Context Is Decisive
What is your background conversation
that is giving meaning to the foreground?
By Bruce Hodes
Context is decisive. My mother
always said that to me…
Not really…. I learned this in a
Landmark seminar. It rocked my
world, my understanding of the
world and what gives the world
meaning. The instructor, wags his
index finger and asks; “what is
this?” “A finger”, we say. “Ok, if we
are talking about anatomy, it is a
finger, but what if we are talking
about numbers? What is it?”
“One”, we said smugly. “Well then”,
the instructor said, also smugly.
“If we are talking about direction,
what is it?” “Then, it is up.” “Wow”,
he says “this” indicating his finger,
“just changed three times. It
changed from anatomy, finger, to
number one, to direction up. All we
did was change the background
conversation.” I sat stunned.
What just happened? Silence
enveloped the room.
For this article, context: is
the background conversation
that gives meaning to the
forefront conversation. As
demonstrated above, context
is decisive. The context defines
how things show up and how
they occur. This definition has
changed what I pay attention to
from what is happening in the
foreground to what is happening
in the background. Context has
deepened my ability to understand
my world and the meaning that
people give to the world.
Here is an example. In my lifetime
and certainly in the lifetime of
my grandmother, the career
opportunities available to women
have dramatically expanded.
We will agree that now being a
pilot, doctor, president, soldier,
astronaut, policewoman, scientist
are all available for women as
valid and viable career choices.
This was not always so. What
happened? What shifted in the
last eighty years? Women existed.
For the most part, these careers
existed. Yet the reality that my
grandmother dealt with when
she graduated as a sole female
medical doctor in NY in the 1930s
and the career reality for my niece
in 2015, when half her graduating
class of physicians were women
are in stark contrast.
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