Usable Insight – Edward Kennedy’s Death: A Window of Opportunity
It is 10:30 AM EDT on Saturday, August 29.
As many of you, I am watching the funeral service of Senator Edward Kennedy. I am at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA and will be leaving for the airport in four hours to return to Los Angeles.
I’m watching former Presidents sitting next to each other as well as Republicans and Democrats sitting next to each other all about to be looking forward in unison to the service for Senator Kennedy and awaiting comments and a eulogy by President Obama.
Watching this I am aware that you and I are also looking at a window of opportunity.
Before this event and within 48 hours after this event we will all return to our “silos.” And with that we will all descend back to our “transactionally” narrow, “zero sum” game, everything-is-a negotiation mindset and approach to our world. The walls will again separate us and turn us into foes vs. collaborative human beings.
But for now the silo walls are down and we are more in touch with the two things silos and we have in common and very much personified by the life of Edward Kennedy.
Those two things are the sky above — a potentially ennobling vision for a better and fairer, kinder and more caring world that we should work towards together — and the ground below — our common humanity regarding strength and vulnerability, living and dying, celebrating and grieving. Edward Kennedy has for nearly fifty years entreated us to do what’s in the best interest of all and to heed that for those “to whom much is given, much is expected.” And with the deaths of his older brothers, his own illnesses and those of his children, his personal crises including Chappaquiddick, the loss of his Presidential bid to Jimmy Carter, and his struggle with alcoholism, he served up to us an example of humanity that we can see ourselves in and the potential to persevere through it and in the end rise above it.
I think the greatest tribute to Senator Kennedy would be for all of us to continue beyond his death with our silo walls lowered and the opportunity to work together for a better world extended.
I think it will be a brief time when we will talk and then “just listen” to each other. Let’s see if we can keep that up.
August 29th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Dr. Goulston,
I really appreciate your insights. I too have been watching the funersl. it is quite moving and he was quite a man.
Nancy Hope
August 30th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
I think it a great idea, and I have dropped my silo walls, I am waiting for the rest to drop theirs.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:37 am
I couldn’t find a sitemap. Do you have one?
September 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Nice looking site you have – are you having fun with it? It’s interesting and well worth the time to visit.