Out of Many, One (E. pluribus unum): Multipotentiality, living out your mission and personal integration
Am I a “multipotentialite”? Well — I wear more hats than you can find in a hat store, that’s for sure. And one of those hats is postcolonial theorist — which, a lot of the time means interrogating and playing with language. In the beginning, there was the word. Your thoughts create your reality. Words are very important. They’re one of the primary media for creating your existence. So, I want to let you know that I’m walking into this article wearing my postcolonial theorist hat. My inner verbal interrogator is concerned with the term “multipotentialite”. It’s not the word itself that so much concerns me. But, was this word created to differentiate between the “multipotentialites” and the NON-multipotentialites? Is this one of those words that someone created to feel better after they were left feeling excluded or dishonored by society? Normally, I am all for people creating new terms to articulate new ways of being — that is my JAM!
What concerns me about this particular term, however, is that it is created from the words “multi” and “potential” and it seems to infer that some people have multiple potential and, if they’re being separated out, does it also infer that some people do not have multiple potential? It’s true that not everyone explores their multiple potential. But as someone with diverse daily tasks and sources of income, I want my life to inspire people to explore the fullness of who they are, to have the courage to use their many gifts and talents. And not only to use them, but to use them well, to use them in ways that satisfy them, that bring them pleasure and that make the world a better place. I am for human potential — however it’s embodied. And now, I will take that hat off and leave it on the hook by the door.
A year and a half ago, I defended my doctoral dissertation. It is a dense piece of theoretical work and data, to say the least. The year before that, I created a spoken word poetry version of my dissertation and performed it publicly in The Bahamas — the origin of my research. The month following my defense, I created an art installation and dining club aligned with my dissertation for the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Over the past year, I’ve taken the theoretical methodology for my doctoral dissertation and implemented it as the primary philosophy for my business, the Institute for Earth-Based Living. One set of ideas — many ways of expressing it. Multipotentiality is a key piece of my dissertation’s theoretical methodology and my business’ philosophy because it’s a central piece of my core identity. I not only do many things, I also am many things. I have many identities, but I am one integrated being. Nothing that I do is random. All of it is related and, besides the fact that I can articulate why it’s all related, everything I am and everything I do is an outgrowth of the intersections of my own being. That is, I’m a woman who was born at and who consists of many crossroads. “E pluribus unum”. Out of many, one. Does anyone actually know what that means? Unity in diversity. There’s never been a time at which I felt that the things I do are unrelated. The hard part has always been — how can I do all the things I do and be all the things I am and still get paid.
I was once questioning one of my (many) projects aloud to a good friend who responded, “You’ll figure it out. You’re an artist scientist explorer.” I get stressed out when I have to offer bios and my resume looks ridiculous — not because I’m ridiculous, but because it’s difficult, in that format, to express my experience. I’m always re-organizing and moving things around, working to make it all make sense. One of the ways that I’ve dealt with my multipotentiality recently has been to become a coach. I engage with many methods and modalities, but I use them all to help attorneys, political leaders and religious leaders overcome activist burnout. So I work with activists — and a huge piece of that work is to help them tap into their own multipotentiality, to help people remember (or teach them, if they never took that class in graduate school) all of the ways in which social change actually occurs. I usually introduce this to people by encouraging them to focus on their mission more than their method.
I am a multipotentialite, not because I have a random combination of gifts and skills, but because I am passionate about and committed to my mission and I recognize that I can achieve it in many different ways. I recognize that different seasons of my life require me to engage with the world, myself and my activism in different ways — each of which offers something unique to the world and opens up a piece of my being that wouldn’t otherwise have been expressed. Equally important, I recognize, having lived and worked in so many different places and engaged in so many different spaces over time, that different situations, people, spaces, cultures and times are more receptive to certain methods than others. The same phenomenon can manifest in completely different ways and it’s important to address or engage in the ways that make sense in real life — not just theoretically. I can do lots of different things. But ultimately, they’re just different methods to explore, articulate and carry out my one mission: to facilitate the healing and liberation of the planet. As an ecologist and someone who lives an Earth-based life, I know that everything is connected. It never really occurs to me that I do a lot of different things until someone else points it out (or asks me one of those uncomfortable multiple choice questions where you can only mark one option) — because I know that everything I do and that I’ve ever done is connected.
In highschool, I was voted “most likely to be in school for the rest of her life and never actually earn a degree.” The girls in my highschool were on to something, because, even though I now have three degrees, all of them are multi/inter/trans-disciplinary. I wasn’t trained in one discipline. I wasn’t trained in one form of research. I use the tools and methods of many different disciplines (and non-disciplines) to explore single topics or particular situations. This makes me a much more effective problem solver in the real world. It means that I know when a hammer is needed and when a screw driver is needed. And hopefully I know how to use both tools. But if I don’t, I absolutely know where to go to find someone who does. I have a degree in Peace Studies and a degree in Environmental Studies. These are major challenges and opportunities for our human species right now — and they won’t be addressed effectively without multiple solutions and ways of thinking — integrated thinking.
In the United States (as well as other places), the term “integration,” traditionally (in the “mainstream,” anyway), has referred to multiple people, multiple types of people, figuring out how to create a society in which people who are different from each other can all live alongside each other. But the multipotentialite is someone who integrates multiple aspects of themself and figures out how to allow all aspects to exist in a single body. I am a firm believer that social integration isn’t possible without psychological integration. I’m not sure we can figure out how to all live together externally if a significant portion of the population hasn’t figured out how to live with all of who they are internally.
