See & Connect

Despite the fact that I want to Vassar College, where you might expect that flew a feminist flag and gladly embraced open discussion about what it is to be female and to be feminine, I would have cringed back in the day to have entered a discussion about the womb. Yet, twenty years later, here I am wanting to talk about the womb. I want to write about the womb – and not just in relation to women. I want people to talk about it because the womb is a symbol of creation. As my mantra goes: Life is a collective creative process and when we want to change how we are living together (aka – social change), we do it through collectively creating different relationships with our selves and one another. Thus, I am increasingly getting the sense that – male or female – we would greatly benefit by giving attention to the womb – which is space that holds a fertilized seed, nurtures and protects it while it grows. What does it symbolize to you? What do you associate with it? In other words – what is your relationship with the creative process/creativity? 

Last month in Guatemala, I was chatting with a female friend about to turn thirty and we talked at length about the womb. About our mother’s wombs, about our experience in the womb (I know, kooky as it may sound…but I’ll maybe come back to that in another post), about earth as a womb – earth as a mother. About the way that the womb isn’t something we talk about openly in society. About violence against women and their wombs. About the need for people generally to reconnect with the womb – with this powerful symbol of creation.

Does this mean dancing naked under the full moon? No. Well, to some people I think it does. But to focus on that would miss the point. To focus on ‘womb-talk’ as something for hippy women would also miss the point – though I can imagine how it easily could happen. I also imagine how talking about the womb – what it symbolizes for men and women – would give rise to important themes such as shame and violence. For half the population the womb is part of bodies, part of a montly cycle of release and re-cycling, as it were. And for all the population the womb is essential – it is where human beings come to life.

Yet, we rarely talk about it.

What does this silence say about our relationship with the act of creating; of incubating fertilized seeds; of gestation; of releasing the old to make way for the new on a regular, cyclical basis; of being/feeling protected and of giving protection?

Do I feel uncomfortable posting about the womb? Sure. I have asked myself “What will some of my more straight-laced professional connections think?” And I have answered “It doesn’t matter what they think of me for bringing up the subject of the womb – what matters is what they think of the topic itself. And if bringing up the subject helps them/us to explore the question of their relationship with the creative process, well, then that is what counts.”

What is your reaction and your response to talking abou the womb? And why do you think ‘womb-talk’ might be relevant to creating a healthier world – be it in relation to the global landscape or in your hometown?

I’ve just spent nearly six months living in Mexico (including a few weeks spent visiting Guatemala). I have plenty to write about in relation to that experience and how it has influenced my thinking on social activism. I’m thinking a lot about, for example, the relationship between the individual and the collective and the relationship between spirituality and activism. However, before I can start writing regularly about these topics, I’m finding myself want to write about another space – my own mental wellness. While in Mexico, I unexpectedly experienced a lot of anxiety. Anxiety is not new to me, but this time it hit sideways – nothing major triggered it and it was very persistent. And it was a pain in the ass, frankly. It was disruptive to friendships and to my being present in where I was. The biggest lesson I took from it is that I’ve been lacking discipline and patience. Perhaps this is the result of my US upbringing – even though almost my entire adult life has been lived outside the US. That is, instant gratification or at least “Results-pretty-damn-quick, please!” seems to be part of my wiring somewhere. 

What is the relevance of patience and discipline to social movements and social activism?

I’ll try and answer this question by extracting from my personal life. My baggage got pretty weighty in 2007 and I decided to do something about it. In the last five years I’ve done the rounds on intensive processes to help me work through emotional weight. I think, for the most part, I’ve chosen wisely in the various workshops I’ve done. I have acquired great insight where my behavior patterns come from and learned helpful tools to help me navigate my way through the world when certain unhelpful old behaviors start wanting to make an appearance.

As did anxiety, in Mexico – rearing its very ugly head.

Just before I left Mexico, I had my first flash of insight. In a moment of mental stillness, I found myself thinking: ahh, what I need now is not more workshops or healers (where I was in Mexico has no shortage of people claiming to be healers of one sort of another and I was tempted to seek assistance from them). Rather. What I needed was to be more disciplined on a day-to-day, moment by moment basis in using the tools I have to work with who and how I was feeling and being – agitated, indecisive, thinking in circles.

Particularly – as anyone who has suffered from anxiety will know – trying to be disciplined when you are in the thick of it can be challenging.  In those moments, it feels like a catch 22, like my inclination to use the very tools I have to challenge disruptive behavior patterns is blocked by the patterns themselves. Which is why, it becomes all the more important for me to be disciplined on a daily basis to use my set of tools to maintain a relative state of equilibrium – rather than get to a point where it feels very hard to use the tools.

What are these tools I’m talking about? The usual – in the sense that they are increasingly becoming very popular in our fear-filled, anxiety-ridden, depression-fueled, consumerist lives: mindfulness, meditation, yoga, exercise, cognitive behaviorial techniques, etc. What I reckon happened in my case is that I got slack on the discipline of using these tools daily – thinking in particular that one intensive workshop I had been on in March 2012 had ‘sorted me out.’ 

