Change and Chaos part 2
About 18 months ago I wrote about change and whether it always had to look like chaos.
(If you’re interested, you can read it here… https://medium.com/@jenn_reddy/does-change-have-to-mean-chaos-for-me-ma-6655d7bdae3)
Since then, life has of course marched on. Clients have come and gone, kids have gotten older, relationships have formed, deepened and shifted, I’ve acquired a bit more wisdom, made a few more mistakes, and have a few more grey hairs then I did then.
This writing is less about me though and more about the world in which we all live and collectively contribute to.
If Facebook is ever any indication of how people are feeling, the collective posting of grief, rage, anxiety, feeling of superiority, finger pointing, and ‘unfriend me if you believe xyz’ statements are clearly pointing to a people unsettled. It’s not all bad, but some days it feels really heavy.
As I’m skimming through posts, I’m reminded of several conversations I’ve had or overheard lately. Conversations about the state of the world. About how messed up humanity is. About how we’ve killed the planet, caused endless harm to each other, and after all this time and information, it’s still not any better. Oh, and it would all be fixable and fine if not for those stupid people over ‘there’.
If you listen to the news, read most anything on the internet, watch documentaries, or follow politics, this view is repeated endlessly. But what if we step back from the sound bytes a bit? Then what would we see? What if we looked at the world as a whole? What if we looked at 50 years ago? 100? 200? 500? Not the overly pretty idealized versions we’re all so fond of, but the real life actual way people lived.
How was the murder rate? What about wars? Disease? Nutrition? Environmental awareness? Politics?
And what about social justice issues? How many people had autonomy over their lives? How many were educated? How were marriages decided, families created, and children born? Where was the wealth distributed and who got a say in that? How were you treated if you were different in any way from the cultural norm of where you lived? Say a different skin color, religion, or sexual orientation? What if you got pregnant out of marriage? What happened if your parents were horribly abusive? What if you were born with any kind of handicap or prematurely? What if you had the audacity to love someone your social system didn’t agree with? Or live in a way that was collectively agreed to as ‘bad’?
(Here are some answers to those questions if you want to know…
https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting_better_or_worse_a_look_at_the_numbers/transcript?language=en
Are we still collectively working through these issues? Goddess yes!!!! We’re nowhere near to figuring some of these things out. But the fact that we’re having the conversations is no small thing.
Right now in this country, our children and adults are having ongoing conversations about consent, institutionalized racism, fascism, the patriarchy, what gender really is, the human psyche and how to heal it, what the generational effects of trauma can be, safety, education, priorities, boundaries individually and collectively, our feelings about poverty, how to heal the places we’ve done wrong and so so many more. Is it heartbreaking to have these conversations? Often yes. They are frequently started because something’s gone horribly wrong, or there’s lots of big feelings about a current event, or people are working to correct an wound that already occurred. The incidences that drive these conversations can be heartbreaking.
Here’s why I celebrate those conversations and things still to do, these wrongs existed humanity’s past but they were so normalized that THEY WEREN’T EVEN CONVERSATIONS TO BE HAD! The fact that we’ve graduated to discussing them, crying over them, and working to fix them is a beautiful privilege. I would argue strongly that we have moved some pretty major issues forward in some really big ways in the last 200 years.
More and more of the world’s population goes to bed each night with access to clean water and food. More and more of the world’s population lives longer, healthier lives. More and more children will grow to be adults. More of those adults will have gotten some education. More of those children and adults won’t be sent to war. More of those adults will marry who they want, have children when they are ready, and worship (or not) where they feel called.
Is it close to everyone? Nope! Our ancestors have worked hard to get us here. It’s come with toil and struggle and suffering and tears and death. Growth and change can be brutal and ruthless. There is no backwards evolution and every step forward is fought for. And we’ll never be done. There will always be places we as a species can improve and that is a beautiful thing. Love your fellow humans — whether they’re on your side of any given issue or not — for they are also part of this growth and change and expansion.
And in looking at the Facebook feed I notice that of course there are also puppies and kittens and funny memes. There are trees and mountains and rivers. There are congregations doing incredible outreach, children and teenagers inventing mind blowing solutions and taking on the adults in their way. There are beautiful humans reminding us how to love, teaching us how to question, showing us how to lean in, and guiding us toward our personal and collective power to create a more whole and connected world.
What I’m reminded of is this — Whether it’s internal growth or external, expect some chaos. Expect some tears. Celebrate the hard conversations, the moments that make you question every choice you’ve made, the pain that’s forcing you out of comfort, your sweat and dirt caked exhausted face. Because that’s what growth and movement forward looks like.
