Dis Orientation

I've just completed orientation for my summer fellowship. For those not familiar, I'm working with a non-profit that consults with small businesses and non-profits on Triple Bottom Line sustainability and how to improve their performance on the different dimensions of people, planet, and performance.

It was a long orientation, with a significant time investment (generally 9am to 9pm every day), but it was pretty superior, as orientations go.

Obviously, whenever you get together with a new group of people there are always ice breakers involved. Most of the time these are painful and contrived, but I actually think these folks did a decent job of keeping it casual and organic.

One question I appreciated quite well was thus: If you could change one and only one behavior of everyone around you, what would it be?

There were some great responses on composting, eliminating disposable water bottles, educating, and more. By the time it got to my turn, I was worried I'd have nothing left.

Still, having spent so much of my life in school buildings and windowless dungeons offices, I've been thinking a lot about how much harm our architecture is doing us.

In the end, I suggested that I'd like for people to better understand how our environment (both ecological and social) affects us mentally, physically, and spiritually, and how our use and/or abuse of it can harm or help us as individuals and as communities.

The purported reason school buildings all look like prisons is because windows are a distraction from learning. I have to say, though, that natural lighting helps keep the soul from being deadened by its surroundings. Plate glass windows in each classroom with sun tubes and exposure to outdoor and to constructive social time would do wonders for most kids (and adults in offices, for that matter).

Anyway, that's just been on my mind a bit, and I figured I ought to post an update on my silence while I'm waiting in this (naturally lit, open) office for a meeting.