This workshop definitely played a role in helping me shift a lot heavy, useless baggage – especially a lot of anger I had been carrying around with me. Yet, I had not understood fully that the tools they spent enormous amounts of time practicing with us would need to be used on regular basis for some time.

I’m writing this post from London. One of my first days here, chatting with a friend of nearly twenty years, I had a ‘ping’ moment of realizing that it was unrealistic to think that a number of intense workshops were going to unravel beliefs that I’ve been carrying – let’s say – since I was a child. Let’s say nine years old. I’m forty-two. That’s a long time. Some of my patterns and the underlying beliefs are deeply etched. It became so clear to me that the person who has the power to change me, is me. And the way I will change is slowly and with persistence and patience.

And with tenderness and love. Yes, the “L” word. I think it is hugely entwined with having patience – asking of myself what is realistic to ask and with kindness. Doing this rather than being impatient and castigating myself for mistakes and for change that is coming more slowly than I would have liked. At the same time, I’m also aware that being loving – kind – to myself includes being firm with myself – that cliché of Strong Love.

I’m writing all of this with “I” and “Me” – but of course the reality is that I was not alone in my anxiety – my friends witnessed it, were affected by it and some did what they could to help me through it. The friends that supported me the most had that balance of loving-kindness which is tender and soft, yet had a firmness about it. They refused to indulge me and the habits I was playing out.

I have power – but that being able to use that power relies in part on my ties to others – on support and connection.

So, what does all this have to do with social movements and social activism? My starting point when it comes to thinking about social movements and social activism is that social change is a collective creative process. Part of this process might be driven by impatience – the desire to express rage and demand change NOW. This stage of the process, of the journey, serves a purpose for sure. It is, after all, what leads to the toppling of dictator governments. The next stage, however, the one where we are creating anew in the space where we have dismantled the old – this one is the space of transformation. Some aspects of it  – as in the case of individual transformation and creation – will happen quickly, easily, readily, smoothly. Others – will prove to be a bit more difficult.

You see, I’m inclined to think, that the way our collective creative journey/story unfolds mirrors the way our individual journeys/stories unfold. The challenges an individual faces in trying to change his or her self and create a different kind of life, give us a roadmap to the challenges that we – in collective – face in trying to change our world. And right now, I have just gone through an intense experience which has brought to my awareness the importance of daily discipline and patience. I add, as well, the importance of connection – the support, inspiration and loving kindness of friends and family has been crucial to me in what has been a challenging time.

Hmmm, maybe this subject of my period with anxiety isn’t as far removed from my me being in Mexico as I think. After all, I was staying in Chiapas – home to the Zapatista movement. This movement uses the Caracol or snail as a symbol. As I understand it, the reason for this is to emphasize slowness – it is in our busyness, impatience and obsession with moving forward that we often get lost and lose sight of our way. The snail also refers to community/collective – by drawing attention to the conch shell that historically has been used to call people together to meetings in small communities. Finally, the spanish word caracol, can also refer to zig-zagging movement. And, well, my individual journey certainly has been full of zig-zag rather than some linear movement typically called ‘progress.’

Creating a different life for myself and working with others to create a different lives for all, at this moment invokes for me the following: Daily discipline. Patience. Slowness. Zig-Zag. Community. Collective. Loving kindness. Loving Firmness.

What does your personal journey with change and transformation tell you about the dynamics of social movement and social activism? 

Over the years, I’ve heard the words “It takes a village to raise a child” bandied about by various US political leaders – Hilary Clinton tends to come first to mind when I think of this saying. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend who told a story that brought me back to this saying. The story also got me thinking about the narrow boundaries we’ve created in US culture – a culture deeply rooted in individualism, fear and isolationism (when I use this word, I’m not talking about international relations).  Here’s the story…

My friend has a good friend who, after trying for a couple of years to get pregnant, decided to adopt. She and her husband chose to adopt locally. They live in a southern state here in the US. In the local adoption system, the couple is visited, assessed etc. and also prepares a portfolio which tells their story of who they are and how they live. I guess this is what is termed and ‘open adoption.’ This portfolio includes a letter to the prospective birth mother/birth parents. The birth mother/parents also meet potential adoptive parents. Let’s call my friend’s friend Janet and her husband Tim. One day Janet and Tim get a phone call to visit a birth mother – even before they had completed their portfolio (I think all that lacked was the letter). They went and met a nineteen year old woman who was pregnant with her second child. It seems that the father – same father, both children – wasn’t around much and this woman decided she could not handle raising a second child in the circumstances. Her first child was a year old. I’m assuming she heard about Janet and Tim and thought “Okay, I’d like for my child to be raised by this couple.”

