So, this whole “children of the discordance” thing, it wasn’t something I read in a book or cooked up in some brainstorming session. Nah, it pretty much just smacked me in the face after a while. I started just noticing things, little cracks in the way folks, especially newer groups, were supposedly working together. It wasn’t outright fighting, more like a quiet, polite kind of mess.
You see, I got involved in trying to set up this community art project a while back. Sounded great on paper, right? Get local artists, young people, a few old hands, all chipping in to create something for the neighborhood. Everyone was so enthusiastic at the start. Lots of “yeah, cool idea!” and “I’m in!” messages flying around.
The Wheels Start Coming Off
But then, when it came to actually doing stuff? Man, it was like herding cats. We’d have meetings, everyone would nod, agree on a plan. Then, nothing. Or, worse, five different people would go off and do five different things, none of them matching what we talked about. It was maddening. I’d send out an email asking for feedback, simple stuff, and get radio silence from half the group. Or I’d get one person saying “yes” and another doing the complete opposite, claiming they thought that’s what we meant. Seriously frustrating.
I remember this one instance clearly. We needed to decide on a theme. Simple, right? Well, it turned into this bizarre dance where nobody would commit. Here’s a taste of what I was dealing with:
- Person A suggests “Unity.” Everyone nods.
- Person B then quietly starts a design based on “Nature,” doesn’t tell anyone directly.
- Person C says they love “Unity” but their sketches are all about “Urban Future.”
- When I’d ask, “Hey, thought we agreed on ‘Unity’?” I’d get these vague answers like, “Oh, yeah, but this felt more inspiring,” or “I thought ‘Unity’ was just a starting point.”
It was like everyone was speaking a different language but pretending they weren’t. There was this surface agreement, but underneath, a whole lot of individual agendas just pulling things apart. No big dramas, no shouting matches, just this slow, grinding halt to any real progress. It was exhausting. I spent more time chasing people and trying to figure out what was actually happening than doing any creative work.
That’s when I started to really pay attention to these little breakdowns, these moments where what was said and what was done were miles apart. These weird outcomes, these half-finished ideas, these confused efforts – those were the “children of the discordance” for me. They were born out of that gap between the polite “yes” and the silent “no,” or the unspoken “my way is better.”
So, I started to just keep notes. Not in a formal way, just jotting down observations. What happened? Who said what? What actually got done? It wasn’t for a report or anything. It was just me, trying to make sense of why something that seemed so simple could become so tangled. It became my own little practice, trying to understand these patterns, these subtle ways groups can just… drift apart while still smiling and nodding. And that’s pretty much how this whole idea started to form in my head, not from a theory, but from just being stuck in the middle of it.
