Urgency

“Urgency is what you need to get across to people!”

Bob Hanson is stressing this point to Sue and I. We are meeting with Bob and his partner, Barry Hinton, of Saba Direct, Inc.,* direct marketing specialists. At this particular moment, we are the recipients of their bountiful wisdom on how to run a successful community visibility and fundraising campaign.

I am happily challenged. Sue is just happy, especially as she is the one that brought these generous, wise men to us.

Yes! To gain the impact we are after through our project we must convey the urgency! What good sense that makes.

But, urgency is an addiction. Along with addictions to power, anger, lying and excess materialism, defeating these addictions on a community-wide level is one of our program’s prime objectives. (i.e. Addictions other than to alcohol and drugs.)

And, yes, trust me, if you don’t already know it, urgency when infused with repeated hits of adrenalin fuels many of the ills of our society (i.e. excitement addictions).

Exceptional communities are founded on other than adrenalin highs. So how can we build healthfully generate “excitement”? Be “of it (i.e. the problem), but not in it”; solution builders, not addiction enablers?

One of the prime objectives of our project is to teach people how to strengthen and/or form small community pockets that are exceptional in nature. That means we are after something more elevated in character than fostering the mediocrity of the masses, the shallowness of living in an addicted society such as our’s.

My heart and my mind, like most Americans on the 4th of July, yearns for the majesty of our country at its best, not the messes we seem, also, able to create.

So when the fireworks go off, as they already started to last night in my neighborhood, along with celebrating the holiday, I will be asking myself:

What are the fires our Small “Zones of Peace” initiative wants to particularly dampen at this time?

And, how can we present ourselves as proponents of “urgency” without addiction; that passion for integrity, social justice, creativity and commitment that infuses our best?

You know the “good guys” urgency; the urgency that is based on genuine survival imperatives, not the ego-generated ones!

Perhaps we could even attempt to make a dent in overcoming the polarization of politics that looms ahead with next year’s elections?

Such are the issues our New Horizons Board of Directors will ponder with me when next we meet on July 17.