You put your whole self in

You put your whole self out

You put your whole self in

and you shake it all about

You do the hokey-pokey 

and you turn around

…that’s what it’s all about!

Yesterday I had the amazing good fortune of doing the Hokey-pokey with a group of consenting adults, inspired by Cedar Barstow as part of her Right Use of Power workshop. At the end I laughed both because of the joy and the elegant simplicity of the message. That one little rhyme said more to me than anything else about what it means to be a changemaker (stay with me here).

The journey of doing good often starts by putting part of yourself into something – testing your talents, playing with ideas, exploring the zone. Not long into it though, we find ourselves putting our whole selves into what we do. It is this funny dance of wanting to put our whole self into something, jumping out for survival, only to go back into the zone again.

It is like a dance that repeats in a circular motion, and we keep going back for more.
The origins of the hokey-pokey are contested. In the UK it is regarded a traditional song, now in the trust of the collective consciousness to shape and give new meaning. Writing this from Colorado, I am trepidatious as here the rhyme is owned by Sony. I wonder whether I can give new meaning to our cultural stories when the collective consciousness is owned by the corporate monolith. I will take a risk.

The hokey-pokey is said to have different meanings and origins. The one that I will expand on is that it derives from the words Read the rest of this entry »