And Then I Felt Small

Normally conference keynote speakers are brought in to jazz up the audience. Their stage play is pretty script: They get the audience excited about being there, tell them about a specific challenge they face, then reveal how they already posses the power of change if they would just take the appropriate, prescribed action. In the end, we all leave feeling good about ourselves safe in the knowledge that we can do something without actually leaving our comfort zone because we already have what it takes, the right stuff. It just took the shamanistic magic of the wizened speaker to reveal it to us.

But this year's BbWorld keynote was different. If you've never been to a Blackboard Conference they are really unlike any other educational conference you'll attend. The trappings are lavish. The settings picturesque. The attention to detail paid to our creature comforts seem to know no bounds.

This year, amidst the glitz and glamor of a benefit rock concert, a man wearing an ill-fitting suit took the stage before us beautiful people and proceeded to tell us his story. His name is Greg Mortenson and his story is so incredibly simple and pure that one cannot helped be moved.

You see Mortenson's mission is to promote peace by building schools. One at a time. In Afghanistan. For boys and girls. He doesn't run the schools. He doesn't supervise the construction. He leaves his family in Montana behind for half a year and goes to a remote place in the world and finds the people who want to do this. Then he helps them make it happen. Then gets out of the way.

It is a holy story, really, about the better angels that exist inside our imperfect beings and what happens when we act on it. You can read about it here, in his book, Three Cups of Tea.

Mortenson's story moved me. Even worse, it made me think. I thought about the things I take for granted. And how I bitch about it when something interferes with my world. I thought about my values. Or what I liked to think were my values. And I thought about how out of whack my values and actions were in relation to each other. And then I felt small.

Now, the question is, what do I do about it?