Who Am I Doing This For Anyway?
The saying “Just because we can doesn’t mean we should” has been tossing around in my head this week. I took a moment to look it up, just as a matter of due diligence before I quoted it, and didn’t learn anything noteworthy about it’s provenance. However, I did see a very interesting and somewhat alarming picture of some guys (of course it was guys?) that had picked up one forklift with another forklift in order to lift still another item high enough to install it in some industrial setting. It seemed like a timely image somehow – a teetering tower of “this just might work” that, if it didn’t, would almost certainly cause harm to those that made it. Sometimes the gradual re-opening of business and other gatherings under the current conditions can feel like that – this just might work, but if it doesn’t it could be a mess. That can be a hard space to live in with any sense of confidence, peace or equanimity. One thing that I think can help inform our imaginations about how to do it as well as possible is the conscious consideration of what it means to serve the “common good”. In a roundabout way, that’s what this week’s Talky Bit will be exploring.