Do bridges get walked on? Perhaps. I said that to one of my first coaches and he admonished me for embracing a defeatist narrative. “For God’s sake, Rebecca. be a bridge and maintain your dignity!”

I suggested to a state level leader that a healthy group maintains permeable boundaries. Her eyes widened slightly, but not in amazement. They widened in shock, as if to say, “What the hell are you suggesting!?”

Perceiving an eco-system of institutions is easy; read a book or take a course. This isn’t where culture lives. Perceive instead those invisible but deeply felt power dynamics; the unspoken rules we only learn through cautious observation or by accidentally breaking. Truths that lie just beneath the surface, underneath org charts and job titles. This is the true eco-system. The deep structure.

The relational context.

We won’t find it in a book. It reveals itself when we physically move toward it the way we move to greet a friend. This movement gradually inches us away from the warm-cozy of established pathways, past the impermeable boundary of accepting what’s readily available, beyond the subtle resistance of “Wow, that seems like a lot of work.”

We see the deep structure while moving to places that are disparate and cut off. In the undiscovered place that persistently generates impact without loudly declaring itself. In the dusty corner that no one bothers to clean. In the upstream territory that the third friend went to explore, while the other two friends, watching her move, declared her a traitor.