Week 2 Comment on Dara Easterling’s Art of Possibility chapters 1-4 post

Dara,

I enjoyed reading your interpretation of the Zanders’ “world of measurement.” To the reading from The Art of Possibility, you added the notion that we live our lives as though under microscopes, like we are constantly being inspected. What I found most interesting in your analysis was that you pointed out that the microscopes are not always imposed on us by the outside world. You describe “our own personal microscopes” as those which we impose on ourselves—by our constant comparisons of ourselves to other people, and of our accomplishments to other people’s successes and failures. It’s an astute observation, and it made for interesting reading. Thanks! -Kim

 Dara's post

The "world of measurement" on page 15 is a term in the Zander text that has many elements.  From the time we are born till we move on to the next life we are under a microscope.  We are under our own personal microscopes as well as those of others.  When we are young we are trying to figure out what clique we fit with or why we like this person or that person without actually looking deeper at the 'why or how.'  As we get older, we are being evaluated on educational merit for the most part and that determines, in some instances, the professional path that we will take.  They are in the form of standardized tests, college applications, and other quizzes, surveys, and the like.  Then, when we have gotten through all of that we are both looking through and back at that microscope.  We focus on the needs of our families as we perceive them and we are thinking back to previously made decisions that may have been made on impulse and affect us further down the line.  This all is what make life an evaluative process and changes us as people.

Benjamin Zander in his 2008 video used "measurement."  It is not like the measurement I described above but his perception of how the event or presentation was going.  It was just one event in his long line as he described it.  He constantly was making eye contact and going out and mingling with the audience to see if they were focused on what he had to share.  But that doesn't mean that the audience, internally, made connections or build knowledge bridges based on the music and the content.  He also discussed passion, which in my interpretation is a map of what we are, what we like, and where we are going.  That is the road map to possibilities, both seen and unseen. I think that in bringing in the topics of measurement and possibilities that something new is gained.  We now have yet another dot on our map to try and understand and make meaning out of the long line that we call life. Source: image-  microscope and people. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/?CTT=97

Zander, R. S., & Zander, B. (2000). The art of possibility. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.