In the Work That Reconnects,
we have a dialogue exercise
in which Person A asks Person B
“Who are you?”
several times over a few minutes,
as it feels right to reprime this exploratory pump;
then person B does the same for person A.

The person hosting, facilitating, enabling
this reiterative question’s redundant possibilities
is merely an echo-present listener,
noticing diversity within these multiple responses,
without judging good, bad, ugly, or even indifferent,
quietly hearing rhythms of longing for love
between the crippling cracks of anger and fear,
compelling and compiling self with other hatred,
pathology.

The question,
Do all these diverse self-descriptions truly fit
this same love v. anger-fear polyculturing-multisystemic elephant?
does not usually arise.
Rather,
we accept all these scrabbling voices
and hats
and feelings
and ideas
and beliefs
co-occurring within one bilateral
positive-health v. negative-pathology mindbody ecosystem,
seeking diastatic fullness
richness,
poly-empathic
polymorphic communication,
design, development, investment,
and cooperative-integrative implementation outcomes,
at the end of this elephant’s rhetorical day,
if not sooner.

Why is this not always the case
when we ask our friends and families,
our public sector leaders
and financial sector investors,
“Who do you hope we are becoming?”

What loves are we preparing to invest in
and which past angers and future fears to divest of?

What indicators can I give
that I already invest in cooperatively regenerate health
agendas,
platforms,
designs and intentions,
co-mentoring therapeutic diapraxis
of which I preach so positively to others?

I know you support restoring regenerative health to our soil
and preserving clean water,
as I do.
So does it bother you,
as it does me,
that we still contaminate our water with poo and pee
instead of investing in nutrition-starved soil,
where both could be positive resources
countering past neglect and abuse,
rather than doubly-negative pathology?

We say we support cooperatively vibrant and healthy local economies
and empowering political vitality,
so does it bother you,
as it does me,
to so often hear “either-or” deductive reductivism
and wonder why not first cooperatively consider “both-and?”

I appreciate what you just said
and I wonder if adding X might make your idea
even better.
Do you agree,
or maybe you see concerns for yourself and others
new to me,
of which we might learn together?

Could a cooperative election or social change campaign
begin with compiling interdependent hopes and wishes
and loves of Who Are You?
thereby more smoothly avoiding stuckness-traps
of fear and anger and dissonant pathological outcomes.

Could investing both-and cooperative communication norms
better lead toward co-investing in healthy wealth,
politically strong-embraced policies,
procedural and dialogical transparency,
polyculturally inclusive design and development and discernment
of poli-eco-logical therapy
v. multi-morphic pathology;
co-arise local through global health outcome networks,
diastatic eco-normativity,
embracing each and every sacred Person A and B response
to Who are we?

For an interesting response, please also see, “Who I Am”, written by my son, Spencer Cole Dillenbeck