vesterberg.se

I appreciate and enjoy being out in nature as you might have understood by earlier posts. Umeå is a small town with about 100 000 inhabitants. I live on the outskirts of the town and I just have to cross my lawn to stroll in the woods. When I walk my dog out there, most of the times I meet no human at all. When you love nature, it is easy to dislike big cities. They seem cramped, dirty, harsh and noisy. People living there can look stressful, busy and sometimes even hostile.

Last week I was in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, for a few days. When I travelled with the subway each day I realized that I liked very much to be in a crowd. I have not always felt like this. I used to dislike or at least not enjoy crowds or queues and I hadn’t noticed this change in me until now.

Today I was out in the woods with my dog again and then I suddenly realized that I felt (almost) the same being in a crowd as being out in nature. Hmmm. How could that be possible? A city is full of houses, streets and cars. Yes, sure. But it is also full of people. Full of individuals. It dawned to me that it depends on how you look and which channel you tune into. Nature is beautiful because there is life out there. People are living and beautiful, whether they hurry or not, whether they give you attention or not and whether they smile or not.

My conclusion was: If we slow down and tune into the channel of nature and keep this channel on the dial, we will see and relate to people differently.

I am back home again after yet another green world café. We might not have been a huge crowd, but for me to experience the connections and conversations that emerge among diverse people, young and old, businessmen and students, environmentalists and just “ordinary” people are so inspiring. As I have written before, diversity is really powerful. Facilitation dialogue is the most exciting (and challenging) thing I have done for a long time. If you haven’t heard of conversations like the World Café, read about it at theworldcafe.com.

On-line cafés

Afterwards a few of us discussed the possibilities to include people from other countries in the conversations through video-conferencing systems. Imagine discussing sustainability issues with people from Greenland, Malaysia or Borneo, or having “joint-cafés” happening at the same time at different places.

We need mirrors

We have ways of thinking and solving problems in Europe that we believe is right. Many people are not aware of that their way of thinking is just a way of thinking. Do you follow me? We have one perspective, but there are more. We try to be “objective”, but in a fact we have blind spots that become visible to us only through meeting people from other cultures. These people are gifts to us! This is an alternative way to look at immigrants. They are gifts, not problems. We are often so eager to export our thoughts and solutions. We have good ideas, yes, but do we know it all? People from other cultures are in a way like mirrors. Through conversation and friendship with them, we can see ourselves in new light and we change to the better.

On-line conversations

We have people with different ethnicity close by, in our own city, but wouldn’t it be a fascinating to utilize new technology to connect across cultures? You might read this and live in New Zealand, Kenya or Singapore. You are a gift to the Swedish culture and I am a gift to yours. Would you say yes to a cross-cultural conversation?

Some time ago I came across this video. I don’t remember where I found it, it might have been at KarmaTube. The language is foreign to me, but the message is clear. This video became very special to me.
It’s title is: Be The Change.

I am going to get personal now. As I watched this video I was very much moved and started to cry. It came from deep within my heart. I was taken aback because of the intensity of my feelings. I decided not to control myself and did not hold back. Something was stirred and awakened in me. When I look back, I can see that this experience brought faith into my heart that we as humans can cooperate and that I could be part of it. For me it was like finding a deeper level within myself or maybe that a deeper level made itself known. It was special event.

We live every day surrounded by information, possibilities and choices. Among this noise there are encounters that can affect us deeply. It is hard to describe how to find them, but they are out there waiting for us. When our hearts are touched deep down we become passionate and compassionate.

I began to reflect on the importance that we have our feelings as well as our thoughts engaged in what we do. We need a holistic perspective in our dealings with the world today and that is possible to achieve when our feelings and thoughts go together. Wholeness. Intellectual solutions is not enough. Compassion is the foundation because we are dealing with the living.

I had a similar experience a little later when I saw this video where Juanita Brown explains the vision of The World Café. It moved me deeply in a way I cannot describe. I had heard about The World Café earlier, so the information was not new. Perhaps you don’t feel anything special when you watch the videos. They are not magical. But it was an opportunity passing by for me at that time. There are other opportunities for you. That second experience strengthened my conviction; yes, we can do it.

I believe opportunities of deep connection like these are given more often than we realize. Sometimes we fail to find them, but when we recognize them and embrace them, the change is profound. Learning by heart and doing things out of your heart, have new meanings for me now.