As I enter this new year it is my intention to turn over an old leaf. This is a leaf that I have turned over often in the past, but I think it needs turning over once again, and the task of turning it over is too engrossing to allow the time to flip new leaves. So this year I will turn one leaf, and it will be an old one.

There is a condition I will call the condition of darkness. People in this condition live in an unfriendly universe. They expect that they can have only what happiness they can snatch from a world that is trying to deny them. People in the condition of darkness have no hope for the future. They see a world in decay and count the changes in our civilization as milestones on the Ghantt chart of regression. These people in their darkness peer through the gloom and identify those around them as enemy and potential enemy. Conquer or perish. Nation against nation, or my career against your career, my promotion or yours, my job or yours.

There is a condition I will call the condition of light. People in this condition feel borne up by the power of the universe. Protected and sheltered, supported, directed, cared for. People in the condition of light experience this power as continually creating the good. They dismiss catastrophe as momentary setback and list change as accomplishment after accomplishment whether that change occurs to the nation or to themselves.

These people living in light see the world as friend or potential friend. Even the meanest person they encounter, the most vicious, triggers compassion rather than hatred. And ordinary people become more than ordinary in their eyes, perhaps because what might have been shadows in their spirits are dispelled by the aura of the people living in the condition of light.

I call these "conditions." Light and darkness do not belong to armies of people, or even groups of people. They are conditions. I have met a few people in my life who I thought might live entirely in the condition of darkness. But very few. And even with them I have had reason to doubt that there was not even one glimmer of the light. And I have met no one who lived entirely in the light. Light and darkness are conditions mingling in each of us as we sometimes shine in a brightness that brings glory to our day and sometimes become dark stars, black holes extinguishing not only our own light but the light of those around us.

I would prefer to live more and more as a person who believes our destined reality is that of children of the light. I have felt no joy in having enemies, and much joy in having friends. I have experienced no happiness in dread of the future, and much happiness when I expect the decade to close "in Jerusalem." I am tortured with anxiety as I lose my trust in the basic goodness of the world, and I am at peace when I believe that that which is beyond myself cares for me.

When I entered the world of work in 1961 the cards were stacked against living in the light. The world that I worked and lived in was organized on the principles of darkness, and daily reminded me that light was the wisdom of a fool. In those days it was not safe to check one’s weapons at the door.

In this decade there are symptoms of change. A beginning bias towards the long-term customer relationship and against the short-term "beat down the objections and score a sale" philosophy. Initial efforts to organize on the assumption of employee integrity and competence. A desire in many quarters to earn money by providing value. All of these tactics are derived from one axiom, that light shall prevail over darkness.

Four years ago, as I was inventing and learning new ways to manage, the suggestion was made to me that what I really needed to do was acquaint myself more deeply with the tradition in which I was raised. That tradition has proclaimed the condition of light to generation upon generation, in saecula saeculorum.

So as this year turns to a new year, I turn not forward to new techniques, but backward to an old leaf, the leaf of my tradition, a page that a reasonable person might think I had grasped by now, but one I do not understand well enough yet to live in the brightness that could be mine. I turn backward not in contempt for the new techniques but in the belief that Total Quality, Self-managed Work Teams, Empowerment, and all other such tactics are of no use unless I deeply understand the nature of living in the light.

And in this new and yet fragile environment a consultant, manager or executive who lives in darkness, even if the darkness is not intended and unrecognized, is an infected physician spreading the plague with his own breath to the very people whom he has been commissioned to aid.

I think I had best study that old leaf.

The author of this essay is John Cowan. He has written two books of similar essays: Small Decencies and The Common Table Each is approximately 160 pages in paperback. To purchase either book by mail send a check for $10 per book to him at 1498 Goodrich, St. Paul, MN 55105. Price will be negotiated for any order over 20 books. If you wish to discuss consulting or speaking engagements or attendance at a workshop he may be reached by e-mail. His address is Johnedie@aol.com

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