Does the amount of available space determine what change becomes?

Tonight I revisited some 📍pins to ponder that I’ve pegged across my recent posts.

Taking notes and wondering whether there are emerging conditions for courageous change:

  • The SPACE to dream a dream

  • The BELIEF to name it

  • The LIVING of shared values

  • SHARING STORIES that honour both the lived experience of the sharer, and the integrity of the listener.

  • TIME TO THINK and TIME TO CREATE CHANGE within busy, “messy” systems and lives

  • OPPORTUNITIES to LISTEN in shared spaces

  • SPACES where TRUTH feels SAFE ENOUGH to say, and to hear

A theme emerged: SPACE.

And through the stories I was reflecting on, I could see how the absence of space - or the amount of space available - influenced, or even determined, what change becomes.


Without space, dreams remain unfurled

Without space, a lack of belief tightens its control

Without space, shared values remain stagnant in PDFs and dusty wall posters

Without space, stories go untold, unheard and become forgotten

Without space, thoughts are not brought forward; change remains a longing

Without space, we rush to respond in shared spaces; failing to listen

Without space, truths remain unspoken; lack of time excuses missed opportunity.

Is space – its presence or absence, its availability and amount - a core condition of courageous change?

📍How can we enable more space?
Whether it’s headspace, physical space, emotional capacity, institutional space, time.

📍What becomes possible within the inevitable constraints of systems and life?

 

Thinking Out Loud is where I share short pieces of thinking from the middle of the work. Ideas, questions and lived experiences, offered while they’re still forming. (Tiny Experiments Pact: Day 17/100).

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Hearing twice in a week that people can be “messy”