The Heart of the Issue

The other day I was sharing a cup of coffee with a friend on top of an old pickup truck in a large outdoor garden/plant nursery/store/coffee shop, right in the middle of Bayview. We were talking about social enterprise and community development (the topics of somewhere around 96% of my conversations, I'm afraid) and I said, "I just don't like programs; I don't think they really get at the heart of the issue..." At which point he interjected, "What is the heart of the issue?"

I stuttered out some kind of rambling response about generational cycles of family struggles and economic disparities... all the while thinking, "gee... who do I think I am, making statements like that? What really is the heart of the issue?"

So this question has been plaguing me. After a few days of turning this over, I guess I've decided the heart of the issue for all of us is in our hearts. When hearts have been damaged, scarred, and hardened, so that they can no longer love, hope, and dream, this is the issue. When hearts cease to feel and so forfeit that unique and extraordinary quality of humanity that enables such values as compassion and dignity, this is the issue. When hearts are so aching for love that they substitute shallow versions of it for the real thing until they don't even remember the real love they're looking for, this is the issue.

Can a program get at that -- at the heart?

What can?

Maybe some programs can do it. Maybe. But I'd venture to say that people need people -- people with broken hearts need people with healed and healing hearts, people with hardened hearts need people with gentle and open hearts.

If the heart of our complex issues lies in our hearts, then we need something that will reach all the way down to our complex hearts with their complex differences. Something like that connection with other complex people. I know, programs can be perfected, quantified, and planned while people cannot... but programs don't have hearts, people do.