Janet and Tim went to meet this woman and very quickly she chose them to adopt her child. When she went into labor, Janet and Tim were at the hospital – they even had a room. When the baby was born, she was shuttled back and forth between her birth mom and her adoptive parents. Finally, as I understand it, the birth mom said “This is enough, please give the baby over to her new parents and don’t bring her back to me.” She requested that there be no contact for one year – in order to help her manage this process of giving up her baby to other people. Apparently, sometimes in the first year, pictures are sent to the birth mother/parents. Then in the second year, this might happen rarely. Then in the third year, not at all.  

As I listened to this story, firstly I was wondering what chaos might ensue – adopting a baby in the town where you live and where you are nearby to the baby’s mother. My friend who told me the story said she’s concerned for her friend and her husband. Even though legally the baby ‘belongs’ to the and the mother cannot demand to have her baby back, the arrangement sounds like a recipe for emotional drama at some point.  

I shared my friends doubts – initially – but then I found myself thinking that actually the strangeness of the situation was that the birth mother is going to be pushed out of the picture while the child is growing up. I said to my friend that maybe what’s wrong with this picture is the boundaries we have created in our lives here in the U.S.

Here’s what I was thinking…

Generally, we don’t really do being in collective so well. I say this having just spent five months living in Southern Mexico (Chiapas). I was in a city where many people lived the usual urban, isolated life. But this city was surrounded by communities of indigenous people who lived collectively. I had this front of mind when I started reflecting on this adoption. I imagine that in a community where people live more collectively – where people know each other and look out for each other (I’m not romanticizing, they also stab each other in the back, fight, have challenges rooted in differences of opinion and power games), if someone had a baby they couldn’t take care of, people would help out. In a sense, this adoption is a form of that. Except, this adoption is a commercial transaction and the birth mother  is cast aside from the child’s life (at least until the child can make the choice as to whether or not they get in touch with her). And fear seems to be woven into this – fear that the mother would want her child back. I guess this is tied to sense of ownership – a question of to whom does the child belong. The message coming out strongly in this case is the that the child belongs to the adoptive parents. Not to the village. Whereas, if we really were talking about a village, then I imagine this question of ‘who owns the child’ and the desire to totally separate child from mother wouldn’t arise. 

As I thought about this, I was reminded of my own family. I have cousins in India who spent much of their childhood living away from their parents, in a different city, with one of our aunt’s. This gave them the opportunity to get a better education. In large, extended Indian families I believe it isn’t uncommon for children to be raised more or less collectively. Yes, they have their own parents but in some ways every adult in the family is a parent to that child. And sometimes, that child might go live in another part of the family – away from their parents. 

As I thought about this – about my own family – and this adoption process I wondered about what really makes the most sense. I wondered what would happen if there wasn’t the separation between birth mother and child and adoptive parents – if the arrangement was looked at as one of collective raising of a child. My friend and I briefly talked about this – the boundaries we live with in our culture that perhaps don’t make so much sense, disconnect us from each other.  

I know that adoptions are complicated and relationships can be very messy (and perhaps dangerous to a child). And also, a huge difference is that in one type of scenaro – my family, a village – we are talking about people who know each other and have established relationships. In the other – this southern town, we are talking about strangers. Plus, never having been involved in an adoption, who am I to have an opinion about how they could be done. So this post isn’t meant to be about how I think adoptions could be done/should be done. Rather, the point is that the story of this adoption got me thinking – if we really starting taking this idea to heart that it takes a village to raise a child, what would that mean for our relationships not just with the children in the communities where we live, but with each other – the relationships between the adults, between people who are not blood-related? To have relationships that are more resourceful and sharing-based, what would have to change in terms of our assumptions, beliefs, fears, attachments etc? What boundaries would we have to break down?

As ever, I’m back to my mantra: Social change is a collective creative process  – creating a different world entails creating different relationships with our selves, with one another, with our environment and with the creative process itself. 

What questions, ideas, thoughts does this adoption story raise for you?

What do you think of when you light a burner on your stove? If you are in the US, likely nothing – press knob in and turn. That is how the vast majority of stoves work – as far as I know – in the US. Having lived in England for twenty years, I’m familiar with having to either press an ignite button or use a little handheld gadget to ignite the stove, while you turn the knob. Where I have been staying in Mexico, we use matches – yes, matches! – to light the burners on the stove. Stove-lighting is a little bit more of a conscious act because of this and the fact that we have a gas container in the apartment – that inevitably runs out. When it runs out, we call the gas company and they bring a new one. If it takes more than a few hours, we are likely to whine about it. When is the last time you worried about not having enough gas to light your stove? Am I going to write about gas and other natural resources? Yes and no. I’m actually thinking more about awareness and wastefulness generally. How conscious am I of the resources I am using on a daily basis?

