No Man Is A Room

I volunteered at the Vancouver World Future Society Conference to save half of the registration fee. I paid my own way. My school can't afford to foot the bill for the fees and flight.

As an aside, we all hear that the children are the future. But, what is the future? That is a pretty important question to ask in education and elsewhere. Trend and Futurist work is not prophecy, instead it is an intelligent examination of available evidence and information and projecting plausible and possible outcomes. And preparing for the implications ahead of time.

On the first day as a volunteer, I walked up to the registration table and was given a quick run through and off I went. I sometimes get anxious in uncertain situations. I wanted to be friendly, helpful, and useful.

A registrant asked me if lunch was provided. "I don't know" was my totally oblivious response. Always try to be honest than assume anything. Honest ignorance can be forgiven, incorrect information is dicier morally. People can be honestly wrong, but be careful about asserting certainty. Know what you know type of thing.

One of the first attenders to show up in the room I was manning, as first mate on a ship, suggested that we turn the temps down because full rooms often become hot houses over time. It seemed like a reasonable idea, so I asked the hotel staff to take it down temp wise on the thermostat. So far, so good, and then some. It felt comfortable in the room for a spell. Then, the temps dropped to the chilly zone. So much, that a lady had to get out of the room to warm up and others showed signs of frigidness. It got polar.

So, then I asked the hotel staff to turn the thermostat up. Seemingly, a modern application of Goldilocks HVAC. Well, you know what happened next. It started to get too warm. Eventually, I just opened the doors to the outside lobby as it seemed comfortable out there and I figured there would be some diffusion of sorts equalizes the temps between the room and the outside.

The insight was all intuitive, no formulas were calculated. That worked...but then there was some noise of passersby talking too loud or the clean up staff knocking stuff around. No perfect system but the best one attainable considering the situation.

In a way, being in a healthy church community should help us moderate unwise extremes. God speaks to people and voices, hotter and colder, get moderated by community. This is not being lukewarm to the Gospel or anything along these lines, but instead it is more in keeping with things like maturity, soberness, and temperance. These are good qualities and we need each other to nurture these. Such moderation is a virtue. So keep the doors open. It gets noisy but that is to be expected. No man is a room unto himself.