I used to talk about a line of invisible dominoes falling, carving out change that we wouldn’t see but that we would ultimately feel in Kansas. It was change that only honest human connection could create. I’ve brought people together across differences with a StoryCorps project called One Small Step since its rollout in Wichita in 2020; work that has dovetailed nicely with my role at the Kansas Health Foundation. But now, the storytelling organization has ended this project (known colloquially as “O.S.S.”) in Wichita amid a flurry of layoffs. The dominoes are at risk of no longer cascading.

As an employee of the Kansas Health Foundation, I did not lose my livelihood. But I lost a pathway to fostering the kind of connection that our state and our country desperately needs right now. While it may be true that—when push comes to shove—top-heavy organizations tend to favor the top, it’s also true that the environment of vitriol we’ve worked against in the United States has become more complex and difficult to navigate. We were always in an uphill battle. But now, it seems, it’s an uphill battle in a torrential downpour…and most of our foot soldiers are lying in the ditches.

I facilitated 110 interviews in these last five years, and 99 percent of them left me with a sense of the beauty of humanity. I was a guide and simultaneously a voyeur into individuals’ lives. Partners got to know each other, and I got to know them from the other end of the table. But they didn’t get to know me as anything other than guardrails made flesh. It was like falling in love two hundred times over, with people who didn’t turn their gaze my way, but instead found love for one another.

In the ancient Greek conceptualization of love, there are many forms: philia (friendship love), storge (familial love), pragma (enduring love) and agape (universal love), among others. Over five years with One Small Step, I was blessed to hear those stories and to encourage connection and understanding. Agape feels very real to me. I fell in love with these people, one by one. I watched them exercise love for each other in big and small ways. But pragma is the kind of love that feels the most real, the most critical, and the most absent from our culture at large. A pragma-love for humanity is what this project evoked in me and what it strengthened one conversation at a time. To have pragma is to be dedicated to something or someone, to have a love that endures and evolves. It’s hard to offer that to masses of people, most of whom we have never—and will never—meet or know in person.

But there are very few practices as grounding as listening to the unvarnished thoughts of real people. When they are at ease, candid, and responding to meaningful questions…nothing else can compare. I was privileged to be the gateway and the guide. I found so much love for the people of Kansas, and for the people in our country. We are caring creatures, but we might not know how to connect the dots or how to take our most important values and parlay them into a way to walk through the world.

Humanity is precious. Our relationships, our stories, and our feelings are precious. If I had a dollar for every time a conversation pair discovered a random synchronicity with each other…then I’d have a hundred dollars. Whether it was having a beloved three-legged dog, or exactly twelve siblings; recently returning from travels to Japan, or both being proud owners of a lake boat; people have things in common that they don’t expect. There are so many dots, and it is only through meaningful conversation that we are able to connect them. Afterward, they feel better about their neighbors and the world. The most common response I heard after conducting these interviews was, “We need more of this.” Followed by, “Everyone should do this.”

After all, there are two ways to play dominoes. We can build a pattern by aligning the ‘pips’ (or connecting the dots) one discovery at a time. We can build a design whose beauty is only revealed when we act, and we witness how our movements form a grander design. We can keep making connections that are authentic and that matter. It is true now, as it always has been, that if we can come alongside one another without our walls up…if we can offer our stories to one another…then we can utilize a transformational love of humanity. Imagine if that was our starting point, our common ground.

I used to tell people that I believed there were invisible dominoes falling, since we started having One Small Step conversations in Kansas. I used to think that it was making a difference, even if we couldn’t see it yet. Now, as OSS ends, the work is more needed than ever, and finding the ability to love one another pragmatically is absolutely pivotal. It will lead to us, en masse, finding the will to work collaboratively rather than competitively.

Do I still believe we can help our communities through honest and deep conversation about our values? I do. But the effort will need to transform into something less formal, more grassroots. And whatever we do, it can no longer afford to be invisible.

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