Logic is my friend.  I have always relied on logic to help me understand why things work the way they do so my risk taking can be properly calculated. Or at least that is what I thought!  As a female, it also comforts me to be further aided by that mysterious but always reliable “woman’s intuition.” Or at least that is what I thought!

All of that was recently undone for me by the story about “one red paper clip.” A paperclip…a flimsy twist of an object that heretofore was unappreciated in the clutter of my desk drawer along with all those loose pennies, buttons and that earring that I am confident will someday find its lost mate.  Would you have thought that a paperclip could be utilized as a power tool to connect people, their interests, their challenges and their values in ways that completely defy logic? Me either but read on.

As the story goes, recently a Montreal man looked at a red paperclip on his desk and decided he would trade it on the Internet.  His ultimate goal was to keep trading up until he had a house.  Yes, you read that correctly – a house. He put his red paper clip on the internet to trade and had a response almost immediately. Evidently two vegans had a pen shaped like a fish and they wanted to rid themselves of that connection.  So they traded the fish shaped pen for the red paper clip. The Montreal man then traded his new fish shaped pen for a handmade doorknob from a potter in Seattle who had been trying to get rid of it for some time.

So are you curious what he traded that doorknob for? --- A camp stove from someone in Massachusetts. So he was back on the Internet with his camp stove that he had traded from a doorknob which he had traded from a fish shaped pen which he had traded from a red paper clip. Then a Sergeant at Camp Pendleton who was heading back home to South Carolina wanted the particular model of Coleman stove that was the current bounty. The Sergeant wanted to cook meals on the stove as he drove home across the United States. OK that at least has “some” logic. So he traded a generator for the Coleman stove. By now however the full cycle has turned the original red paperclip into a generator. Logic?  I have no idea where that resides in this evolving scenario. Logic would not support that the conceiver of this wild tale would eventually succeed in his ultimate goal of a house.  But time will tell.  He has given himself one year to accomplish the task.  Now we all have our priorities and the age of the original owner of the red paper clip who started this odyssey became a dead giveaway when he traded that generator for an “instant party kit” (an empty keg of beer with an IOU for a refill along with an illuminated Budweiser beer sign.) At age 26 it required no further logic to understand that particular trade. This is a true story and his quest continues. Last time I checked, he had a snowmobile to trade. Apparently an empty beer keg and a beer sign have real value in the marketplace. Go figure.

On a different but equally intriguing paperclip note, perhaps you have heard the story of the middle school in the rural small town of Whitwell, Tennessee. A very Homogeneous community where a couple of high school teachers were looking for a way to teach the students about the evil and ugliness of intolerance. Referencing the Holocaust and the six million people who were extinguished as a result of Hitler’s intolerance for those he felt were inferior, it became clear that the students could not get their head around the number six million.  So they set out on a quest to collect six million paperclips to help gain perspective. The commitment of the students was contagious even though it may not have seemed like a project grounded in logic. The students went on to engage the larger community in their efforts over a four year span and as a result of the process, and the 27 million paperclips they ultimately received, it became a life altering experience for the entire community. It also built a legacy and desire for a deeper level of learning and an appreciation for a broader sense of community outside their rural homogeneous town. 

So what does all of this have to do with you? And me? And the GNA community?  As a result of new concepts that the delegates at the recent GNA House of Delegates were asked to consider, we encountered the difficult process of major change within the Association’s engrained logic. For some the change was simply intolerable despite all the evidenced-based research that change was occurring all around us at warp speed. I would hear some say: “I’ve made up my mind – don’t confuse me with the facts. You’re just trying to brainwash me.” The structured logic organization leaders had relied on for so long as a guide on how the organization should continue to do things was defying their logic.  A  paperclip for a house? Ridiculous. Collecting six million paperclips – what’s the point? What will be done with them if that many paperclips are collected? Why paperclips?  Why not collect rubber bands?

The punch line to all of this is that the paperclip stories demonstrate and reconfirm that whatever you believe you can achieve. My own personal reflection is that if I am honest with myself, my logic has probably talked me out of as many good opportunities as it has saved me from tragic mistakes. “Women’s Intuition” has served me well in many instances and freaked me out in others.

Taking a leap of faith can be exhilarating when you have confidence that you will make it to the other side. Grasping the hands of others in taking that leap of faith and bringing them along with you requires a higher level of accountability. In this case, my confidence is not reliant on my logic or intuition but on a well researched body of knowledge. That knowledge, and the profound commitment of the GNA leadership team to succeed for the good of the organization, gives us all a running start and the momentum needed. Courage sometimes needs to trump logic. In the meantime, I will never look at a paperclip in quite the same way.         

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