Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash
Last year I mentioned that I’d love to change the world but I don’t know what to do. I imagine many of you are in the same boat. We see the problems of the world - climate change, racial injustice, wealth inequity. Anything we could possibly do seems like spitting in the ocean.
How do you start to make the world better when there doesn’t seem to be any place to start?
Start Where You Are
One way is to simply see a need and meet it. Whether or not you believe in a God who has a plan for the world, the fact is that right now you exist in a particular place and time and the opportunities available to you are the ones at hand.
Marcus Aurelius put it this way:
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
There is a mantra for this type of action “Think globally, act locally.” This was an idea that started in the 1960s but might be even more relevant today - some organizations are working creatively to involve their communities in local action.
Connect the Dots
OK, so one action no matter how small, is a good action. But have you really started something? And more to the point, have you started something that really matters to you?
Architect Christopher Alexander believes that when an action or an entity has a sense of wholeness it also has a sense of life. In his book The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life he gives a very clear example of how easy it is to start something that grows into something bigger, something that is good and really matters to you.
Start with nothing - In this example the blank sheet represents a kind of nothingness. In reality it contains all the possibilities that are available to us.
Do something - anything - For many of us the problem is not that we have no options. We have too many options. The dot on the paper represents a decision. It doesn’t matter what the decision is…we can change it later. Better yet, would could build it into something better, with more power and life.
Consider the emergence of opportunities - The dot, the decision, opens up a field of new opportunities for decisions. The closer you get to the decision, the more intense the field is.
Let’s say that you planted a single tree to fight climate change. The next thing you might do would be to plant another tree within the “halo” around the first tree.
Define the new areas that emerge - Going back to the dot on the page, look at how it changes the potential of the blank page. Alexander sees four new rectangles on the page that are defined by the presence of the dot. These are new potential structures.
These rectangular blobs can represent a large number of opportunities. Going back to the tree we planted, we could populate a rectangle with a forest, a garden, a building. Anything we do in one of these rectangles has the potential of strengthening our original action.
Explore new directions that emerge - Not only do the four overlapping rectangles define four areas that support the original dot. Now there are four vectors from the dot to the farthest corner of each rectangle. You can also imagine vectors in the open spaces between the rectangles.
Consider our seedling. Imagine that we decided to plant a lawn on one of the rectangles supporting our tree. Now we have a direction for our lives…we are landscapers.
Put it all together - Alexander combines the rectangles, the halo, the rays together in one sketch and feels that there are about twenty new potential structures here that support the single dot on the blank page. Building another dot along one of these structures will produce better results than simply putting a random dot on the page.
Sketch with Words
Remember we’re starting with nothing here. We might have a tract of land we’d like to build upon, we might have less than that. We might not know if we want to build or farm or join or activate.
Putting a dot on a paper might seem too abstract for charting a new direction for our lives. Fortunately there’s another way to sketch out an idea. Award-winning children’s book illustrator Matt Shanks has written up a delightful and useful method for sketching with words.
You don’t have to be an artist or a poet to follow this method.
Illustration by Matt Shanks
The advantage of sketching with words rather than lines and circles is that your picture is still fluid. Depending on what you want to do next you could turn your word-sketch into a drawing, or an outline.
Check out Bret Terpstra’s Thinking Faster with Mind Maps for another very powerful option.
Now You’ve Got Something
If you’ve stuck with me this far you can see how easy it is to start with nothing. To summarize:
Start with nothing, no ideas, nothing
Make a decision, any decision
What possible follow-up decisions emerge from the first decision?
Group the potential follow-up decisions into areas of action
What new directions are suggested by these areas?
What specific possible actions could be taken in any one of these directions and in any one of these areas?
By the time you’re done with this exercise I’m willing to bet you’ll have an exciting starting point for your next adventure.
Valdez Alley, Ventura, CA photo by Philip Houtz