A Mason's Work

Brian
00:01

One of the more interesting elements of navigating things like change is the nature of making assumptions. It is outrageously common to make assumptions about the way something works. I run into this all the time, only to find that in the process of execution or in a discovery phase, those assumptions are completely invalid. And so when you are trying to direct change in your lodge, in your life, that checking of assumptions, checking the stone you're working, understanding the nature of it to try and determine where it's, you, know, where its fault lines are, what's what its intended use is, all of that kind of stuff. Check those assumptions. 'cause I think you'll find if you've had an experience, you may not have experienced quite like mine, but as you go through your Masonic journey, you'll find that a lot of things that you thought were sacred to others may have been assumptions about what you, the way you thought the world worked.

Brian
01:10

And they're just that they're assumptions. So when tested, a lot of people will tell you like, no, this isn't important to me at all. Why are we, why are you worried about stepping on my toes here? 'cause that's not a thing. Or even more so, you'll find that people really have the same problems and complaints that you do, but don't know how to solve the problem maybe in the way that you can. So by asking questions and by digging in and testing those assumptions with others, I think you'll find your Masonic experience expands significantly based on your ability to have those conversations. Now, what's important when you're trying to align folks to the objectives you're creating or when you're checking those understandings, is to make sure, like you, you know, caveat the conversation as needed to say, listen, I don't wanna offend you, but I, I want to ask some basic questions just to help me get my bearings. That usually works out okay, unless you're doing it in no, sort of a passive aggressive way, in which case you'll, you might find that you get pushback in strange ways from this. So, but that testing of assumptions, I think, and understanding the stone you're working is gonna be a vital part of how successful you can be as a mason trying to create change in the world.

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