It was 5:55PM and we were scheduled to begin at 6:00 and still we did not have the design. Narayan, my co-host, and I had just met for nearly three hours with four young Chinese women to sense into the design for a World Cafe around the topic “Dream and Reality in the University”. This group repeated the messages that Narayan and I had been hearing repeatedly about Chinese young people in conversations over the past couple of weeks:
- They are programmed to compete and to achieve
- Their educational and career paths are chosen for them and they have no choice but to follow it
- They have no experience in self reflection and no self awareness
- They don’t trust and will not express vulnerability or deeper feelings in conversation
- As only children, they have large responsibilities to their families and feel very alone and isolated
- They are excellent at accepting their fate and enduring it.
- Being happy is their goal and it is attained only through financial success and material security
- Alternatives such as working for an NGO or as a social entrepreneur are totally unattainable so best not to dream about them.
It breaks my heart to hear these stories, to feel the loneliness, isolation and resignation in them. It terrifies me to imagine the future of our planet with this huge population of youth entering the Chinese economy with such limited vision. The students in this small group were all members of a student organization called Green Student Forum, an environmental action group, and they admitted that they could not allow themselves to think about bigger issues of environmental sustainability and the consequences of the path that they are on.
The young people say that they are afraid to have genuine conversations and that they don’t have self awareness and don’t know how to dream. Yet, every conversation we have had in the past couple of weeks was real and genuine and reached a level of depth and intimacy that surprised everyone. It is my sense that there is a hunger for meaningful conversation despite all of the obstacles and fears.
So, the question was how could we get the participants in the World Cafe to experience such conversation? And we were stuck. What would be the “right” question that would trick them into an experience that all of their experience and belief systems said was unsafe and off-limits?
Personally, I was stuck and frustrated. I wanted so badly for this to go well. I wanted to create an experience that could touch these students that I had come to care so much about. And I wanted to demonstrate the potential of participatory processes and my skill as a practitioner. While I am consciously working to avoid assuming that I know what is needed and to avoid being a missionary bringing the truth to China, I am also wanting to share what I know and to encourage the development of an Art of Hosting community of practitioners here. I had also been invited here as a “steward” or an “elder” of this work and I wanted to do well and to live into that role. All of these personal motivations and agendas were just contributing to the stuckness.
As we walked to the venue in those precious five minutes before the event, I discovered something in myself. I focused on my breathing and upon my deeper intentions of being present for the participants and I let go of all the scheming and planning and thinking and just allowed myself to feel and sense what I knew of the participants and their needs. Suddenly, like a sword cut, I sensed the questions for the three rounds:
- What are the conversations that you are not having?
- What is preventing it?
- What is the next step to get unstuck?
This felt so right and yet it also felt like stepping into the fire and challenging a level of honesty and depth that we had been warned against.
I accessed an unfamiliar part of myself as I shared the questions with Narayan and prepared to set the context for the conversation and to invite the participants into a different kind of experience. It is a place of deep and powerful presence, the place of a caring and compassionate warrior. It is the space that my friend Bob Stilger has identified as the Sacred Outsider archetype. From this place, I knew that my energy would fill the room and that I could speak with respect and love, naming the patterns that I have been hearing in conversations, that I could touch the loneliness and fear in the participants.
The meeting began with several “get acquainted” games hosted by Zoumei and when the time came for the cafe to begin around 7:00, the group was ready. Narayan and I spoke from the role of the Sacred Outsiders, naming and amplifying the themes we had been hearing and expressing how touched we have been by them. Then we invited them into a different kind of conversation. Within two minutes of the cafe beginning, we knew could feel the energy of six deep and meaningful conversations. These courageous young people acted against all of the societal prohibitions and in spite of their own fears. They let down their barriers and defenses and spoke from their hearts.
What a beautiful night it turned out to be! Despite it being the 9:00 scheduled time to adjourn, we invited a check-out circle and heard person after person talk about the power of the experience and about not feeling as alone in his/her confusion. There was new sense of hope and a desire to continue relating at a deeper level.
Twenty-eight young people out of 1.3 billion Chinese… No, its probably not going to change the world. But seeds were planted and I trust that some lives were touched and that new possibilities were activated in the students. What I do know for certain is that I was touched and changed by this experience. I don’t fully understand it and cannot express it well, but I know that I discovered something in myself related to that warrior spirit and the Sacred Other that is a gift. This is a part of myself that I want to learn to access more and to use with love. I am so grateful for the continuing gifts of learning and authentic experiences that I am receiving on this journey.
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