This year, I’m focusing a lot of my thinking on fire – fire as a symbol for (r)evolution.  In the past month, I’ve been presented with many opportunities to think about fire from different angles – including how we use fire in our homes. Last Sunday, I went for a walk in the mountains with some friends. For us, this was a fun day out – a fifteen mile walk on a hot and sunny day. Yippee!!! Along the way we passed a woman and her two small children. The woman was carrying firewood on her back – as was one of the children. We were going down a very steep section – they were walking up. Basic, hard labour.

This wasn’t a new sight to me.  When I was in Guatemala earlier in January, a place called Lago de Atitlán, the matter of accessing firewood was repeatedly brought to my attention. My friend who lives there observed that it is a huge issue – people having to walk a great distance – and being in the mountains usually up/down very steep inclines – to get wood. Wood is basic – it is what lights fires for cooking and for hot water. No gas lines for these families. No calls for instant deliveries of gas or even of firewood. No. You go out, you gather it, and you carry it back.

I was alongside two other people when we passed the woman and her two children walking up the steep mountainside carrying firewood. I remarked on it – how unbelievable it seemed that this woman was having to do this. One person responded by saying that what seems crazy to us is ‘normal’ – conventional in other communities. At first I thought she was suggesting I was being Eurocentric (developed-world centric, whatever you want to call it).  I don’t think she was, but I think she was raising the question of who are we to judge age-old practices.

I’m always a big fan of questioning my presumptions – especially when I’m from the outside looking in on other cultures. Yet, my friend in Guatemala pointed out to me that the wood-issue is a serious one that can’t be left to ‘ahh, but that’s how people here live’. What happens, for example, when the person who normally gets the wood falls ill? No wood. At Lago de Atitlán, I understood that one possible solution is to plant more trees on land close to where people are living – so that people aren’t trekking through the mountains to gather wood. This isn’t a suggestion/practice that has been embraced – I didn’t learn the reason for this.

But I digress. I digress into the wider, messy topic of rural development – something I know very little about and something that isn’t really the point.

Rather, I want to draw attention to the fact that people are carrying wood up mountains to sustain their homes while we generally don’t give a thought to the sources of our fire and heat. This includes hot water. The other day, I was washing dishes with hot water – a habit from the US/UK – especially if I am washing dishes that have been sitting around and need some extra vigor to clean up. One of my housemates said that they don’t normally use hot water to wash dishes. When I thought about this only a few minutes later a little light bulb went on in my brain – ahh, of course, hot water uses gas.

Washing the dishes, taking a shower – these days many people talk about water wastage but not so much (that I know of) about gas wastage. Even making a cup of tea requires a degree of awareness. At my friend’s place in Guatemala, I was instructed to be conscious of how much water I was putting in the kettle – the idea being, if you are making a cup of tea for one or two people and fill the kettle to the brim you are not just using water, you are using gas (stored in a portable tank) to heat up the water. Where he lives, you don’t pick up the phone when you run out of gas and await your ‘instant’ gas tank delivery.

How would you cook, clean and bathe differently if you were having to carry the wood you needed to do so up the side of a mountain? If you were having to chop down a tree to get it?  Or even if you simply knew that you had a limited supply of gas and that when the gas ran out you couldn’t simply pick up the phone and order more?

As I type, I realize it isn’t fair to generalize about the US and UK and gas-consumption – after all, in the winter many families in both countries struggle because they cannot afford to pay their gas bills – particularly in cities and particularly elderly people.

For many people around the world fire is a precious resource, not to be taken for granted.

Awareness.  Really, that’s the sum of what I’m thinking about. Awareness.

And privilege.

Awareness, privilege and fire.

No conclusions really, just thinking…..

This is my first post for 2013. I am writing it in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico having just returned from three weeks in Guatemala. What is in front of my mind is love. I remember back in 2011, a friend introduced me to one of his colleagues via an email and in this email he said to both of us “You are the only two people I know who can talk about social policy and love in the same sentence and have it be taken seriously.”  Love is a tricky word – so loaded and so empty at the same time.  And I do not talk so much about social policy anymore. What I do think and talk about often is relationships – the relationships that underpin the individual and collective creative processes that drive social change. In saying this, I mean social change geared towards growing a more peaceful, healthy, balanced and equitable world.  And I am wondering – as I think about relationships – where does love fit into social change?

To answer this question, I’m inclined to define what I mean by love. Of course, there are many different types of love – but when it comes to social change and relationships (of all kinds from your relationships between spouses to relationships between strangers – if that isn’t an oxymoron), I’ve recently landed on the idea that for me love is kindness and compassion. To be loving means to be kind and compassionate.  Love is something we can manifest towards everyone. Last summer, I found myself thinking that really I would like to be able to love everyone on the bus – which means I would to be able to be kind and compassionate with everyone on the bus. That is to say, I want to live a life where love is not something I want to reserve solely for people I know. And love is not only for expressing outwards – I aspire to be loving towards myself.

