The following is a parable which is to say: It has some truth in it, but I am trying to make a point, not relay facts. I can’t tell you exactly what happened and I’m not trying to — as with any good parable, if you leave this story with a big question instead of a small answer, I’ll consider my job well done.
Many years ago, the board for our county’s annual fair held a meeting to discuss the grandstand that stood on the fairgrounds. They’d been talking about it for years, but the talk had gotten more intense. The grandstand was ancient, maybe not that safe anymore and certainly an eyesore. Almost everybody agreed that something needed to be done with the structure, but the committee couldn’t decide what that something was. The meeting went on and on, and when it finally ended, the board was no closer to consensus than when they’d begun.
There were budget concerns, of course, and the question of how big to make the rebuild. Our county’s population had declined for years but had recently stabilized. Should they make the new grandstand bigger or smaller than the old one? Mostly wood or mostly metal? Add a cover to save folks from the midday heat, or save money and leave it open? Everybody in the greater community had an opinion, too, no doubt, and I’m sure the committee members heard those opinions every time they stopped at the post office to pick up their mail or tried to have a cup of coffee at the cafe.
It’s impossible to say how long the indecision would have continued because, one warm spring morning soon after, the fair board president got in his tractor, and instead of heading to the field to plow, drove to town and knocked the old grandstand down with one push.
I was new in town then, and mostly unaware of gossip, so I never heard anything about it when it was happening, just noticed the old grandstand was gone and that not too long after a new one began to be built in its place. By the time the fair rolled around in August, there was a big, sturdy structure beside the rodeo arena and everyone, or at least everyone I talked to, thought it was pretty nice. (“Pretty nice” in these parts is high praise.)
I’m telling you the story this way because I’m purposefully trying to muddy the waters. If you only heard the story from me, it would be easy for you to decide the fellow who knocked down the grandstand was a hero, but that wouldn’t be a very useful parable. So I’ll add that if you heard the story from one of the other board members, you’d likely be told that after the grandstand was unceremoniously knocked down an equally rogue rebuild began. A lot of wasted time and money later, that first rebuild had to be torn down, too, and that tear down was much harder. The second rebuild was done with considerably more consultation and collaboration and turned out great, however, I’m guessing most of the people directly involved would have preferred to take the extra time and care in the first place.
But, back to humans and parables, here’s my experience: The more humans you gather in one place, the more opinions you will inevitably hear and the more dissension there will be. Almost every single human on earth, even the most spiritually evolved, is a veritable Pandora’s box of unresolved trauma, yearning and deep love. Humans are rarely efficient. Even the efficient ones can be so enamored of pragmatism that they forget to be flexible or expansive when that’s what’s needed.
What happens when one person takes matters into their own hands and the rest of the committee is just left to react? When the rules we all agreed to follow don’t hold us anymore? When the old grandstand has been destroyed, but we haven’t begun to build a new one yet?
