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Collaboration: Working Together


My friend was with me for some full day working sessions.  We are collaborating on a big project.  This is different than most of my work.  Most of what I do is solitary work.  As a college professor, I spend quite a bit of time by myself reading, getting ready for classes, grading papers and examinations.  Of course, there are the times in class with students.  That is great.  But it is a minimal amount of time compared to the other duties.    And I am not complaining; it is a good way to live life.

But I also learned a long time ago, I like to be part of teams, projects, and community endeavors.  As an introvert, I appreciate those times of solitude.  And I seek out solitude if I have to spend too much time with people and in groups.  We all need balance…and I know how to balance my time, commitments, etc.

As far back as twenty years, I remember reading a couple books about “collaboration.”  I was not too impressed.  Collaboration seemed like a fancy word for a pretty normal enterprise: people working together.  But I understand academics and book writing.  People work together, so let’s come up with a fancy term and write a book on---collaboration.

Anyone who knows Latin knows what the word means.  Any time you see the prefix “co,” you know it means “with.”  Think of words like co-operate and co-author.  Clearly whenever “co” is added to some word, something has “joined with.”

Also I know in Latin the word, labora, means “work.”  That one is easy.  Obviously, our English word “labor” lurks in the Latin labora.  Ah, I think, laboratories are nothing more than workplaces!  So I know my friend has joined me to collaborate.  We are working together.

A couple things have occurred to me while collaborating with my friend.  The first thing is the fact that working with someone else often is more fun than working alone.  We talk, we discuss, we ponder, we laugh…and the time is enriched by our joint endeavor. 

Of course, we can be stuck with a real stinker.  Any student knows some group assignments are tough because someone inevitably does not pull his or her weight.  What do you do with a lazy bum on your team?  What do you do with a quarrelsome jerk?  Those are tough issues.

The second thing that occurs to me about collaboration is somehow I become “more” in the process.  My knowledge, skills, and contribution magically seem to multiply in a group.  I seem more valuable than I am on my own.  It is easy to feel more useful and worth more.

Then it hit me.  Collaboration links to community.  For me community is a spiritual issue.  I have known for a long time the spiritual journey works best if it is done with and in community.  Of course, we all journey through life as solitaries.  I cannot live your life and you cannot live mine.  But we can live our spiritual lives with each other---“co-spirited,” if you like!

The trouble for many of us is the spiritual community is not always easy to find or to create.  Many of us feel like spiritual solitaries…wandering and wondering alone.  We need co-laborers in the Spirit.  We want collaborators.  We want to have more fun and somehow to become “more” than we are.

And in most cases, folks will not fly into town like my friend did so that we can work together.  This is a question for another day.

But if you are reading this, in a sense we are collaborating!  What is the next step?  Let’s see…

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