I also aspire to be able to love people unconditionally – all people. I know a lot of people who will tell me (and have told me) that this is naïve, not possible. “If someone murders your child, are you going to love them? Be kind to them? Really?” is one example of a reaction to talking about loving people unconditionally. “If your boyfriend or girlfriend betrays you, you can’t be expected to love them anymore!” is another.  “A person who goes around loving unconditionally, is a person who lets their self get walked all over” is yet another reaction. I could go on.

Unconditional love itself is a huge topic. A topic tied to answering the question “What does it mean to be kind and compassionate?” Well, people have written books upon books about love, kindness and compassion, haven’t they?  I am not going to try to define kindness and compassion or go any deeper into a definition of love.   And I have decided not to try and answer the question posed at the beginning of this post: “Where does love fit into social change?” Rather, I would like to play with the question by posing other questions…

• What is love/loving-kindness? In what forms can it manifest?
• What does a loving relationship look and feel like?
• How are we being when we are being loving?
• How do we know when we are not being loving?
• On what occasions/under what circumstances would it serve us(the individual and/or the collective) well to be un-loving?
• What is kindness? On what occasions/under what circumstances would it serve us (the individual and/or the collective) well to be unkind?
• What is compassion? On what occasions/under what circumstances would it serve us (the individual and/or the collective) well to be dis-compassionate?
• What is the connection between the nature of our relationships with one another and the structures and systems of our communities/societies?
• What are examples of structures and systems (formal and informal) that reflect love-based relationships? 
• Why do we often feel very uncomfortable talking about love in relation to political, economic and social change?

What’s love got to do with social change?

Plenty, I’m sure…but I’ll look to answer this question in depth later. For now, I’m going to delve into these questions some more.

I hope you will do the same.

For some time now, I’ve been inclined to say “I don’t believe in progress.” I think if I were to be more precise, I would say “I don’t believe progress occurs in a linear fashion.” The word progress has its etymology and literal definition in the action of walking forward. Figuratively it means achievement to higher stages. Of course, I believe in development – in the sense that we can develop who and how we are being in ways that are more beneficial to ourselves, each other and the planet. We can progress. But we do not do so by walking forward in a straight line. And sometimes we don’t walk forward. Sometimes we walk backwards. But I’m not simply thinking about a two steps forward, one step backwards paradigm. No, I’m thinking we sometimes zig-zag, go sideways, on the diagonal. What’s for sure is that we are always moving – even when we think we are stuck, I believe we are moving – just perhaps imperceptibly. The Zapatista movement has a symbol for this reality – the reality of change that occurs slowly through perseverance that includes conscious movement: El Caracol – the Snail.  But perhaps more on that later, because my main point is less about pace and more about direction. What does it mean to think about social change from a non-linear perspective?

Since I’ve been here, I have had three conversations (most recently, one this afternoon) where we focused on how it is that the Zapatista movement is not an attempt to hark back to indigenous living in pre-colonial times. The idea is not to idealize the past. The idea is to learn from traditions, e.g., traditions of living collectively, traditions of using herbs and plants to heal, traditions of being interconnected with each other and with the land and animals, traditions of being resourceful, traditions of being creative. At the same time, the idea is also to adapt and modify. This refers not only to work with technology, e.g. modern medicinal practices and tools, but also to the need to reflect on how we are living and have been living in terms of our relationships, e.g. between men and women.

People work together to create a different future. If I understand correctly, at its heart, the Zapatista movement is a collective creative process wherein people are doing their best to live the change they/we want to see in the world. This change has strong roots in the values of autonomy, dignity and mutual respect.

What has always been a form of resistance, is also a form of transformation. The Zapatista movement – as I understand it – is on the one hand about resistance to the cosmologies, ideologies, economies, political and social relationships/dynamics that foster inequities, injustice, disrespect and on the other hand is about a process of transformation in which people shift from one way of living to another – from an ugly caterpillar (no offense caterpillars!) to a beautiful butterfly.

This transformation takes time. Takes work. Involves a breaking down of what is, in order to create what can be.

Inevitably, in this creative and transformative process, people experience conflict. Anyone who has sought internal transformation will be generally familiar with this, will know the experience first hand of how difficult it can be to change – no matter how strong our intentions. The challenges we face as individuals mirror the challenges we face as in collectives/in communities.

I have heard stories of how stopping violence against women is integral to the Zapatista movement and how sometimes doing so requires abandoning certain aspects of tradition. It requires a breaking down of what was in order to create new dynamics, new forms of relationships.  I have heard about how diversity within the collective is a reality that must be acknowledged and respected, but then the question is how to work with that diversity – and this is an ongoing work in progress. I have heard about how sometimes elders want to share their wisdom and also welcome fusion of the traditional with the modern, while other times elders become almost proprietary and/or purists and choose to hoard their wisdom rather than ensure it is passed on to others.

I imagine that in Zapatista communities, tensions between old and new or between one way and another are inevitable. Sometimes the answer, the resolution to tension or a conflict, is simply and quickly found. Other times, people must travel on a longer journey together to create their next steps in harmony with who and how they want to be collectively.  In this journey, people are guided by principles rather than specific outcomes – what the future looks like, what success looks like is unknown.

