Work. Made visible.
When I replied to that email, I already knew what was going to happen. And - maybe - not having given a precise answer was the way I was unconsciously leaving unresolved the conflict between the desire to do it and the fear of not being the right person.
But now I know that the answer I gave was the only possible answer.
Rome, Italy.
June 24, 2022.
2:00 pm.
It begins. Stelio welcomes everyone to the 5th Ohana Meetup. He asks us to do something unusual for a space where we should talk about work. But I will realize soon that, in fact, talking about work is exactly what we were doing, and you will realize it too. He asks us something unusual, then. He asks us to visualize here, together with us, our fathers and our mothers, and their fathers and their mothers, and our ancestors who preceded us. And he asks us to visualize our children, and our children’s children, and the generations that will follow us. Each of us is in this space, and through us, every other living being is here in the same space.
This is how we have started two days in which we will be together, guided by a single question:
What happens if we truly get together?
There are people in the circle, like Matteo and Miluska, who were with us in the previous editions. They know the magic of this space, and have invited other people. They did it with the same spirit with which you invite a friend to watch the sunset together on a summer evening. It is not possible to keep certain things to oneself if one has been open enough to see their beauty.
And other people are here for the first time, like Susanna and Richard, who have no idea what to expect. But they share a desire to explore that question.
What happens if we truly get together?
And here I am. I’m here too.
I am walking around the inner perimeter of the Open Space Technology circle. It had already happened 5 years ago, when I was given the gift of opening the works of the first Ohana Meetup, in 2018.
While I walk in the circle, explaining how we will work together for these two days, I feel there is something powerful. I realize that sitting in this space are extraordinary human beings. And I will find out in the next few hours how true this feeling is.
Facilitating an Open Space Technology is always a mystery. However prepared you may be, you never know what will happen. It is not a mechanical process in which time, space, rules and tools act as a barrier to the unpredictable. The opposite, actually.
And when Claudia helps us to remember the only 4 principles that will guide us, this becomes deeply real and concrete.
Whoever comes is the right people.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
Whenever it starts is the right time.
When it’s over it’s over.
Some people feel a sense of discomfort in front of these principles, even terror at times. Others experience a sense of liberation and freedom.
Is there really a way to bring out what is most important for a group of people, without someone else having first imposed their will, their agenda, their rhythms, their goals? Is it really possible that people can self-organize and achieve important results without anyone judging whether what they are doing is right or wrong?
The agenda in front of us is made up of two blank sheets.
Now is the time to give people the space and time to share what is relevant to them to discuss and explore at this Ohana Meetup.
The agenda begins to be enriched by various proposals and topics, such as: work-life harmony, the value of money, dreaming, fear and future, moving beyond owning businesses, shared narratives, peer support.
In the end, we have 18 sessions to go through together.
I have pages and pages of notes. There are also the reports that will be published on the Ohana Meetup website as every year. Not to mention the feelings, emotions, relationships, wisdom, hope and trust. I cannot describe all these things. No words could express them. No tale could honor the depth and beauty of living them.
But there is an invisible thread that has been woven into my mind over the course of this year’s 18 Ohana Meetup sessions, and that I can try to share.
What is work?
It emerged that it is not your job.
Someone, in one of the sessions, said that it is your contribution to the world. In the words of Kahlil Gibran, it is love made visible.
Today we suffer from a fracture between our job and our self. And this is why we are looking for a balance. But balancing your life and your job is the reductionist pill of a deeper illness. We have disconnected from our contribution to the world, and therefore from our work.
But we can still do something. We can bring harmony between life and work.
“Harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions” (Wikipedia).
Bringing harmony into our life passes from recognizing what resonates with ourselves. What makes us vibrate deeply, as we explored during the session about the CORE2 method. And it is through this recognition that we are also able to become aware of who we are.
This ongoing exchange between who I am as an individual, and what resonates with me in the ecosystem I live in, can bring us back to a condition where our ego stops cluttering our thoughts and actions.
A condition in which each of us can contribute to what is necessary, according to their abilities, their history, their culture, and at the same time in natural connection with every other frequency around.
Love. Made visible.
Through this lens, which may appear only conceptual and abstract, I have made sense of the powerful visions of how to concretely change the way we work together.
Rethinking the value of money changes the dynamics of power, the use of resources, and even how you build healthy relationships.
Deeply reconnecting with what surrounds us allows us to rethink how we are using energy sources on our planet, how they connect to profit, what the limits of current technologies compared to the development of renewable and regenerative sources capable of supporting the development of our societies without having to compromise it in the name of ethics as an end in itself.
Overcoming the ego prepares us to overcome even the concept of owning businesses, opening the way to new incentives to do business, greater operational and decision-making efficiency, freedom, rethinking the financial drivers in our markets, using profits to support different purposes, including governance at work in a more appropriate way.
Love. Made visible.
We knew this decade was going to be an important decade for humanity.
Now I feel it in every cell of my body.
The role that each of us will play in the game we are playing as mankind will make a difference. Participating in this year’s Ohana Meetup was enlightening on this.
We are at the gates of a new era. An era in which rigor accompanies fun, ecosystem contribution accompanies personal evolution.
I feel like I’m on a confused, blurry, uncertain journey. At the Ohana Meetup, I met people who are on different paths, but are equally confused, blurry and uncertain. But one thing appeared extremely clear, limpid and sure: we are walking in the same direction.
And this gives me courage.
I’m happy.
And I’m in love. Visibly.
A week before the start of the Ohana Meetup I received an email in which the organizing team shared the various roles that were important to cover with Cocoon members.
When I replied to that email, I already knew what was going to happen. And - maybe - not having given a precise answer was the way I was unconsciously leaving unresolved the conflict between the desire to do it and the fear of not being the right person.
But now I know that the answer I gave was the only possible answer:
“I’m available for anything needed”.
