..续本文上一页ects. Because when we are willing to expose our defects, we expose some kind of heart to other people. Curiously enough, people respond more to our honesty about our imperfections than they do to our perfections. When we”re honest about our difficulties with a project, or with another inpidual, or whatever, everyone in the room sort of resonates with the bravery of someone who”s courageous enough to express their pain. It”s so fascinating that that”s what inspires people.

　　Margaret Wheatley: The experience of really listening to another human being is the source of our willingness to love them. Someone just gave me a t-shirt that says, “You can”t hate someone whose story you know.” That works at every level. The difficult issues in our society will not be resolved until we can listen to people”s experience of things like racism and sexism—just listening without trying to defend ourselves.

　　In organizations, we”re blinded to the power of honest communication because we fear it will take us down the road of guilt and accusations, that it will fracture our relationships rather than heal them. We really don”t want any more meetings because all we”ve done for years is accuse and yell at each other, trying to push our own agenda through this very dense resistance. We can”t see the power of these very simple processes that would bring us to this great place of opening to one another. Yet when we finally realize the truth of who we are, and really hear people”s stories, it truly changes our capacity to be together.

　　The first thing that arises when we open up to each other is a great sigh of relief. We realize that we”re not the only one who feels bewildered. When we hear that nobody knows the answer any more, that none of the old ways work, that we don”t know what the new way is, then confusion has a higher value than certainty. Uncertainty is more appropriate to a world that is so perplexing to us. When people hear that, they relax.

　　Pema Chödrön: Because that”s their experience.

　　Margaret Wheatley: That”s their experience, so they feel confirmed. And what comes next is the possibility of courage. Instead of blaming ourselves because we”re the only one who doesn”t get it, we realize we”re all dwelling in the confusion of modern-day life. I certainly see this in myself—I am able to trust myself more because I”ve had the recognition that what”s called for is simply to notice how confusing and chaotic life is.

　　That allows the really big questions to surface. People everywhere are asking profoundly spiritual questions—about being together more with other human beings, about their lives having meaning beyond the criteria we”ve been given of success, money and material goods.

　　I feel these questions arising from the planet in many different places as we come to the end of a world view that has led us into a particularly vacuous place. It is a world view that has kept us apart, and I”m beginning to think that how we can come together as human beings is the real question we face. In the program I took with you, Pema, you said that the root of suffering is the illusion of our separateness. That we”ve forgotten that we”re all interrelated.

　　I do feel that”s the root of suffering in this culture. This culture has torn us apart from one another and only supported us in our inpidual quests for things that are not in themselves satisfying. We”re coming to the end of that now. We”re realizing how empty we are, and I think we have courage to understand how far we”ve drifted from who we are as human beings, and to realize we can learn again how to be together.

　　In fact, a lot of people do know how to be together, but it”s a skill that hasn”t been considered important or given any status in our society. It”s actually been dismissed a…

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