The key is, people – we – need allow are themselves/ourselves to move and create in this way – slowly, with a huge degree of uncertainty, and with movement in many directions. Last month, someone explained to me that in Zapatista communities they seek to resolve conflict through dialogue and consensus. Easier said than done, you might be thinking. I would agree. To date, I have not learned more about how this process has worked in practice in Zapatista communities, or I would give a concrete example. However, as a mediator, I think I have some inkling as to how it might work. And also how it might be very challenging– though maybe it would be less challenging than it would be in communities dominated by different ideologies, economies, forms of social relationships, power dynamics, belief systems. At its heart will be dialogue that covers much ground and allows for the unknown or unseen to appear unexpectedly. 

In any collective creative process, we move this way and that. We make what we think of as mistakes – though in the moment we acted they felt like the ‘right thing to do.’ We laugh, we cry, we struggle, we overcome. We remain open to discovering, encountering that which we do not yet know/see (but often can help us immensely!) – in our individuals selves, in others, in the group dynamic. We do not really know the exact route to our destination, we rely on principles and intuition to guide us with each step.

What we don’t do is walk in straight line from A to B. This is a powerful myth that readily disconnects us from our creative selves and limits who and how we can be.

In what ways are you viewing and living social change, social activism, your life as a linear construct?  What are the implications of doing so? What changes would you make in these arenas if you began to view them and live them – if you began to accept them – for the non-linear collective creative processes that they actually are (and yes, from my point of view, you individual life is a collective creative process)?  

I started a post the other week on the theme of violence. I’m sure I’ll come back to it, but in the meantime, I’ve come back to a recurring theme in my work/life: invisibility.   Invisible means unseen. The word invisible is an adjective – and can be understood as a way of describing an intrinsic characteristic. The coat is invisible.  Yet, invisibility can also be extrinsic.  We create invisibility through not seeing. We create the condition of invisibility through coverings and hidings. Why am I thinking about invisibility? Because I’m thinking about what we see and don’t see in ourselves, each other and the collective creative process that is social change. I’m thinking about the importance of SEEING.

We say: “Seeing is believing.” I’ve never given much thought to this saying. But as I was typing the last sentence in the first paragraph, it popped into my head: Seeing is believing. Yes, it is, isn’t it? We have to believe or be open to believing before we can see.

By ‘see’ I’m not only thinking in the realm of the physical – being able to see something physically. After all, we also say: “Oh, I see” to show that we understand; it is like saying “Oh, I get it/you.” Particularly in this sense – this sense of recognition, understanding and connection – sight is hugely important.

How do we strengthen our sight – our ability to see? 

This past week, I had experiences where it was – afterwards, of course – very clear to me that in many ways I had been blinding myself. I was choosing not to see, for example, that I had put a new friend into a box made of prejudices and assumptions interwoven with my own fears. Because my friend was in this box, I was never really seeing him in his fullness – I didn’t give him a chance to be seen or perhaps more accurately, I didn’t give myself a chance to see him. We met and I thought to myself “Oh, he’s this, this and this…” and these assumptions guided my interactions from then on. I think of it either as though I put him in a box or I created a special set of glasses that I wore around him (or even not just around him, I wore those glasses even when thinking of him). Let’s call him Tim. I created a pair of Tim glasses – and I could only see Tim through those lenses.

As I type I realize that this metaphor starts to get messy. For example, because of my Tim glasses, I would HEAR every sentence Tim uttered in a particular way. Impossible to separate seeing from hearing – all of which really are within UNDERSTANDING. But perhaps I am digressing…

As I sit here typing, I’m wondering about how many pairs of glasses I carry around with me – some specific to certain people, some more generic (though which I see all people). Maybe I go about wearing multiple pairs at the same time  – or it is just that I wear one pair of glasses with these lenses that are constantly changing moment by moment – depending on what beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, presumptions are alive within me at the time.

I’m also thinking about how difficult it can be sometimes to take off a pair of glasses – accustomed as we are to wearing them. For example, a few weeks after knowing Tim, I remember thinking: “I’m not being open to seeing him in his fullness…I need to open up.” I did open up for a bit, but then closed back down again  – I took off the glasses, but only for a short spell.  After all, I might have created those glasses when I met him, but really the material for the Tim glasses pre-dates my meeting him, no? 

What glasses am I wearing and are they really helping me to see more clearly?

What glasses are you wearing and are they really helping you to see more clearly?

What are your lenses made of – what creates the glass through which you are looking – ahh, looking glass…now I’m talking mirrors. I think I’ll leave that for another post…

My first day in San Cristóbal de las Casas, I nearly ended up in the hospital. I was walking down the street – on the sidewalk, struggling to send a text on my newly acquired, very basic (yet somehow repeatedly confounding me) cell phone. All of a sudden, I stumbled – big time. I stumbled because I had reached an intersection and the level of the sidewalk was about a foot higher than the street. Thankfully, that day I must have had a really good sense of balance and strong ankles – because I stumbled without falling flat and without twisting an ankle. Lately, I’m really valuing this gift that San Cristóbal is presenting to me in a variety of ways – a strong reminder to be pay attention, be present, be aware.

