I’ve been thinking about the tendency to organize everything. Instead of sandlot ball or pick-up basketball, form a league with layers of bureaucracy and expenses: organize it!  Examples of layered organizations formed where once stood loosely organized or spontaneous or informally scheduled activities could take pages, I imagine. Perhaps we should look to dust devils and kickball for inspiration about coming together and making things happen.

Dust devils form when a variety of conditions are right, e.g., humidity, temperature, wind and bare land. They can appear and dissipate within seconds, or they can last significantly longer.  They can be fun to watch or a pain to get caught in. Dust devils, it seems, are like most experiences in life. They just happen.

Today I watched an empty ball field on the church grounds spontaneously fill up with kids ranging from toddlers to middle school age. All the conditions were right and the field filled and a game began. No opening ceremonies. No umpires or officials. It all came together and fun was had by all.  I find it curious that I have not once since such a spontaneous assembly at the neighborhood playing fields, in the nearby empty lots or in the streets like the old days, but that is the topic for another day.

I’m particularly reminded of my decades working in higher education where “Form a committee” was the call to many challenges. One of my deans said that while he worked at Bell Labs, many engineering questions were answered, not by a committee, but by people detouring into the many mini-meeting rooms that lined hallways that were intended for spontaneous, creative conversations. He said many conversations began when people would encounter each other in the hallways and the comment, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about an idea” became an invitation to step into a room to problem solve on a whiteboard. I like that.

The temptation to organize everything seems like one we should resist at times. Perhaps we should allow more things to happen as they naturally occur when the conditions are right.  Not everything that comes to us is the result of organization of some sort, and neither should our responses always trigger an organized response; this applies to both our personal and professional lives.