A Word from Our Plant Brothers and Sisters
"Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone." - Nobel prizewinner Czeslaw Milosz** Perhaps we in the animal kingdom can learn much from those in our plant neighbours… Let us take a lesson from a word commonly used for plants: tropism (TRO-piz-uhm) noun The turning or bending (typically by growth instead of movement) of an organism in response to an external stimulus."* Plants grow in the direction of light. If the light comes from underneath, rather than growing upwards, plants will grow downwards - Darwin and his son found this. What I love about this word is it suggests much about the nature of growth and change, and the power of where we choose to place our light (focus). Recently, I have been asked why I focus on strength-based practices/why I call myself a positive change agent? This word/lesson offers a more elegant explanation than one of my own minds making. If plants will grow in whichever direction the light shines, who are we to think we are that different? Paraphrasing the words of A-Word-A-Day, ‘we don’t have to keep such terms only for our leafy friends. One can use many of in other contexts, to allude [and I believe learn about] human behavior.’. Tropism highlights that wherever we choose to focus our light, we will get growth. Why then not add light to the good and best of what is, and what could be, rather than continuing to focus our spotlight on the negative and letting that grow? ie Why not look at things through an elevating and positive len - and do as Peter Drucker suggested, focus on growing our strengths, making weaknesses irrelevant? So my question back is - Where are you shining your light? * Source: My "A-Word-a-Day" subscription - a fun daily email sharing words for the etymologists, linguophiles and word-ily inclined among us. You can subscribe at http://wordsmith.org/. ** An essayist and poet - incidently I love that he is quoted as saying this: "The mind can rationalize anything, he said, but the stomach can only take so much." (The context: he wrote a book called the Captive Mind about intellectuals in repressed environments. He notes that the intellectuals who became dissidents were not necessarily the ones with the strongest minds, but those with the weakest stomachs.)
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November 16th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
How about shining our light on the weak things so that they grow to become strong. Strengthening the strong so that the weak becomes irrelevant isn’t far from the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.
This is why I have an issue with strength based relationships - it ignores weakness - instead of strengthening it. Just because you no longer see your weakness doen’t mean it goes away - you just trip up over it when you least expect too.
November 16th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Great! I think both the movement (without growth) and the growth are significant. The flower heads of sunfllowers, as an example, turn, without growing, toward the sun, hence their name. Of course, they also grow towarfds the light. People, when given the right environment, are energised by the positive, i.e., turn toward it. Once they focus on the positive, growth is a natural consequence just as with the sunflower.
Barrie’s question, above, is a good one. One answer is that weakness need not be ignored. However, trying to fix a weakness is to focuses on the weakness and so to emphasise it. Identifying the strength one wants (not just the elimination of the weakness), recognising the degree it is already present, finding the personal circumstances in which it is manifested, and then developing those circumstances is a strength-based approach to eliminating weakness.
November 17th, 2005 at 2:49 am
I concur with Neils! And Barrie, your question is well placed and I am glad you raised it!
I am not suggesting that weaknesses and working through them doesn’t have a place. There is an inherent balance in this world. Strength based approaches, at least by my interpretation, should not ignore negatives. I am just recommending that when we look from a positive frame we are able to see negatives in a way that elevates them (frames them into how can we make it better) rather than feeds a spiral of negativity. You can read my post to the Appreciaitve Inquiry Community on this here: http://mailman.business.utah.edu:8080/pipermail/ailist/2005-November/005166.html
November 17th, 2005 at 4:40 am
I just read “we notice and amplify what we choose to focus on”
thought it apt to this particular dialogue!
December 15th, 2005 at 10:51 pm
Your link to A-word-A-Day is broken.
December 16th, 2005 at 2:33 am
thanks! will fix it now