This site has two main purposes. The first is a dedication to our branch of the McManus Family, including the military career of the late Regimental Sergeant-Major (WO 1 Retired) JJT McManus, CD, Cdn Gds. The second is to act as a repository for my notes on personal development, community, and learning that I believe are helpful and worth reflecting upon.
First, I would like to share a few words of perspective as we embrace the second decade of the twenty-first century. Former US President Bill Clinton in his March 2007 address at the TED conference (http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_clinton_on_rebuilding_rwanda.html) reflected that we live in a world that is interdependent, yet insufficient in three major ways: it is profoundly unequal, unstable, and unsustainable.
Lamenting that the ideology of “our differences are more important than our common humanity” is the central psychological plague of humankind of the twenty-first century, Bill Clinton goes on to say that the world he wants to leave behind is one that moves towards integrated communities – locally, nationally, and globally, where there are a broadly shared set of opportunities, a shared sense of responsibility for the success of the common enterprise, and a genuine sense of belonging. We know that this is “all easier said than done,” but not impossible.
Some segments of Humanity are beginning to realize that we must change how we currently live towards a manner that sustains our planet, improves the systems we have developed to support our existence, better shares the fruits of our individual and collective successes, and increases our accountability for how we achieve success.
At an organization development seminar in Ottawa in 2005 with American management consultant and author Peter Block, Margaret Wheatley, an educator and president of the Berkana Institute (http://www.berkana.org/) suggested that being in-community is an important state for moving forward. “Many of us in the West have no idea what it is like to be in-community. We even come to a learning event to learn for ourselves. What can I learn? What can I give? It is all about me.” However, we all know that nothing gets done alone, no-one gets through difficult times alone, and no one learns alone.
Margaret challenges her audiences: “What does it take for us to participate in community? Try to reflect upon how you create your relationships. Reflect upon how we can be together in truly healing relationships. There is no power greater in bringing people together than just listening to each other.” Yet, we are conditioned to give people advice, and to try and fix things. The better skill, she suggests, is to gain confidence and competence in just being there for others. This allows other people to find themselves.
So, this sense of being in-community is what some are calling the last frontier. And to be honest, frontier work is simultaneously exhilarating, adventurous, dangerous and exhausting. People often find themselves in unfamiliar spaces and out of their “comfort zones,” where they may experience, among other things, conflict, a flood of positive and negative emotions, and competing opportunities.
There is a calling to integrity, compassion, and kindness through reflection upon one’s beliefs, assumptions, and an awareness of the effect of our choices. We all have a responsibility to be in-community, which one may define as “safe and authentic spaces for people to be present, play, practice, pause, perform, and ponder.”
In these spaces, the diversity, dynamism, and distinctness of human intelligence, imagination, and potential flourish. By tapping into what Carl Jung referred to as the “collective unconscious,” we begin to coalesce, create, and shape our individual and collective future.
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