By Lavinia Plonka
“I think we should….”
“Forget it, we don’t have the money.”
“What about….”
“There’s no budget for that.”
“We need….”
“Yeah, but our financials are so bad, the members will never go for it.”
“I’d like to propose…”
“Go ahead. The complainers will eat you alive.”
Didn’t we, why haven’t we, money, naysayers, money, no volunteers, money, money, money. No wonder we call it a non-profit!
I sit at the board meeting, squirming, checking my Facebook page, pacing the room, staring out the window, even at one point lying down on the floor, feeling like Steve McQueen as a prisoner in Papillon. Nothing helps me endure the chains of minutiae that hang on our organization. If we really wanted to torture political prisoners we could simply put them on a non-profit’s board of directors.
Many years ago, before it was a status event, I went to Burning Man. It is located on a desert playa, a specific terrain that transforms radically in the event of a rare and sudden rain. As the rain came pouring down, the soil was transformed from a hard packed gray surface to a bizarre kind of clay that attached itself to the bottom of our shoes. With every step another layer of clay attached itself, so that even if you ran, within seconds you were wearing cement platform shoes. You could no longer lift your feet and you had to stop in spite of the pouring rain to knock the clay platforms off your shoes and run again, repeating the process until you were soaked, covered in gray muck, and exhausted. The difference between this and being on the board of a non-profit is that eventually the rain did stop.
I had taken to calling the board meetings “bored” meetings. The endless questions about the lost revenue, the harried executive director constantly explaining why something ended up costing more, and the eternal discussions about policy filled me with futility. How could we possibly innovate, change, improve anything if we were trapped in an endless loop of protocol? The final straw was when a typo was found in one of the by-laws.
The By-law is up on the screen as part of a Powerpoint presentation. (When Steve Jobs went to meetings, if someone began a Powerpoint presentation, he walked out.) I’m like the mime in the box, helplessly banging on the invisible wall to escape.
“This has to be changed, the name of our organization is misspelled.”
“Sure,” I say, “Let’s do it.”
“We have to vote on it.”
“What?”
“It’s a change in the by-laws. Therefore it has to be put to a vote.”
“You’re joking.”
They ignore me. “Anyone willing to put forth a motion that we correct the spelling in By-Law 48, section 2, sub-section A?”
A hand raises from a zombified board member. “We have a motion on the floor from Cara to change the spelling in the name of our organization to reflect the actual spelling in By Law 48, Section 2, Sub-section A. Do we have a second.”
I think of Kafka. The motion passes. After all that hard work, we have lunch.
Cosmologists have posited that the universe is a living, breathing being and that all life is a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm of the universe. Each of us contains a sun, the rhythm of the moon. On a smaller scale, our blood is like the earth’s rivers, the trees our lungs. Our relationships reflect the galactic dance. I contemplate the notion that a board of directors meeting is like a black hole – you get sucked in, and nothing escapes.
“So that went really well,” smiles the President. “We passed a motion. Let’s check in with each other shall we? How are things going for you all?”
To my shock, as we go around the table, each board member offers a self congratulatory platitude. “Well, it was a tough year, but I think we’re now on the right track.”
“I’m feeling very positive about the direction we are going in.”
There is a rumbling inside of me. My face is getting hot. If I am a reflection of the planet I’m a volcano, if I’m a microcosm of the universe, I’m about to go supernova.
I take a breath and explode. “I’m sick of us operating from fear. I can’t understand why everyone is operating from an attitude of lack. If we are all about functionality, why are we so dysfunctional? Why can’t we just try to change? So what if we make a mistake? Einstein once said, ‘Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.’”
My voice is quivering. They’re going to hate me. They’re going to tell me I’m over-reacting. A little voice whispers that they are going to kick me off the board. Which actually sounds good at the moment. But no one moves. They sit, mouths open; egos singed, smoke trailing out of their ears.
Like a comet striking the earth, I have disrupted the status quo. Emotional debris is everywhere, smoldering ruins of a meeting. A collective breath and the President speaks. “I’m really glad you said that. Let’s take a risk.”
Another board member speaks up. “Thank you. I feel the same way, I was just afraid to say it.” The sun begins to shine on our group.
I’m a volcano. A comet. A storm. My husband calls me Kali, the Hindu Goddess associated with both destruction and empowerment (although he seems to forget the goddess part.) It’s not an easy job, but somebody’s got to do it. I think this is why I wasn’t elected prom queen.
Body language expert, Lavinia Plonka has taught The Feldenkrais Method for over 25 years.
For more information, visit her at laviniaplonka.com