The weather inside my head was just as depressed as it was outside my windows. It was as if I saw everything through a foggy lens. While the (outside) day set up for rain until it came down in sheets – clogging up our drains and driveway – the inside day unfolded as a low energy day from the start. Being in such a state is probably good for my ability to empathize with others. It is remarkable how quickly one can forget what life is like for someone without the usual dose of energy and optimism that I am usually blessed with.
All day I had this nagging feeling that what I was doing was not good (enough), not relevant and I was fooling myself if I really believed that I contributed to something more important than the glory of myself and my employer (in spite of the rhetoric that claimed otherwise). I was plagued once more by the disturbing thought that I am just a small cog in the wheels of a vast and competitive ‘development complex’ that needs to show at every step and turn that it is saving the world like no other. That there is actually harm done gets little press: for those who play the game well there are many benefits to be had that are handed out and consumed in semi-obscurity. At the same time, as a (very small) player in the game, I felt squeezed to the limits, being nickel-and-dimed to death about my travel arrangement, giving-giving and sucked dry, being met at every turn with the most irritating words ‘sorry, those are the rules.’ A sense of futility and self-pity mingled to make it hard to give my full attention to the selection of Ethiopian management consulting firms that want a piece of our work in their country.
The best antidotes in nature grow close to the poison, I was once told. And so the antidote for yesterday’s blues were found right in my family and town. It was the annual spring town meeting and Axel, as chair of the Community Preservation Committee had worked tirelessly with his people, for weeks, on getting a motion passed that would increase our town’s surcharge to the town’s preservation fund. He had built a good case but the difficult economic times undercut even his most compelling arguments.
I forgot all about my blues as I listened – while knitting – to both the scripted and non scripted parts of the town meeting. There is much more scripted than I realized – as much of the decision making has already happened by the time the townspeople are gathered to vote. Robert’s Rules of Order Reign – a process, I suppose, that allows 200 people to make decisions, but only on the surface. This is not meant to be a conversation. The conversations start months earlier and continue until the final minutes before the start of the meeting. I observed and listened and got a lot of knitting done.
Tessa was elected to Field Driver, an archaic position held, along with that of Poundkeeper, Fence Viewer, Counter of Bark and Mulch and others by today’s townspeople to honor our past but with no discernible task. I held that position once and so entered the archives of my town as my name was printed on the list of town officials in the 2006 annual report. I am rather proud of my family: one chairman, one ex-Field driver, one current Field Driver and Sita the VP of a group that has set out to change the world, one connection at a time.
I had to leave the meeting long before it was over because of the dictates of my sleeping hours. As I left the school gym with most of its chairs still occupied I was for a brief moment jealous of the people whose center of attention had been for month this one local event: just making sure the town was run well and its citizens taken care of. It stood in such sharp contrast with me minding the entire world. It suddenly had a glamour that my worldliness could not compete with. I was only a bystander in this drama, even though I had a voting card (and used it).
Axel went out with his co-campaigners and friends for a drink afterwards – his local community – to mull over what went well, what not, and start strategizing anew for the next opportunity to make their case. He did not get home until long after midnight. And I went home to bed and felt much better after this refocus on the local.
Sylvia's Journal 
In fact the meeting did not end until after midnight. There was no after-action review, no drink, nothing but tiredness and a feeling of having been through much grinding of wheels. It is hard to organize even a bit of humanity, never mind what Sylvia’s trying to do with whole countries, or even provinces. Our particular motion was defeated, and I didn’t get to say much about the idea of preservation, but we lost by a slim number of votes – 5 – and movement was made. As Sylvia knows having a conversation with 350 people isn’t child’s play, and Sylvia is good at it.