I grew up in the United States — a society that’s very black and white. You’re black or you’re white. If you’re not black or white, you’re Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Indigenous — but those qualifications come after black or white (And if someone can fit you into “black” or “white” based on their own perception, they will). Every group, then, has its own ethnic divisions, of course. You’re rich, you’re poor or you’re middle class. You’re a Northerner or you’re a Southerner. You’re East coast or West coast. You’re the Bloods of the Crypts. You’re Democrat or Republican. You’re male or female. You’re always one thing or the other. PICK one! If you don’t pick, someone else will pick for you. Which track are you going to take? Oh — and of course, you’re either your mother’s child or your father’s child. How often do you hear people ask the question, “Who does he/she LOOK like?” This is complicated, of course, if your parents come from different countries, different cultures, different religions, different races. Spoiler alert: every family has its own culture, so everyone’s parents come from different cultures. SLASH, everyone is a culture in and of themselves. However, for utility’s sake — obviously, some people express much starker differences than others. But to me, the multipotentialite is one expression of how people throughout the world are owning their internal differences and expressing them. It’s one way that people are saying, “I’m not willing to ignore or repress certain aspects of myself to fit into a social box that doesn’t honor the complete truth of who I am” — whatever that means in terms of what is acceptable in one society or another. Because, when you repress a part of yourself, you repress that same aspect and expression in everyone you meet — whether consciously or unconsciously.
To me, multipotentialism is a natural evolution of integration and globalization. The confusion that comes from being a multipotentialite is the same as being multi- or mixed anything. And in fact, many people who I know with multiple jobs and income sources also own multiple identities in other ways. I have no data for this — but I would hypothesize that there’s a least some sort of connection originating in this desire to live beyond the norms of cultural categorization.
Societies are becoming more plural. Individuals are becoming more plural. Each individual is exposed to more cultural systems than they probably even recognize or can recognize on any given day. This exposure causes people to experience different parts of themselves than they would if they were very isolated culturally. Again — who knows if we actually realize this is happening? Despite the oppression that exists and that is very in-your-face (well, it’s in MY face!) every single day, never before have so many humans had the capacity to choose their identities, to choose their religions and spiritual systems, to choose their homes and cultures and, most importantly, to choose to own every piece of their experience that resonates and create new iterations of old identities and experiences. We have the opportunity to choose our work in ways that no humans have ever been able to in the history of our species.
But with the evolution of owning our internal differences and expressing them through different forms of work, I believe, comes the responsibility of integrating the types of work we do into a single tapestry, into an umbrella that serves a single mission that allows each type of work to serve its unique purpose — even if it seems a bit paradoxical. And this will mean, I think (I hope), the creation of new roles, new positions, new businesses and organizations and new types of businesses and organizations. It will require thinking about business and organizational structure in a completely different way. It will mean that businesses and organizations are shaped by and will benefit from the uniqueness of the individuals comprising them, rather than creating containers to which employees are required to conform. It will mean that “scaling” your business will require more than creating something that’s replicable, but creating something that’s translatable and relatable in the spaces in which your business resides. This reduces competition in its negative forms and allows businesses to find niches that are natural to who they are and what they do — which is another way in which we as humans can own our ecological identities and not just live ON the Earth or WITH this Earth — but AS the Earth. It means that no amount of pushing will make a business work or grow, but that businesses are going to have to adapt to the ways and timeframes in which all things that are organic unfold and grow. And this brings me to the last hat I’ll wear while writing this article — my astrologer hat (if you can imagine … it has springy spongy planets that sort of float and bop around my head).
While writing this article, Uranus changed signs. Uranus only changes signs every 7 years. The planet of breakthroughs, disruption, innovation, social change moved into the sign of Taurus — a sign of money, worth, business, banks, care for the Earth and ecological living. I sense that this next seven years is going to bring an overhaul of how ecological resources are valued and also, how businesses are shaped. I feel we’re in a time of creating businesses that aren’t only focused on the “triple bottom line,” but that will actually be formed and run aligned to align with organic processes that honor the cycles of the planet and the cycles of our bodies.
As I complete this article, the sun is in the sign of Gemini. Gemini loves to collect information. It flutters around like a butterfly. It buzzes around like a bee. If any sign of the zodiac is a multipotentialite, it’s definitely Gemini. And yet, the Moon is full in Sagittarius. When the Moon is full, it opposes the Sun and illuminates two signs that exist in opposition to each other. It illuminates an axis, a paradox. And every paradox offers a habitat for balance. The relationship between Gemini and Sagittarius is where data becomes theory, where what and how one learned in their childhood influences what one will choose to go on and study in higher education. It’s where your divination and spiritual practices become a unified system, religion or theology. It’s where you can have lots of jobs, but they all become unified under a single title, a single mission, the desire to expose a single Truth. In Gemini, you move through your everyday world. In Sagittarius, you explore that which is unknown — physically (through travel), intellectually and spiritually. They’re both explorers — one collects data and the other one analyzes it. Everyone has both signs in their chart. Everyone has every sign in their chart, every energy in their spirit, every capacity — good and bad.
When you get to the end, go back to the beginning. Am I a “multipotenialite”? Who cares! Am I willing to own the fullness of my multiple potential as a human being? If so, how am I going to use it to find pleasure in my life and offer meaning to the world? Am I willing to acknowledge that everyone else also has multiple potentials? Am I spacious enough to provide them with the space they need to grow and explore those potentials? These are the questions that really matter.
**If you’re seeking to learn more about your own multipotentiality, click here to schedule an intuitive restoration session, where I’ll help you to explore all of the inner personas wanting to be expressed within you and help them get along with each other.**
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