When I was little, Saturdays belonged to me and my dad.
Once I became a parent, I realized those Saturday mornings were just as important to my mom, who got a much-needed break from an active toddler and then kindergartener, but she also wanted me and my dad to have time together, just the two of us. I loved every minute of it, and I thought everything my dad did was cool. I loved helping him fill the car with gas, going through the car wash, wandering the aisles of the local hardware store, and exploring the warren that was the 1970s-era Canadian Tire.
But all of that paled in comparison to the day my dad walked me through the doors of our local mall’s movie theatre to see Mary Poppins.
A singing, magical nanny who dances with cartoon penguins and races on carousel horses? I was hooked.
It is a love my dad, my mom, and I share, and thirteen years ago, we became fans and regulars of the Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF for short. Every September, we’d hop on the GoTrain and head downtown and immerse ourselves in the world of film, hightailing it between theatres, with breaks in between for meals, conversation and people-watching. I call my now octogenarian mom and nonagenarian dad The Cute Older Couple of TIFF.
As Dad often remarks as we sit on a King Street patio, it is so much fun to be around so many people, all of them caught up in moviemaking and movie-watching. It’s electric.
The last two years haven’t been like that. I’ve still ordered the tickets and planned our films, but we’ve watched them alone, they in their home in the GTA, and me in my home, 1,500 kilometres away in New Brunswick. Sure, we talk about the films on Zoom, but it’s not the same. It’s not electric.
So, as I sit here looking out at my snowy yard in February, considering what it means to live in endemic times, I have but one question: how and when can Mom and Dad return to the movies?
When dealing with complex issues, we can often get caught up in the ‘big picture’, warn of ‘slippery slopes’, and worry about ‘setting precedents.’ Those are all important, and I coach my clients on how to manage all of them. But these are intellectual debates and solving wickedly complex problems requires leaders to take a deeply human approach; to be empathetic to the variety of people affected by the change.
While it’s true that all wicked complex issues are wickedly complex in their own way, all share the same wicked root: our contemporary conflicts revolve around a fight for fairness.
Why? Because we are in the midst of massive technological, ecological, economic, social and political change, each of which is causing our values to shift.
These shifting values are reverberating through our shared cultures, causing deep fissures and conflict.
You’re not wrong if you think we’re more argumentative and more confrontational these days. We are and it’s because of our changing values.
When our systems were stable – back when the economy ran smoothly, and elections were predictable – our societies and organizations were held together because everyone in that society or organization agreed on the core premise. We agreed on our shared purpose and values.
That’s not true anymore. Our systems are changing, and this is causing a shift in what we value. Our individual priorities are shifting too, and we no longer feel as safe within these systems as we once did, which is causing us to double down on defending our self-interests.
A common mistake we all make is to believe our personal, group or organizational perspective is also the wider community’s perspective.
But that isn’t how systems are going to work in the knowledge age. Individual concerns must give way to a shared purpose to gain wide support across a network. Failure to do this will lead to even more stalled conversations, protests, and organizational inertia.
We can start by working to agree on a new core premise: to do the greatest amount of good and the least amount of harm.
To fight for fairness, so we can all get back to doing the things we love, with those we love.