Clusterf@ck

The northern end of Main Street in downtown Kansas City has been torn up to put in a streetcar for so long it is hard to remember what it was like as a functioning thoroughfare. Lanes closed, new lanes marked with a snaking line of orange poles, signs warning you to “keep right” and of “open trench”, driving down Main Street has become a stressful and tedious journey to be avoided whenever possible. Increasingly you hear that the businesses on Main Street, in the RiverMarket district (where the streetcar will turn around), and in the Crossroads (just west of Main) are struggling from the prolonged disturbance of major road construction.

While there are finally signs of progress, namely that there is actual streetcar rail in the street as opposed to just countless blocks of trench, the streetcar project is appears to have entered into a morass that many large scale projects with lots of moving parts fall prey to:

Clusterfuck.

And not merely in the “bungled or confused undertaking” of the formal definition of this word. In the sense of feeling like there are multiple forces working at odds with one another and possibly not being aware of this fact until a perpetual state of stalemate becomes clear in a sudden and unpleasant revelation.

It is hard to witness this project falling into this state knowing the controversy that surrounded it. Kansas City citizens by and large have been opposed to the streetcar and to extensions of it beyond downtown. They perceive it as being too expensive and not a particularly effective form of transportation. City officials are invested in its development and cite the possibilities for economic development, increase in urban density, and reduction in car traffic. I will admit, my own perspective has vacillated between the two since I first moved here. What I have increasingly come to believe is this:

You don’t build for what you have. You build for what you want to have in the future. You build to create something new out of something that has reached its limits. You build to expand. You build to embrace possibility of something bigger and better than what you have now. You build to manifest a vision.

These ideas all sound very abstract and slippery when it comes to talking about taxes, construction, and return on investment. And they aren’t particularly persuasive. Citizens want facts and accountability and prudence from the government. They are averse to risk and by extension, will accept a status quo that is somewhat uncomfortable to going through the chaotic upheaval that will create truly dramatic change.

And that is the real crux here: if you want things to be different, then they have to actually change. And change can tear things up and leave them unsettled for extended periods of time. Change can look a lot like major construction (and destruction). Change can get really messy before it gets organized. It can begin to look very random and the strategy can be hard to see. It can get so complex and bring up so many new issues and obstacles and problems to solve, that you begin to feel like you are in the quagmire.

Change can be totally fucked up.

But if you will hold fast, keep looking ahead and putting one foot in front of the other on your course of change, you will wake up one day and see something amazing has been built. And with this newly built aspect in your life, even more change begins to trickle out from it like dominoes falling. A vision that once seemed abstract becomes more clear and the future you couldn’t imagine before begins to grow before your eyes. And best of all, when you embrace change, those around you also embrace it and begin their own transformative change process.

So just buckle up and enjoy the ride…because what comes from change is limited only by the breadth of your creative vision.

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