OS in dark places

Holman, Peggy holmanp at na.weyer.com
Tue Nov 25 12:48:00 PST 1997


Birgitt,

Keep on dancing!  I hear elephants are very social creatures.  Maybe
your elephants will wake a few in the states!

Peg Holman
 ----------
From: Birgitt Bolton
To: Multiple recipients of list OSLIST
Subject: OS in dark places
Date: November 23, 1997 1:44PM

I have been doing a lot of thinking this weekend about OS in dark
places, I
mean really big and dark places. I know I had to overcome my own
exhaustion. (thanks to friends and their wonderful hot tub and wonderful
wine out in their backyard in the snow...the exhaustion is gone).

And I posed a question that was, was it better or not to do Open Spaces,
small ones, in really big dark organizations. Or was it kinder to the
people involved not to do them. So...since I posed the question on this
list in my ruminating, I thought I should let you know where I am at in
my
thinking. It is better to do even a small Open Space and bring a little
light and hope they can take it from there, than not to try at all. I
put
this under the "random acts of kindness" heading for sure. I hope I'm
right.

And then my imagery of the larger picture is that even through a little
Open Space, we might "wake the sleeping elephant". I think this is what
truly frightened me. What if the whole big dark system actually took
notice
of our little Open Space? Would it stomp on it and wipe it out (and me
with
it, speaking very selfishly). And then I realized that if the elephant
really did wake, that my job would be to dance with it. Possibly I could
teach it some new steps. My dilemma with this of course is that whenever
I
am feeling stressed, I am not very good on the dancefloor. So...I better
get unstressed about this, hope the elephant actually does wake up and
notice that something is different, and be prepared to dance.

Greetings to all of you. A very special wish for a Happy Thanksgiving to
my
American friends.
Birgitt




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