Chapter 2: Movement
Someone had to do something.
That was the feeling, anyway. Not spoken aloud at first, but present, tightening the air between us. The loose circle we’d drifted into now felt unstable, like it couldn’t hold much more weight without collapsing.
Marcus stood up.
He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t check the room. He simply rose, straightened his jacket, and stepped forward, half a pace too far, claiming the space before anyone could object.
“Okay,” he said, clapping his hands once, sharply. “Let’s get moving.”
The sound snapped through the room.
A few people startled. A few visibly relaxed.
“We’re clearly not getting instructions,” he continued, already warming to the task. “So we make our own. We decide what we’re here to do, how we’re going to do it, and who owns what.”
He didn’t pause.
“If we don’t,” he added, “we’ll still be talking about how we feel an hour from now.”
The emphasis wasn’t subtle.
Helen looked up immediately.
“Yes,” she said, relief clear in her voice. She flipped to a clean page, drawing quick, precise lines. “Purpose first. Then scope. Then roles.”
She glanced around. “If we’re disciplined, this doesn’t have to get messy.”
Lena raised her eyebrows. Sam shifted slightly in his chair.
Something in Marcus’s posture hardened. Encouraged, but also impatient. Like a bulldozer finding traction.
“Exactly,” Marcus said. “So let’s stop circling and start.”
Sam cleared his throat.
“Can I just—”
“In a second,” Marcus said, not unkindly, but not turning either. “Let’s align first.”
The word align landed oddly.
Sam waited a beat, then spoke anyway. “I’m not sure we mean the same thing by that. Some people look relieved right now. Others look… tense.”
Marcus turned sharply. “That’s normal. Change makes people uncomfortable.”
“Or unheard,” Sam said.
The pause that followed was tighter than before.
Lena smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It does feel like we skipped something.”
Marcus exhaled through his nose. “We’ve been waiting long enough.”
Helen tapped her pen, the sound crisp. “Uncertainty expands if we don’t contain it. People need clarity.”
“Do they?” Lena asked. “Or do they need a chance to land first?”
Helen frowned. “Land where?”
Lena opened her mouth, then closed it again, distracted by a new thought. “I don’t know yet. But I feel like if we lock this down too fast, we’ll miss something important.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t a brainstorm. It’s a task.”
Sam leaned forward. “It becomes a task faster when people feel safe.”
Marcus turned fully now. “Safe from what?”
Sam didn’t answer immediately. That hesitation irritated Marcus more than disagreement would have.
Helen filled the gap. “If we don’t set parameters,” she said, “we risk drifting. I’ve seen this before. It looks collaborative, but nothing actually moves.”
Lena laughed. “You say that like moving fast is always better.”
“It usually is,” Marcus shot back.
The air felt brittle now.
Helen glanced down at her notes, then back up. “We could vote,” she offered. “Agree a process. Majority rules.”
“Already?” Lena said. “We don’t even know what the options are.”
“That’s the problem,” Helen replied, sharper than she intended. “We need options that are defined.”
Sam shifted again. “Defined by whom?”
Marcus answered immediately. “Someone has to take responsibility.”
No one said his name, but it hovered there anyway.
The circle no longer felt like one circle.
Without anyone deciding it, gravity shifted.
On one side, Marcus and Helen, close together now. Focused. Directional. Pages filling. Time pressing.
On the other, Sam and Lena, still seated, voices lower, people drifting toward them almost unconsciously. Not because they had answers, but because they weren’t demanding them.
Most of the room leaned that way. Slowly. Chairs angled. Bodies turned.
A smaller group stayed with Marcus and Helen, fewer but firm, drawn to certainty like ballast.
I felt myself pulled, then corrected, then pulled again. My hands were clenched. I hadn’t noticed when it started.
Marcus noticed the split.
“This,” he said, gesturing sharply, “is exactly what I mean. We’re fragmenting.”
“Or differentiating,” Lena said lightly.
“That’s a nice word for it,” Marcus snapped. “But words don’t get things done.”
Sam met his gaze. “Not everything that matters moves on your timeline.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was charged. The kind that precedes storms, not resolves them.
Helen looked between them, pen hovering. “If we could just agree on one framework,” she said carefully. “One way of working.”
“And if we don’t?” Lena asked.
Marcus answered before Helen could. “Then someone leads.”
The words landed heavier than he expected.
No one challenged him.
No one agreed.
I felt the familiar pull again. Relief at the promise of direction. Resistance to the cost of it. The comfort of being told what to do. The quiet loss that followed too quickly.
Around me, people were choosing.
Not dramatically. Not consciously.
But choosing all the same.
The room was no longer waiting.
It was deciding.
Marcus stood at the centre, arms crossed, jaw tight. Sam sat at the edge, hands open, listening. The space between them felt wider than it had been an hour ago.
In the silence that followed, I thought about the old school.
The bell that used to ring.
The teacher who used to tell us what to do.
The way we used to wait for permission to move.
And then I thought about what we’d just seen.
The room was still fractured. But something had shifted.
Not toward one side. Not toward the other.
But toward a quieter recognition.
That we were all carrying pieces of the answer.
That sometimes, you need to move fast.
Sometimes, you need to slow down.
And sometimes, you don’t know which is true yet.
Not because one way is better than the other.
But because the world we’re in no longer fits inside a single approach.
And the people we are, with all our differences, are the only ones who can work out how to move forward.
Not by choosing a side. But…
by learning how to stay with one another long enough to notice what each of us brings.
Reflections
- When someone steps forward and takes charge, what happens in you?
- Do you relax? Do you resist? Do you comply outwardly while withdrawing inwardly?
- What does leadership mean to you in moments like this?
- Is it decisiveness? Containment? Listening? Movement?
- Now notice your judgments.
- Who in this room feels most right to you? Who feels frustrated, naive, controlling, slow, or chaotic?
- What might each of them be protecting? What might each of them be afraid of? Why might each be behaving the way they are?
Finally:
When uncertainty becomes uncomfortable, where do you go?
- Toward control? Structure? Connection? Possibility?
- What does that choice give you? What might it quietly cost?
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