The Right Conditions

One of the things I've spent the last five years thinking about is why some events seem to come alive almost immediately.  Before the first putt even drops, people are laughing.  Someone cheers for a stranger's lucky shot.  Two groups that arrived separately somehow end up walking the course together.  By the end of the afternoon, you'd swear they'd known each other for years.  I've seen it happen often enough that I know it's real.  But I've also learned something else.

It doesn't happen every time. Some events are quieter. People play a round.  They smile.  They thank me. Then they leave with the same people they arrived with.  Nothing remarkable happened.

For a long time, I wondered if I'd done something wrong. Maybe I should have greeted people differently. Maybe I should have been more outgoing. Maybe there was some trick I hadn't discovered yet.

After enough events, though, I realized I was trying to take responsibility for something that never belonged to me.

You can't schedule belonging.  You can't put "meaningful conversations" on the event timeline between dinner and dessert.  You can't guarantee that strangers will become friends before the last scorecard is turned in.

The best you can do is make those things welcome.

I've started thinking it's a little like tending a garden.  You prepare the ground.  You water.  You pull a few weeds.  You make it a place where something can grow.  Then you wait.  Some days everything seems to bloom.  Other days... it doesn't.

That doesn't mean the garden failed.  It simply means some things grow in their own time. I think people are a little like that. Sometimes success looks like two coworkers who discover they have more in common than they realized. Sometimes success looks like a father and daughter spending an uninterrupted hour together before life gets busy again on Monday. Moments like that rarely feel important while they're happening.

Not every event has to change someone's life.  Most of life isn't made up of life-changing moments.  It's made up of ordinary afternoons that quietly become part of who we are.  The longer I do this, the less pressure I feel to create unforgettable experiences.  I've become much happier simply creating places where good things are free to happen.

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Either way... I still think it's worth setting up the course.

If I've learned anything from these events, it's that we don't always get to see what grows afterward. We only get to prepare the ground. That's enough for me.