Next slide please

I've been away for the last few days for a two-day client working session focusing on what their role might be in the transition to a more environmentally sustainable world. While attendees were mostly employees of the company, the first day also included a variety of external folks to provide a little spice to the conversation as well as an environmental luminary as a speaker.

This environmental speaker's presentation started as most environmental presentations do: with the unbelievably grim and hopeless situation around global warming and the fact that it really probably is too late and we're all gonna fry. It was extremely well done and in spite of "knowing" most of what she was talking about already, I was very affected by it.

After about 20 minutes of this gloom pummeling, she abruptly paused; she had been talking so fast and so intensely that the sudden silence felt like running into a wall.

She flipped to the next slide and there was: Gandalf.

Yes, Gandalf, as in The Lord of the Rings.

This is a big, serious client! And there's Gandalf on the screen, and below him was a poignant quote about his being a steward and a protector; how saving even just a little bit of what exists now is worth doing.

Next slide: Hobbits.

Ordinary people with an extraordinary task. Overcoming the un-overcome-able. Losing much, but saving much too.

I don't think I was the only one who teared up a little.

I guess if someone has to make me cry in a client meeting, Frodo isn't the worst possibility.