The Different Drum

A couple of engaged conversationalists encouraged me to read M. Scott Peck’s The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, which I am now enjoying. Peck writes about the use of community to establish reconciliation and harmonious interaction between individuals, groups, nations and also within our own selves. Ultimately, we are able to embrace our whole being, while also becoming more integrated with those around us. I have not yet finished the book, but was struck by the power of Peck’s observation that, “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” In terms of conversation, all too often participants are seeking, sometimes demanding, insight or solutions to the challenges they are speaking of. Yet conversation’s real benefit is not in being forced to produce such remedy, albeit that it can do so, but to be enjoyed as part of this mystery that we live.