Getting a Bearing on the Future?

A heady title – Getting a Bearing on the Future. Not sure anyone can do this well, certainly do that and articulate it to others. What meaning is intended and what ends up being communicated clearly are most likely quite different outcomes. That’s the trouble with writing, thinking, communicating. Some readers will think I’m writing in code; some of those readers will be reading in their own code. What meaning they get out of my writing is entirely different from what I set out to do. But then, they came to the task with their own agenda and filters.

I set out writing this blog so I could clear out my brain’s attic of thoughts, random as well as organized. They were all crowded up in there. Lots of dust, mismatched pairs of thoughts, and other hand-me-downs one finds in an attic. Clearing them out was not easy. It took much longer than I had planned. I’m not sure that chore is done or even close to being done! Such is the nature of storehouses of memories, thoughts, and understandings held from days long ago.

What ideas trigger the avalanche of memory? Is this tumbling of thoughts even accurately recalled? Remind yourself that ideas are wedded to context; are we truly remembering such contexts well? And then again, pulled from context, an idea often takes on a different dynamic when paired with a fresh context. Something happens and a different meaning pops into being. It is a discovery of sorts. It jangles the brain into a different operation of logic. Something new may be forming from this juxtaposition of elements.

Memoirs, biographies, auto-biographies, and character profiles are of a different sort. They share the latter-day culling, however, in an attempt to make fresh sense of something held in memory. Is it a fresh meaning? Or is it an accidental matching-up without sense, thus a bastardization capable of misleading? Sorting such dead ends becomes necessary if we are being honest with logic.

At some point though, I become impatient with where things are going currently; I wish for better behaviors from others in society, especially politicians portending to speak for all of us. I watch institutions receive mixed signals on their actions and progress, and wonder how they will fare with their public and beneficiaries. Will the patients, students, patrons of the institution get what they need to be the best they can be whatever their given situations?

Who loses out if such institutions are held back in their professional roles and achievements? Will the library continue to gather and dispel information and data to those who can make use of it? Will new ideas be supported and inventions, too? Will sciences develop toward long-sought-after solutions to mysteries in need of solving for the good of us all? Saving some money here and there results in what outcomes that minimize life for the rest of us? What are the dependencies of such things? What are the mutual relevancies we rely on? And why are they there in the first place?

Because many things in life require broader approaches to managing them or creating new opportunities from which we all benefit.

That is the very nature of public institutions – libraries, fire districts, police departments, schools, park districts, charities, counseling services for families and children of low income. A town government that manages water, sewer and storm water issues; also streets, public order and the aesthetics of a village.

Our communities are the result of many separate organizations – some public, some private, many voluntary. And all of them are dependent on individuals who have dedication and passion for the purposes of the organization with which they attach themselves. Community. Interdependent and dynamic. Magically reaching out to make things better than they were before. Always looking for need and purpose. Keeping busy interacting and doing the tasks that only become evident when we begin talking with one another and expressing our needs and ideas.

If our public discussion is uncivil, it cuts off communication. It shuts down sharing ideas. It destroys the willingness to cooperate and collaborate. Many hands make light the work; so too, many minds make workable solutions to common problems.

It is in our interest to seek community and make it whole. Identify the elements that sap the community’s strength and wholeness; then do something about it.

A nation is the sum of all its communities. If each is healthy the nation is, too. If our communities are suffering, then too, our nation suffers.

We are reminded that all politics is local. How very true that is! What does that tell us of our future heading?

May 15, 2018