I am dreaming the world. This world is an illusion. It is not as it appears.
A wise one tells me this, so I dutifully recite the mantras.
"It will help you awaken," I am told.

In a moment of inattention, I scrape my index finger. It's a small cut, really nothing, but it throbs painfully. It hurts enough to keep me awake that night. How strange this tiny break in flesh exposes the full pulse of my body. No statistic (only .003% of my body surface,) describes its impact.

Small cuts.

I'm standing at a newsstand. Time magazine has a special issue, "Can the Earth be saved?" We humans have changed the climate and now the planet is responding to our arrogance with violent weather. Another weekly magazine features "Botox," the new government-approved drug that can change the face of America. It deadens facial muscles and eliminates wrinkles. To look younger, all we have to do is numb ourselves.

The world is an illusion. It is not as it appears.
Can a planet be saved by the numb at heart?

I'm driving behind a big black truck. It's been "lifted"--raised high on its chassis by big tires and super suspension. The chrome bumper and wheels glitter with exuberance. Inside are three teen-age boys, riding high, torsos dancing together to music I can't hear. I love watching them as we cruise down the road. They remind me of how it feels to own the world, those moments when it's all working just for you. A minute later, I am weeping. The world is not as it appears.

I'm sitting on the caked and dusty surface of a reservoir that has lost much of its water to drought. The wind raises only dust and I feel gritty from the inside out. I notice green growth on the dried surface, but when I stoop to see it, I realize it's not leaves, but a type of algae, the first plants to appear when earth emerged from fire.

The sun sinks low and rose-colored hills appear in the east. Warmed by their radiance, I glance at those fishing along the shore. Are they too soothed by this light? They seem focused on casting artificial flies onto the water a few feet in front of them. I turn and face west. The world is on fire! Cirrus clouds flame passionately, burning at sun's departure. I am watching the world dying. I am told this (who is telling me?) In the great turnings of life, this is the age of destruction. There is nothing to do but surrender. Gracefully. Even in death, Life will be beautiful. I am stunned by this message. I hope it is an illusion.

It is night and I am sitting on the edge of my gentle bed. I open a jar of African honey butter and begin my evening ritual. Slowly I massage cream into my pedicured feet-first the soles, then the toes, then the cuticles. From the jar's label, I learn that this cream has been gathered for me by the labor of women in Zambia and Ghana. I read that my purchase creates work for them and income for their families. I do not know how they harvest honey in Zambia or make the cream in Ghana. But I do know African women, many of them. Often I have stared at their feet noting the muscular calluses from never wearing shoes, the flaking skin from never using cream.

In the peace of my bedroom, I imagine them in theirs. I know there is no comparison, not in comfort, not in security, not in fatigue. As the creme soaks into my soles, I picture them in fields, gathering the means for my life to remain soft. They cannot imagine my life. I know them well enough to know I cannot imagine theirs.

At a conference center in the U.S. where I sometimes work, I am told of the African women leaders who come there to attend meetings. Always, they are given their own bedrooms and not paired up with a room-mate. This is offered to them as a gift. It's the first time they've ever had a room of their own.

      I am dreaming the world. It is not as it appears. Yet I know that I spend more       on a morning cup of coffee than half the world has available to live on for that       entire day. Three billion people living on nothing as I walk dreamily into       Starbucks.

      I am dreaming the world. It is not as it appears. Yet I know that 35,000       children die each day from starvation as I watch the cooking channel. I learn to       make small cuts in the peel of a cucumber to shape it as a rose. To cut open a       mango so the fruit is revealed. To slice an onion so it doesn't make me cry.

      But I want to cry. For the world I am dreaming.

I turn off the television and burrow into my pillows. In Zambia just now, the women are rising from their crowded beds. Soon they will walk on hard feet into the bush, carrying basket crowns through the high grass. They will find where bees have hidden the honey this day.

I awake and clean my favorite coffee pot. The metal filter slices the skin under my thumb nail, but this cut doesn't throb the way my last one did.

It is late afternoon in my world. The sun is still shining. The wind picks up the dust of drought and it becomes difficult to see. There are still a few hours left before the sun illuminates this dust and sets the world on fire. In Africa, my sisters are sleeping now. They too are dreaming the world. It is not as it appears.

I leave them sleeping to go draw my bath. I have been camping and my feet are a mess. I will scrub them clean and rub away the young calluses. Then I will massage them with African honey butter. In my dream, I do not know where my softened soles will lead me.

Bio

Margaret Wheatley writes, teaches, and speaks about radically new practices and ideas for organizing in chaotic times. She works to create organizations of all types where people are known as the blessing, not the problem. She is President Emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable global leadership foundation serving life-affirming leaders, and has been an organizational consultant for many years, as well as a professor of management in two graduate programs.

Her newest book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, was released in January 2005. Her book, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, (January 2002) proposes that real social change comes from the ageless process of people thinking together in conversation. Wheatley’s work also appears in two award-winning books, Leadership and the New Science (1992, 1999) and A Simpler Way (with Myron Kellner-Rogers, 1996,) plus several videos and articles.

She draws many of her ideas from new science and life’s ability to organize in self-organizing, systemic, and cooperative modes. And, increasingly her models for new organizations are drawn from her understanding of many different cultures and spiritual traditions. Her articles and work can be accessed at www.margaretwheatley.com, or 801-377-2996 in Utah, USA.

.