Do you ever intervene...

[ralphsc]

Hi, all

I agree with "never intervene."  And I have the following story.

About three years ago I was facilitating an OS event in a community in
Missouri on the theme of the future role of the local hospital there.
Everything was going fine for the 100 or so people there.  In the middle
of it all, I happened to notice a man at the community bulletin board
removing a number of the posters.  he was literally ripping them off the
wall, crumpling them up, and tossing them on the floor.

I asked him in a gentle way what was up.  He said he'd just come from a
session that had covered all the issues described on all the posters he
was removing, and since they were now taken care of, he was removing the
no-longer-relevant pieces of paper.  I suggested that it might be a good
idea to leave the decision to remove such papers to those who'd posted
them.  He said (somewhat angrily I thought) that if that was the way
things were supposed to happen that I had instructed people very wrongly
and that I'd better do something about it.  He stopped removing posters
and walked away.  I re-posted the items he'd removed.  A few minutes
later I noticed the man leaving the building.  Whatever happens is the
only thing that could have.

Ralph Copleman