When I first created the newsletter on my own site many, many years ago I named it Perspectives. I felt that perspectives were important but I didn’t realise how important that approach would be until I spent some time learning about Futures Thinking.
I am travelling at the moment with my husband in Southeast Asia and we spent two months in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. He rented us an apartment in a large complex and we found ourselves on the 44th floor. Of course it was labelled 43A because the number four in Chinese rhymes with the Chinese word for death so it’s considered and lucky. There was a 13th floor but not a 34th or 44th floor. And that was just one little little bit of perspective that I gained. In some cultures 13 is unlucky and other cultures it’s number four. So where else are we similar but different.
But the most physical and uncomfortable perspectives I gained was not about language or culture or customs in a foreign country, but what it felt like being 44 floors above the ground.
I have had the privilege in recent years of living in my own home, a house that was literally on the ground. And I had the opportunity of walking down to the beach and strolling barefoot across the sand. I take it seriously that we should be grounded and connected to nature and I’ve been trying to reconnect with what I’ve lost over the years. But it’s really difficult to do that so very high above the ground.
We were in Malaysia during Chinese New Year celebrations and almost every evening there were a number of beautiful fireworks displays in different parts of the city. My husband and I would open the sliding door to the balcony and with extreme caution step out onto the balcony while still holding one hand inside the apartment. Even sometimes sitting in my office working if I thought about the height that we were at and what it looked like from the balcony I could feel my stomach turn.
But the other thing I noticed, and it is of course very obvious, was the difference of what we could see from the 44th floor across the city versus what we could see when we went down to the ground floor or even the eighth floor where we found the laundry and a playground and a small cafe.
At 140 m above the ground you can see a wide Vista. You can see buildings near and far, different suburbs, the ebb and flow of traffic. You can see fireworks and lights, but you cannot see people. I spent time (cautiously with a balcony door open but sitting safely just inside the apartment) looking across at all the other apartment blocks and wondering about the lives of people that were there. How many people might be tending to a sick child or a new baby? How many people might be falling in love or how many relationships might be approaching their end. How many people were frustrated with their jobs or lives and how many people were excited about new opportunities before them?
Watch a version of this message on YouTube
A strategy that serves a village may not sustain a nation.
I’m convinced statistically that my eyes would have brushed over those and many other emotions and life experiences but all I could see was an aggregate of statistics. I would have had to go downstairs and meet with a friend or colleague in person to find out what they were experiencing. My perspective from high up was statistical and aggregated. My perspective on the ground floor would be personal and intimate, the experiences of one individual at a time.
And that is one of the biggest challenges we face when we’re discussing the future. There is very different advice for a national education department trying to evolve education for the needs of the future for an entire country versus the advice that would be given to a parent trying to prepare their own child for more opportunities. The trends that hit the headlines may statistically be experienced by many people but the concerns and adjustments that a single person must make in order to remain employed or employable, is a different conversation entirely.
Neither is better or preferable. Both are relevant. When we have to make plans for the greater good we must remember that an individual will experience this. But we cannot be paralysed into inaction about the implications for a single individual when it’s clear we need to make decisions.
Good Futures work should be able to speak to both the height and breath of a group of people as well as be able to give insight and direction to an individual.
That is the work that I hope to do, and that is why I am challenging my own perspectives, from growing up at the bottom tip of Africa, to spending some months in the vast and beautiful countries here in South East Asia.