The point is... these "metaphorical monkeys" are the individual and isolated aims for one member of a group, rather than the shared purpose and vision of the group at large. In our own groups where do we see the existence of monkeys--- in what context do we work independently of one another rather than having a shared investment of the tasks at hand?
The greatest example of "monkeys" I have personally experienced is within our individual chapters. Each chapter was created to perpetuate certain ideal and principles that are spoken of in our rituals, however, this is not always (or usually the case). There are many chapter women who do not choose to be learn about our Common Purpose---this is the primary problem. Uneducated chapter women leave the membership without clear direction, and therefore, some women may choose to compromise our values for personal gain.
--------------> The next step is the executive board and the committees and chairwomen under them. Once again I have found that these women often work separately, rather than as a united front. Too often do we get tied up in the next big social, or recruitment event, or philanthropy that we forget to incorporate ALL aspects of our chapter (service, sisterhood, philanthropy, education, etc.) into every single event. Each committee and each executive board member will often get caught up in their own tasks and responsibilities, relentlessly trying to prove that their facet needs the most attention and money; and is of the upmost importance...
WE FORGET THAT OUR CHAPTERS ORIGINAL WEB IS ONE THAT WAS WOVEN IN A MUCH LESS LINEAR MANNER... MUCH MORE CYCLICAL IN FACT, WITH OVERLAPPING STRINGS, BUT WITH A SHARED DIRECTION.
Tracy!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you said about us living through our rituals! This is where women lose that grasp of our sorority's common purpose and through that many deactivate. When we are uneducated in our values, then we do not care about the responsibilities each one of us has within our sorority! Great Blog Partner :)
Heidi :)
Tracy I totally agree with you that each office position gets to caught up in their own duties and begin to neglect the other women and their roles in the chapter. The monkeys that are our individual problems now become a community problem because we let them interfere with our communication between the leaders in our chapters.
ReplyDeleteTrace-- I totally feel ya on the idea that VPs and chairpeople end up working independently instead of as a united force... but I also think that we can look at the entire executive board as an independent force that ends up working alone toward many of the goals that best illustrate our individual chapters' ritual and what we stand for. A lot of the active members leave it to the designated leaders to take care of these things for them, and the chapter becomes divided into leaders/not leaders.
ReplyDeleteTracy, I love your comment about incorporating service, sisterhood, philanthropy, education, etc. into every single event. I think that we often focus on planning each of these events separately that we forget that they really all build on each other. We don't really need to plan one of each event per week; that's just creating extra stuff. We would benefit ourselves more and live our ritual better if we made the most out of each event and included all of these aspects into each thing we do as a chapter.
ReplyDeleteTracy,
ReplyDelete1. You need to be a writer!
2. I totally agree with you about incorporating all of a chapter's values into their activities rather than isolating each event as having one purpose. We should strive to have all that we do reflect our united front and shared ideals.