This has been sitting on my laptop since the start of
November when the weather had turned properly cold, leaving feathery ice
patterns on my skylight window and a dusting of snow on the hilltops. Now we’re more than three-quarters of the way
through the month & I’m only just getting around to uploading it. Where has the time gone? Frittered away in numerous trips to the
mainland...
The path through the bluebell
woods has disappeared under a bright coloured carpet of leaves; difficult to
navigate by torchlight these days, lucky my feet know the way by now. Last year I blinked and missed autumn - this year I've been trying to capture it with varying degrees of success. The leaves don't stay long on the trees in these winds.
We had an excellent community engagement event at the end of
September, part of the year of support I won us from the Scottish Community
Development Centre’s ACE programme (Achieving Community Empowerment). Almost everyone turned out for it, as well as
our local councillor, MSP, and key people from Highlands & Islands
Enterprise and Scottish Natural Heritage.
We had round-table discussions on four topics: housing, infrastructure,
developments, and getting people involved, each one facilitated and focussing
on how to achieve positive ways forward rather than getting bogged down in past
gripes. I was feeling a bit anxious
about facilitating my table – I’ve never been in a room with everyone on the island before and I
wasn’t sure what would happen. What if
people started shouting at each other? The
cheery chaps from SCDC advised me that everything would be fine and if things
did start getting boggy, I could move them on by asking “what can we do to make
this better?” My fears were unfounded,
everyone displayed thorough understanding of the issues, and there was a
reassuring consensus of opinion. Being a
worrier, I’m still concerned about the ones who didn’t come – if they won’t get
on board with an event with a free meal at the end of it, will they back
whatever we do next, based on the outcome of this event?
“What can we do to make this better” has especially
resonated with me this month, as I’ve been attending a 5 day course on conflict
resolution and mediation targeted at those working with communities. The course was spread over 4 Fridays and a
Monday, so it’s been pretty tiring commuting backwards and forwards to Glasgow,
but I’m thoroughly enjoying the course and it’s not so bad compared to the
Inverness – Aberdeen commute I did for the two years of my MSc. Like the man said, everything’s relative. The course has been useful in helping to
identify my own response to conflict (Avoid! Avoid!), and to reflect on whether
this is the most constructive way to deal with it (not always). It’s also got me thinking about how we
resolve conflict on Rum, since it seems like a fairly peaceful place compared to
one of our near neighbours. I suspect it
has something to do with the relative equality on the island – as individuals
nobody really holds any more power than anyone else, everyone has a similar
degree of security. Living on an island
we’re very dependent on each other for survival; people will always help each
other out, even if they wouldn’t particularly choose to socialise with
them. It’s also an island where women
are the main decision makers and business owners; I’m not drawing any
conclusions from this, just putting it out there!
Part of mediation involves allowing things to be as they
are; allowing both sides the space to find their own solution, rather than
trying to impose what you think is best for everyone, and this ties in neatly
with a mindfulness programme I’m working my way through. Can I just accept that things are as they are
on the island, and stop making myself crazy trying to “fix” everything? Can I allow events to unfold in their own
time? I suspect not, if that timescale
is measured in decades rather than months and it’s the community bunkhouse
we’re talking about, but in other areas, yes – perhaps I can. Maybe this way I can find a little of the
peace and harmony I’m seeking. Our Rum
Mum who departed last autumn for warmer climes was fond of reminding me that
things will happen in their own time.
Someone made the radical suggestion to me recently that our island
“characters” are as essential to the health and variety of the community as
anyone else, and this has got me thinking as well. People contribute in their own way, and maybe
it’s not necessarily by being a director of the Trust, or setting up a
community company. As confidence grows,
will more contributions be made in more obvious ways by more people? This is a community which has historically
had everything done for it by someone else.
We’re like a teenager who’s left home for the first time and it’s slowly
dawning on us that clothes don’t get cleaned by magic, and the shelves don’t
fill themselves.
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| Skye from Kilmory |
