Let's meet on it

I write in haste today because, as it sometimes happens, I have spent most of the day--and the week, and large portions of my adult life--in meetings. Unfortunately, they were not meetings about what to write in my newsletter article. But then, meetings on that topic rarely go anywhere.

It is mostly in science fiction that things get done without the aid of meetings. The steel-jawed superhero perceives the need, possesses the means, and executes the necessary with laser dispatch. The rest of us have meetings. While nothing happens in them, nothing happens without them. Long-range planning, short-term planning, assessment, review, pre-meeting meetings, post-meeting appreciations. We have meetings solely to nominate those who will attend future meetings, and further meetings to ratify the nominations.

In the present moment, all one can do is breathe, refrain from strangling the breath from others, and await adjournment. All the action bullets pertain to the future, what little of it remains between scheduled meetings. From the outside the process is indistinguishable from other primate grooming behavior--hence the term nit-picking. Well--we tend to wear clothing, too. But the result is the same. By the end of the process, by some means not altogether clear, it is decided who gets the bananas and who gets the peels. New business? Do I hear a motion to adjourn?