Trajectory
A trajectory is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. I will spare you the mathematical analysis of how the trajectory of a projectile can be easily defined in parabolic form utilizing Cartesian coordinates through a handful of calculus equations. Keeping it simple: it is you, two points in time connected together, and asking two questions: when will you get to where you are going? and when you get there, is that where you want to be?
At least with flying projectiles, from a cow in a tornado to the launch of the space shuttle, we can with a fairly confident certainty answer those questions. But what about rural healthcare? What about your organization? Your community? You are on a path. You are passing through time. Your momentum is increasing or decreasing. What is your trajectory? The question is not what is your size, what is your strength, or what are your resources. The stone in the sling brought down the giant armed for war. There are so many more dimensions to trajectory than the above definition, because that definition exists in a vacuum and does not consider the external and internal forces at work in the movement of the object.
As a devout student of history, one thing is beginning to stand out to me more and more: ideas are the forces that shape the world we live in. Ideas are at the heart of the trajectory of all things. Ideas take form in thoughts and desires, words and communications, gathering and utilizing resources, starting cities and building nations, searching into the secrets of nature and bringing forth inventions. One man declares "I have a dream...", another man desires the destruction of a nation. Ideas, regardless of morality, set things in motion.
As an architect I work in that realm between the invisible realm of ideas and the brick and mortar of reality, taking the strategic vision and purposes of an organization and expressing it through words and drawings so the contractor can bring the earthly materials into the right relationships with each other to create a facility through which the staff express the purposes of the organization in a completely greater dimension than I have done! But that is what we all do, everyday of our lives, my profession is just a very tangible expression of this process that identifies the trajectory of these ideas, on a very finite and fixed scope.
I cannot escape the voice of those words in the article Taking on the Mountain, "What more do you want me to do? I am doing everything I can to help this hospital!" was the statement of the young physician at a recent roundtable discussion at the NRHA conference. More than the words, were the urgency, the frustration, the desperation and the desire to do whatever she could to make a difference in the hospital and make it more vibrant and productive in the community.
How do you come up with the ideas your community, your hospital needs? We can all think thoughts, write strategic plans for 3 months, 6 months, one year and five years, speak at community events and national seminars. But how do you come up with the thought, the idea, as when Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream..." that takes on power, gathers momentum and makes changes in your environment and the world you live in? This is the great challenge of your local leadership.
Thoughts and words are like the wind, they can be everywhere and seem powerless. How do you bring these other external and internal forces to bear upon the wind, to harness the wind to strong constructive uses? Not like the tornadoes, and how many ideas turn into tornadoes! How do you bring forth ideas and thoughts that shake the heavens and shake the earth, that shake governmental powers and plow the fields to cultivate your community to greater productivity? There is a powerful harnessing of thoughts and words taking place through the NRHA, the successes with legislation are an example. This wind needs to increase not just in the global governmental affairs, but in the local levels of the organization.
Words stir things up!
But what is the trajectory?
Maybe the bigger question is: What do you see?