Getting to Maybe 4 - Relationships & Trusted Space

Robert Paterson posted few days ago this article that refers to the importance fo relatiionships for our sense of belonging and well-being. It is well written and refers to some other threads of the same conversation:

"What happened to many orphans in Romania who were not cherished but only functionally cared for? They withered and in some cases died. What happens to many men in middle and later years who are unmarried or without a partner, they get ill and then die much more often than their unmarried friends. Want to be ill a lot - have few friends. What, other than execution, is the worst punishment we can hand out to another human - solitary confinement.

We are primates and for primates, relationships are not important - they are vital to a good life. But we have told ourselves that our organizations are all about transactions. Most business or government leaders pay very little attention to the climate inside. There is of course one major exception to this - in the military, that do real things that are obviously dangerous, morale, and hence the relational climate is always considered as critical. War in the end is won or lost in the mind and the emotions.

Well so are all things that demand more than one person.

But we have been captured by a Newtonian idea of the machine where people are merely inputs. This worked to a certain extent so long as the world was in some kind of stable mode. It still works if what you do is simple and merely needs to be replicated. But now we are in one of the great Phase Transitions of all time when the fundamental belief about what is reality or not is being transformed.

Success will come to those that get it. Those that don't will fail badly.

So what are the underlying new beliefs that "Getting to Maybe" has to offer us as we all struggle to shift to the new?

Relationships did not lead to quality of life, they were the quality of life .... "They results of their research demonstrated that the safety of people with a disability was not dependent upon the number of social workers, law enforcement officers, by laws, or any other method of enforcement ...Rather their safety was dependent upon the number of relationships the person had. The more the relationships, the greater their safety. The fewer, the greater their vulnerability.

Here comes the kicker though that again belies the culture of the institutions of our time -

The necessary relationship was not a professional one. It had to be like the relationship between a parent and a child or between friends: a loving relationship, a relationship of encounter and attention, a relationship integrated into the full life of each person and built upon mutual giving and mutual being.