Restoration
Despite the need to make a living and transform the
nature of institutions and communities, I have been
preoccupied lately with fixing up a house. I spent one
whole morning last week deciding whether a bench or a
coffee table should go in front of the living room couch.
I have looked at enough wooden furniture that I can now
tell within one-half inch the height, width, and length
of a table without the use of a tape measure, although I
keep one with me at all times to make those fine
distinctions.
Not that all the work is simply redecoration—the
major project has been the restoration of a basement. My
goal is to make it usable after a long period of
high-humidity neglect. The basement had been relegated to
storage and access to a maze of chaotic and jumbled
utilities. This basement runs under the whole house and
has a full, 10-foot ceiling, which is somewhat unusual.
The big question was whether to reinstate the drop
ceiling installed 50 years ago, or to patch and repair
the old ceiling, keeping the utilities exposed.
The ceiling question, though, is one of technology. There
are bigger issues than that—this is a basement we
are talking about. This is the room in the house that
rests underground. It holds hundreds of square feet of
papers, old toys, skis, and outgrown shoes, which might
become useful again some day. This is the room that
houses memories and therefore dreams of what we might
someday have the time to pursue. There is one space
cluttered with old paint, jars of metal things, and
chicken-wire fence—not a friendly place.
The basement also holds moisture. There is groundwater
that drips into one spot and has for years. And this
water finds its way into our space despite the strength
and size of our foundation. The basement holds its own
seasons, indifferent to what we have in mind for it. The
basement is one room in the house that we go down into
not by choice, but by necessity. It holds our past, our
fears, all that we do not want to deal with just now. So
what does it mean to “fix up” a basement and
what is its attraction?
Going Down
Gaston Bachelard wrote a book in 1958 entitled The
Poetics of Space. He explores the relationship
between physical space and our imagination, our inner
world. He contrasts the basement with the attic.
“Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In
the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters of the
strong framework. Here we participate in the
carpenter’s solid geometry. As for the
cellar…it is first and foremost the dark entity of
the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces.
When we dream there, we are in harmony with the
irrationality of the depths.” Bachelard quotes Carl
Jung who talks of the cellar with a different image:
“‘…a man who, hearing a suspicious
noise in the cellar, hurries to the attic and, finding no
burglars there, decides, consequently, that the noise was
pure imagination. In reality, this prudent man did not
dare venture into the cellar.’”
Bachelard continues, “…Instead of facing the
cellar (the unconscious), Jung’s ‘prudent
man’ seeks alibis for his courage in the attic. In
the attic rats and mice can make considerable noise. But
let the master of the house arrive unexpectedly and they
return to the silence of their holes. The creatures
moving about in the cellar are slower, less scampering,
more mysterious.” In the cellar, darkness prevails
both day and night, and even when we are carrying a
lighted candle, we see shadows dancing on the dark walls.
He says that even though we try to light our basements
with electricity, the “unconscious can not be
civilized. It takes a candle when it goes to the
cellar.”
So here I am, spending two months compulsively restoring
a basement, often thinking I am wasting my time when
there is so much “real” work to do. It is not
like I don’t have a job. At last count I had 442
e-mails that I have refused to delete. I have columns to
write, people to call back, projects that demand more
than I give them, and decisions to be made. I have made
commitments to people, and they depend on me to meet
those commitments. My work is meaningful, engaging,
rewarding, and fast paced—sometimes.
But that ceiling and the cellar have captured all my
attention. It has become a restoration project. Perhaps
my current best chance to do something restorative,
something that restores balance and perspective that can
only come from time in the cellar. And perhaps at this
moment, I have chosen to engage in restoration in a realm
that I control.
The Possibility of Restoration
We live in a culture that only wants to visit the attic.
Nationally we are filled with the righteousness of a war.
There is only marginal discussion of what resides in our
own basement, of what responsibility we might bear for
having brought this suffering upon ourselves. We ask God
to bless America, as if all other humans do not deserve
God’s blessing.
As institutions, we decry Enron, setting aside the fact
that what they did has been going on for years in most
large organizations, albeit in a more ethical form. We
have been squeezing benefits and pensions as a matter of
course, and come to accept that the fate of human beings
in our organizations is tangential to the economic and
marketplace success of the enterprise. Every time a
publicly held company fires people, the market
celebrates.
In our larger communities, we treat the inner city as a
cellar that we do not want to enter. There are grand
exceptions, but in many cities we build in the suburbs,
educate in private schools, and view the underclass as if
they are pretty much on their own. In some places, the
edge cities consciously compete with the downtown for
convention business, as if they can win if the urban
center loses.
In the smaller circle of our own workplace, we are
consumers of optimism. We keep seeking upbeat leaders who
can leave us glowing. We love visions for our
organizations and communities. We think we can restore
ourselves and create workplaces of our desires by staying
focused on the attic and the floors above ground. We hold
the hope that all we need is a little renovation, some
remodeling, and that more fundamental restoration, even
reconstruction, will not be required.
The Shadow Is Not Despair
What gets confused is the distinction between exploring
the unconscious, shadow side of our workplaces/lives and
cynicism, complaining, and hopelessness. We think that if
we face our unexamined organizational selves, our own
contribution to what disturbs us, that it will deepen our
despair. The opposite might be true. Our despair, our
cynicism or loss of idealism, may be caused by our very
unwillingness to enter the shadows. The shadows in the
basement are not despair; they are depth. To enter this
world, we would have the conversations that we have been
avoiding. We would publicly own and acknowledge our
limitations long before we are forced to. If we are
unwilling to go into the basement except in the light of
day or out of necessity, then all of our experience above
ground is colored by that. Noises, such as dissent, angry
employees and citizens, and far-off cultures, frighten
us. What we do not understand becomes an enemy. Mystery
becomes a problem to be solved, rather than a source of
wonder and imagination.
The Cellar Knows
Genuine restoration, our capacity to restore ourselves in
the midst of difficulty, happens when we become friends
with the night, or enter the cellar. Restoration would
mean we would deepen our resolve to create organizations
that care for people as well as performance and create
communities that use the gifts of all its members. We
might also become a nation that we can be proud enough of
that we do not have to promote and advertise our pride,
and can be generous and inclusive with our
blessings.
One final comment on my basement. I finally decided to
restore the original ceiling and expose the vents, wires,
and pipes that keep the upper floors functioning. The
floors and walls have become brighter and more habitable,
but the ceiling remains as a reminder of all that the
basement represents. There is one small room filled with
old paint, jars of dust and metal, and that chicken wire,
which I have not dealt with. I keep meaning to go in
there, but I do have e-mails to answer.
Peter Block is author of the best-selling
books, The Empowered Manager, Flawless Consulting,
Stewardship, and The Flawless Consulting Fieldbook
and Companion. Block can be reached at pbi@att.net .
March 2002 News for a
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