The ears have it! (AKA listening is still "doing")
Hello you tree falling in the forest.
Happy Easter/ Passover/ relaxing long weekend to one and all! As part of my own efforts to try to understand what the world looks like right now and what it can look like moving forward, I have joined a few different communities that are exploring the potential of this moment. One of these is the Presencing Institute's GAIA project, which involves connecting with thousands of other people around the world (including some people I know well-- shout out to Abe!). As part of this weird, wonderful and unprecedented global conversation, we had the second of eight "inhale" sessions on Friday this week. The Gaia Project journey is just getting underway (and you can still join in if you are interested!), but I wanted to share a few initial reflections since I think they can apply to a few different parts of the current human experience.
Making it up as we go along: While this project is wrangling the participation and inputs from thousands of people across the globe, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much improvisation, iteration and experimentation is going on as things unfold. I am admiring this moving-target approach both as an engaged participant and a sometimes-cat-herder myself. But I am also appreciating what the process reveals about the larger moment we are in: that in this unprecedented COVID-19 quarantine era, the reality is that we are all just making things up as we go-- as human beings, as families, as communities, as nations, as a species. Pobody's nerfect and there will be tons to unpack when it is safe to be outside and together again. But if you will pardon the NGO-speak, in true M&E fashion, I love the iterative, on-the-ground learning we are doing and the pivots we are (hopefully) taking when needed to make sure we are doing the best we can for ourselves and each other. I have a new appreciation for how difficult crisis decision-making can be, and admire the small and large best-guess decisions that we are making for ourselves, for each other-- as well as the sometimes-tough, best-guess decisions that are being made on our behalf by those leading the charge
Hitting the pause button on "doing": This Gaia Project process involves an initial listening and dialogue phase, followed by more action-oriented phases that will be built based on what we hear and say. In theory this sounds great and I think generally people understand the motivations behind this approach. But in practice, as we come together and interact, it is amazing how many people in the conversation are super keen to move to action, to doing, to fixing, to changing. (Sound familiar? I am usually pretty guilty of this myself) In being part of this process-- and this pandemic-- while we all have some "doing" that needs to happen (and some MUCH more than others-- thank you again and as always, front-line workers!), I am grateful for the built-in reminder that it is early days in this global inflection point in our history. As much as we can manage, this should be a time for being present: for listening, for speaking, for sense-making, for exploring, for noticing. The "doing" of future-building is happening in the listening. And while it feels kind of passive, that is the best thing we can be doing right now until we better understand what was and what is.
Things can (and in many cases should) look different than they have looked: Isolation is difficult, this pandemic is terrifying and I am sure all of us in one way or another are pining for parts of how things "used to be" before COVID-19. However, as we make our way through the Gaia Project-- and through this pandemic-- it is becoming clear that there exists an enormous-- and deeply important-- opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the world we want to "go back to" when the danger of the virus starts to wane. This article (thanks Leah!) does a really good job of shining a light on what we are likely going to be asked to do to "get back to normal" or to "feel normal" again, and instead encourages us to "take a deep breath... and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all... This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get."
We need each other: Yes, I know this is obvious/ I have been talking about this ad nauseum in these dispatches. But by virtue of its intensely global nature, this Gaia Project experience has provided a visceral reminder of how connected the world is (I have had conversations with people from Dubai, Mexico, The Netherlands, the US, India and Germany so far), and just how resonant/ resonating we all are when it comes to trying to understand the world and our place in it as things evolve and unfold around us. I know it goes without saying sometimes, but people are so much more similar than popular culture/ politics would have us believe. And in this pandemic, we have an opportunity to be a "we" in ways that we have not explored before-- whether on a personal level with our friends and families, or in a broader way with random people in our communities and around the world. As we talked about last week, the only way "through" is "with". And I am grateful to be going through this pandemic moment with you-- sharing our words, sharing our time, sharing presence and connecting together in the ether of consciousness.
As I will continue to say: thank you for being you, in whatever ways you are able to show up today. You are doing great. And you are loved.
But wait! Perhaps all of this talk of global presencing is feeling a bit too intense on a sunny Sunday morning? Then please be comforted in the knowledge that quicksand is actually not as deadly as we were led to believe as children (and according to what feels like every 80s-era cartoon or action movie)
Still too much realness? Then check out this ridiculously ratchet music video warning us of the dangers of being a piece-of-shit jogger during quarantine.
From one seeing person to another, I am glad that we can notice the world around us together. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have an awareness-filled week!
Until next Sunday,
The Earnest Platypus