If I was analysing the two incidents described in 3.5.3.2 and 3.5.3.3 now, I would identify a unique human characteristic, compassion, as being a major influence in what I might call – given the context of the two incidents, relatively successful outcomes.
In fact, as I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that the only other thing that might have worked was to raise the level of fear above the level of the young men’s out-of-control anger, (in the first example), and above the level of the 15 year old’s compulsive acquisitiveness (in the second).
And what would that have done – even if it had solved the problem in the immediate situations?
It would have affirmed the belief that fear is the best way to solve a problem.
I realised that it had been an extraordinary privilege to have been present at such rich learning experiences – not that I’d wish to have too many of them again!
But I actually learned more from those types of incidents than I could have learned from a thousand books.
And while I have focused on the power of compassion in the above incidents it must not be forgotten that the other major factor was, of course, surprise, a kind of first cousin of creativity.
That is, doing something totally unexpected and, perhaps, what the young men (in the first example) or the teenage girl (in the second example) may never have experienced before.
And, reflecting on my own and my colleague’s input (looking back on the knowledge that I have now), something in our unconscious may have been willing to hold the situations and trust the root foundation of emergence.