Radical evolution: some musings from the beginning of the year
From hope for new beginnings to living with the old world in me
I think back to the start of the pandemic, and the announcement that schools would be closed in France. A sense of joy and liberation overcame me — what a wonderful opportunity to have my kids at home, spend more time with them, explore more creative and whole-being-oriented pedagogies (I’d been seriously considering taking my son out of his primary school where he was struggling to learn French grammar after three years in English) ! What a challenge to stir things up, force new flexibilities and equilibrium at work (I do love a good challenge to work with!). I was full of hope and inspiration.
The reality of course was quite different. Having cleared the work decks for two days a week to focus on kids, I realised that I needed to use evenings to stay up to date with projects and support other colleagues to keep working, rather than to design creative and integrated sessions for the kids. An initial topic-centred approach soon disintegrated into just going with whatever they felt drawn to, and trying to turn this into learning opportunities (sure, write about Minecraft if you like, as long as you’re willing to learn some French grammar along the way!). I was also taken aback by my wonderfully creative daughter’s descent into despair as the outside world that feeds her imagination was cut off, and the creativity dried up! I’d thought she would survive lockdown the best of all of us, and her despair at being excluded from the world was a shock to me.
For the deep interconnections and community we need in order to imagine and evolve alternative futures were denied us. All my own visions and deep beliefs about how a new paradigm might come about rely on collective endeavour, and embodied presence. Cooperative entrepreneurship, co-living, place-sourced regenerative work. Togetherness, dialogue, connection. How to lean into all this when home alone as a single mum in front of a screen?
In the face of this crisis of imagination, I started to notice in myself the patterns and behaviours of the old world playing out more, as a fractal of the dynamics in the wider world. So, as the French government started asking us to sign our own permission slips to leave the house for essential shopping, I noticed my own authoritarian do-gooder flexing her muscles. The part of me that does things out of a sense of duty and obedience. The part of me that thinks there is a “right” way of doing things, who loves control and certainty (and imposing rigidity on others!).
The internal debate between the open and experimental whole-self trying to follow the principles of living change, and the obedient do-good self was relentless and exhausting. Realising how the polarities of the world at large were swelling up in myself brought some comfort, but didn’t make it any less hard to hold and live into this phase without judgement.
Connecting with rage — and embodied engagement
Fast-forward to the end of the year, past all the meanderings, the attempts at reconciling and awakening to working with wholes, the restorative moments (in particular in the presence of others, where community, being together and envisioning pathways to desirable futures based on new relational dynamics once again was possible) and the crises of retreat and downright top-down control-freak moments! No new normal, but a sense of familiarity as mask-wearing and lockdowns are generalised. And then, in a stealthy way, the rise of rage…
A team reflection session in December with prompt questions around what we’ve learnt, and what is shifting, was the occasion for the unleashing of rage at how the pandemic has uncovered and amplified so many powerful and oppressive dynamics in the world. The gender inequalities with women taking the brunt of the essential worker load and the childcare and homeschooling responsibilities, the racial inequalities with people of colour harder hit both health-wise and economically, the repeated pattern of making vulnerable people more vulnerable — from the elderly, to those living alone, to women and children facing domestic abuse, to kids with difficulties in school having to contend with wearing masks all day from age six up — shutting up those who were already quiet, distracting those who were already distracted… This rage had me in tears on the call (and such appreciation to all my colleagues who were there and let this be what it is!) and then shaking for at least the following two days. An embodiment at long last, an expression in the fibre of my being, a connecting with my aliveness in a new way.
Radical evolution: opening from the root
What is to follow is not clear. Things have been unsettled at the least, and old ways of being don’t switch off like that. However, I’ve noticed a new awareness of things of the body, and things of the heart — in myself, and in those I love and have near. I have danced into the new year with rage and laughter. I have sat in the sun and done nothing to welcome in another cycle.
I’m working on a revised set of inquiry questions, pursuing the thread of “aliveness” I’ve been exploring over the last two years, with a stronger focus on the multiple facets of eros — from vitality, to beauty, to sensuality, to erotic desire. Also more interbeing — cultivating life within and around me, from home-made kimchi, to communal chickens, to interdependent relationships. A new path alongside this linking enraged being and engaged doing is starting to emerge, tentatively in the wake of the uprising…
A long-time lover of fruit trees, I’ve found myself drawn to more spiky plants recently, and am exploring the growth pattern of the fleshy agave family as a way of living change this year. Something about “radical evolution” — radical as in coming from the root, a new stem, a new core — growing and creating space for balance. Watching the lush succulent leaves of the aloe vera on my roof terrace slowly spiral from the centre of the plant, a balance of soft and spiky and strong. Dreaming into the amazing flower stems of mexican agave, as they reach for the sky. Growing space. Living change.