The sidewalks are high, uneven and regularly slanting this way and that. When it rains, the opportunities to slide and slip are rather abundant. Many of the roads are uneven cobblestones. As I walk the streets of San Cristóbal, I find myself focusing solely on what I am doing – walking. If my mind wanders too much or I venture to start scribing a text – I’m likely to lose my balance. Likewise, if I try to move to fast, I’m likely to end up on my ass.

Go slow. Be aware.

I get this same message when I speak Spanish. Learning a new language keeps demanding that I pause to reflect on what I want to say and how best to say it. This slows down my speaking pace. This pushes me to be aware of what it is I want to communicate and the fact that sometimes I’m not at all communicating effectively. I also feel quite vulnerable when I’m speaking Spanish – a language in which I am conversant but far from fluent. I am aware of what I do not know.  I am – over and over again – reminded of my ignorance.

Humility.

Learning a new language also is a great way to practice the art of listening. As a mediator, I generally tend to be aware of the importance of listening attentively and try to make this my regular practice. Listening is a whole different kind of experience when you might only understand every other word in a sentence. Or when you think you’ve understood what someone has said only to realize you got it all wrong.

Patience. More humility.

I’m loving all this – I’m loving the slowness in how I move through the streets and in how I speak. Sure, I get very frustrated with my Spanish-language ability. I don’t like not having the words to say what I want to say. I don’t like completely misunderstanding people. But that is all part of the journey – ignorance and mistakes. I love that with each day, I care less and less about the mistakes. I’m happy to laugh at the language mishaps that keep happening. I embrace my ignorance. I’m becoming more confident in saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you. Could you please repeat that – I’m here trying to improve my Spanish.” I’m getting more and more comfortable with the pace of my progress – relishing the little successes rather than tearing myself apart of the on-going challenges.

Ahh, gratitude for tiny experiences of satisfaction.

What’s my point when it comes to social change?

Well, as the tagline says, I’m passionate about rooting social change in the art of awareness. My point is that here in San Cristóbal de las Casas, I’m getting some pretty wonderful training in awareness from some rather unexpected/unconventional sources – the sidewalks and the streets – and conventional ones – learning another language.   And connected to all this awareness is presence – I’m really learning/practicing being present. If I’m not present, I’m likely to fall while I walk down the street. If I’m not present, I’m likely to make a lot of mistakes while speaking Spanish and do a poor job of communicating what I want to communicate and of understanding what others are trying to say to me. If I’m not present, I’m likely to miss opportunities for learning – about language and culture.

In what ways could you be more present – at work, at home, in any given moment? What benefits might greater presence bring to you? 

Wow. So much to write about when it comes to seeing and connecting to self, others and the creative process in different ways. Right now, the theme that is capturing my attention most strongly is values. I have been having numerous discussions this past week about values and what it means to live by our values. For example, the other day a friend of mine turned down a contract when he found out the organization was funding an organization well known for corruption. He had been deliberating whether or not to work with this organization for some time. Then he found out about this connection and decided it was the straw that broke the camel’s back (or the drop that made the vase overflow, as they say here) and said “I’m sorry, I just can’t work on this project.” Earlier this year, I was reading Gandhi Wields the Weapon of Moral Power by Gene Sharp. This book, which centers around three case histories from the Satyagraha movement, emphasizes the importance of sacrifice. So it is that I’m thinking a lot about sacrifice, privilege and values.  

This friend, let’s call him David, at one stage said to me “I guess maybe I just have to be honest with myself that really I’m taking this job for the money.” This was in part a response to me saying “Look, if you’ve got all this concerns about how they work with the community based groups then either walk away or try and be a force for change within the system.” We’re talking here about a large first-world funder working/funding in a third world country (this is how it has been put to me by people from here). The usual criticisms that can often be applied to funders in the US and the UK apply, with the extra layer of first-world/third-world power dynamics. I’m going to leave all that for another post (though in the meantime direct you to Liam Barrington Bush’s latest on funding relationships– Give Trust, Get Accountability). 

“I’m doing this because I need the money.” The more I thought about it, the more surprised I was that David said this. This seemed inconsistent with his values. Also, I found myself thinking “Hang on, surely, you could make different choices. For example, you could say no the job and get a smaller apartment so your rent would be lower.” At the same time, I couldn’t help but look in the mirror. “In what ways is one set of choices in my life – by which I think I mean choices based on my attachment to a certainly decidedly middle class and super materially comfortable way of living – influencing other choices I’m making. How comfortably does the whole package of my choices sit with my moral values?” 

