Balance: Past, Present and Future


 

How do we make sure that we honor the past, take stock of the present and move to the future?  How much reconciliation needs to be done before we can create the future together?  What is the balance between these times?

 

The top diagram represents how communities all too often engage with storytelling: the temptation and the danger is getting caught in the past--how great it was, or how horrible.  Some communities are tempted to capture oral histories only, and forget that the children and newcomers as well as those who have been here for some time, have important stories about the now, the here.  When capturing stories of the here, you are searching for common ground--what is good and worth saving as well as what isn't. When planning a project, think, too about future stories--how do we create the future together?  Isn't that the goal?  The second diagram with the large green future circle shows how interconnected the eras are, and how we are keeping our eye to the future rather than on the past.