My Life in Open Space

Nino Novak nino.novak at tuebingen.netsurf.de
Sun Jan 14 07:37:41 PST 2001


Dear all,

First, I want to thank you, Rachel, for sharing your childhood story.

As I am father of three children myself, this story somehow touches my
heart especially and gives rise to some thoughts that I in turn want to
share with you:

>>From an OS facilitator's point of view, there may be laws and principles
that help him/her to manage to open space to/for some people. From a
participiant's view, in contrast, there is only something like a "gut
feeling" about a certain event. And if asked what makes the feeling
being good in a particular case, the participiants might say: there was
a good atmosphere, respectful communication, good results. And, in
addition, there was a great amount of personal freedom. If this all
holds true, than the feeling about this event cannot be bad, I think. I
therefore would call this particular space "open". (In contrast, when
they feel uncomfortable, or cannot rise their voice loud enough to be
heard, or feel under pressure, and/or results are bad, I would call the
space: not open. I don't like to say "closed", so perhaps "narrow" is
the best term.)

In my belief, any event or process has certain open aspects, and also an
amount of narrow ones. Any (social) interaction may produce good
feelings - or bad or unhappy ones. Would you agree to say, that the
degree of "openess of the space" plays a major role on the quality of
the feelings about the corresponding event/process?

And - at least from my point of view - this is also true for family
interaction. (I don't like the term "education" because it implies much
more activity (of the educator on the educated) than needed for a "good
education"). In simple words: the opener the space, the better the kids
feel, and the better they can develop.

By the way - the best "opener of space" towards my children seems to be
love. I don't know if this can be compared to a facilitator's attitude.
And I don't know if it can be learned in a training - but at least the
OST laws and principles seem to be a substantial part of what I do when
I love.

Good wishes,
Nino

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