that he wasn’t the person to attend to it because he was a parking-sign worker but that I could report it to the local council depot, and gave me the phone number. Then he commented that he was just repairing the existing parking signs as the signage was incomplete. He went on to say that another new sign needed to be made and posted on the side of a nearby building, in order to mark the boundary of the restricted parking zone. He didn’t think that possible as it was private property.
What I then thought, but didn’t say – because it seemed so obvious, was that maybe he could b.y.o. a council post for a new sign and dig it in, right next to the building himself.”
And I, Frances, continued:
“What may have been obvious to you was maybe what you were meant to share as some people don’t see the obvious.
Your insight was a solution to his problem and after all isn’t that what we are about – extending the conversation?
You may have made his day by engaging him about his work. It must be pretty lonely not having someone to work with. (I know this sentence ends in a preposition but let’s get over the grammar. After all it is a conversation!)
Life is about inter-connectedness. We are complex people and we are all ‘these’ different aspects: from dimensions of connectedness to loneliness, to the need to hug trees: or being aware of the etherial plane and the inter-connectedness of all things.
Life isn’t about ethics it is about engaging in the conversation and learning from one another.”
Wendy and Frances then realised that there are a lot of layers of potential and meaning buried in this conversation, as in life.
In fact, it gave us quite a lot of food for further conversation as we explored the extra thoughts that came to mind. For example: stating the obvious may actually be a point of connection and lead to better solutions. And who knows what the outworking, flow on, ripple effects of the conversation might be!
Wendy left heartened that she had taken a step toward fixing the drain, had learnt about the parking-sign man’s work, and having had a pleasant exchange herself, making a break from the isolation of her work as a researcher.
And what about the parking-sign man’s life? How had Wendy’s interruption influenced his thinking or life that day. Maybe the pause evoked the thought about using a pole and he went back to the depot and ordered one?
And for even further ripple effects, now that you have read this far, how has our sharing this one ‘obvious’ conversation influenced your day, week, month, year, lives?
ethec 