Recently, talking about this subject with another friend the other day, we agreed that this this is a dilemma of middle class privilege – what I like to call ‘bourgeois angst.’ My friend added that she has friends who are ready to go to jail, are literally (given the context here) ready to die in the name of acting to promote social justice.  They are willing to sacrifice their lives. This hardly compares to sacrificing a bedroom, no? Yet, bourgeois angst is nevertheless and important issue. By virtue of our upbringings or where life has landed us as adults, we can find ourselves living in a particular way, setting particular standards, adopting particular cultural norms. Entrenched as we are in ways, standards, and norms of living, we can find it very difficult to walk out from what has become so familiar to us. And at times, walking out can sometimes create distances between us and people who matter to us.  Such challenges may not be life and death, but they still count as challenges that can leave us feeling like we are making big sacrifices (bigger than abandoning one bedroom, but smaller than accepting a prison sentence or death).

I don’t really have a main or final point here. It is just that in the context of discussion I’ve been having and of a friend walking away from a job because he feels following his moral compass is more important than income security, I’m just wondering – “What sacrifices – however big or small – are you (am I) prepared to make in order to stand by your (my) moral values? What are you (am I) willing to give up, let go of – materially, intellectually and emotionally – in order to become more aligned with your (my) moral compass?    

I’m now writing from San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Mexico. This is a colonial town – a base for the Spanish colonists. This is a town surrounded by communities of indigenous peoples. The context of social activism here – indigenous peoples standing up for  autonomy and dignity – immediately has thrown me into new perspectives. I’m being presented with the opportunity to push myself to examine the Gandhi dictum “Be the Change” and social activism more generally from different angles.  I’ve only been here four days, but my mind is whirling. Where do I begin? A key topic emerging for me is the relationship between the individual and the collective. I’m in a place where the collective has primacy. But I’m not going to write about that now – I’m too muddled on that front. Instead, I’d like to take a look at the subject of wounds, healing and love.

At the airport in Mexico City, I met an American who has retired in San Cristóbal.  He said San Cristóbal is magical. He predicted that I’d feel it immediately. Indeed, the city is beautiful – surrounded by lush tree covered mountains and streets overflowing with vibrant colors and sounds.  I feel very at ease here. And, of course, there is much spirit here – revolutionary spirit. I am in the land of the Zapatista movement, no?  Revolutionary spirit is animating, enlivening. It is the spirit of people wanting change, ready to stand up for basic human rights. It is the spirit of people coming together to create the change (in contrast to merely demanding it).  

Tourists are everywhere, ready to take a picture of an indigenous person dressed in the textiles of their community selling crafts. Social changemakers from outside Mexico are everywhere, ready to stand alongside indigenous peoples in the name of human rights. I’m sure the vast majority of both changemakers and tourists alike are enchanted by the tribal.  I know I have succumbed to such romanticism in the past – and if I’m honest a part of me still does – a romantic perception of peoples tied to ancient traditions, having a mystical connection to the land. 

Yet the backdrop to our romanticism – to our labeling San Cristóbal a magical place – is a long history of violence and abuse (and the social activists here will be very aware of this). This is a land of colonization, of bloody battles over land, of human displacement and of human degradation. Mexico, of course, is not unique in this. Twenty first century north, south and central America is comprised of colonized lands – countries with roots in genocide and slavery. Last night I watched the film Dakota 38. This is beautiful, extremely moving film about a journey of healing and reconciliation led by members of the Dakota tribe (indigenous peoples) in Midwestern United States.  Thirty eight men in the Dakota tribe were hanged after the community waged war against the White settlers who had taken their land, put them on reservations and had begun to starve them.

Dakota 38 has a number of currents running through it. I noticed for one that Jim, the man who had the dream that led to the journey documented by this film, was constantly saying to people “I love you.” This might seem hokey and hippy to some. But I know from my own personal experience how significant it is – what it means to be able to tell both strangers and people close to you “I love you” and mean it. Because we can do this only when we can look in the mirror, say the same and also mean it.  

Expressing love, the Dakota 38 shows us, is inextricably tied to compassion and forgiveness. Tied to this current of love in the film is another current – the message that we all – whatever our background – carry wounds. These wounds require healing. This healing requires love. It also requires honesty and self-reflection. In what ways have we been victims of violence (emotional and physical) and in what ways have we been perpetrators of it? How do we forgive others? How do we forgive ourselves? How do we release ourselves from the violence?

Social change is a collective creative process. A key question for me is: are we creating from the heavy stomp of our wounds or are we creating from the light flow of our health? What are you creating from in the different areas of your life, in the different communities you inhabit, in your relationship with your self?

I asked these questions knowing full well the answers are not straight forward. And that I’m not really talking about a clear split of coming from wounds versus coming from healing. The journey is messy, full of contradictions and tensions within and without. I’m already getting a strong sense of the messiness here in San Cristóbal – the messiness that goes hand in hand with the magic.