Everyone that has lived by the sea can recognise the feeling of being thick inside a pea-soup fog, lost to all around them.
They know the land is there, they know what the land looks like, but it’s gone. They need a foghorn.
That moment of realisation. I don’t have a bloody clue where I am! Shit!
Then through the distance, the long slow and reassuring sound of the horn. A sigh of relief.
I’ve said many times in my articles, we’re living in a time of high-intensity chaos and uncertainty. You can throw the first war on European soil since the 1930s in there as well. We get it, God. It’s a time of uncertainty.
Surrender to uncertainty!!!
Granted, we’ve been fighting proxy wars on other people’s soil for the entire time since the last war on European soil. Spoiler alert, we’re not the saints here.
Here’s the foghorn:
You don’t know what to do, and neither do I, and we can acknowledge and be with that together.
The inspiration for this came from the book ‘Come Of Age’ by Stephen Jenkinson.
In a question and answer session, he was asked to describe precisely why all of the interviewer’s friends were depressed. Jenkinson replied that he didn’t know because he didn’t know them and that just for tonight, you’re allowed to be depressed sitting next to someone else who also feels depressed.
That is connection. That is what will help us get through complexity.
We are all a small piece of a vast woven tapestry of humanity. We need each other.
Acknowledging that we don’t know is often so hard and so vulnerable.
It opens us up to insecurity, unsafe environments, possible abandonment, and scorn. It opens us up to all those memories of when we felt that way as a kid and all those half-baked ideas we came up with to keep ourselves safe.
Some of those ideas are genius. Some straight-up don’t make sense. Kids’ brains are different!
The fact is that we will face all of those things in life. The one thing that hurts us more than anything else, is to not have our dignity or our integrity. To not be honest to ourselves, speak truthfully with our hearts and be kind to others.
When we admit we don’t know, the process of curiosity and learning can then start.
If we pretend we know (errr, look at the world right now), we stay entrenched in ideas that aren’t working.
Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different answer.
Then we are living in an insane world. I’m not even sure Einstein said that anymore because so many people have quoted him for so many things. It’s like Keanu Reeves or Gandhi. Either they were prolific, or someone is stretching the truth.
When I’m working in creativity, there are often moments when the musician and I will look at each other with a perplexed tone in our eyes. We both know that the moment has arrived where neither of us knows where to go with the song.
There’s a moment where we both consider whether to say that out loud or to bludgeon our way through the way that isn’t working. Doing that creates a crap song by the way, the song ups and leaves in indignation and goes and finds someone who can actually listen.
Maybe the song doesn’t know where the song wants to go. Maybe it wants to explore with you in open vulnerability.
Creativity, the creative genius, or the spirit which visits us with said song, is a fickle muse. It requires complete surrender and whole attention; otherwise, it gets bored and wanders off to find a frozen yoghurt.
Creatives, you know what I mean.
1 a.m., totally in the zone, flowing and, eh, ah, where’s it gone?!
Oh well.
The world is in chaos because of our inability to be flexible. We are rigid because we have to know things and we have to progress all the time.
Often, as people who value introspection and growth, we can feel shame or personally responsible for this.
We can lose our perspective or our personal style, crushed under the weight of collective responsibility.
Who here feels burdened by these?:
- Recycling
- Saving
- Health insurance
- Being green enough
- Eating the right food (being vegan enough)
- Being the best you can be
- Saving the planet
- Competing with everyone
- Staying safe during covid — knowing whether to wear a mask now that the governments are saying we don’t have to — yet the virus is still here
*all hands go up*
Who made that decision, and where was the discussion?
The decision that seems to have been made at this time is that we know what the solution is. For everyone to pull together and do their part. Yes and no. We need more top-down action, and we need more discussion.
Stand back from this a second and realise that most, if not all, of the detrimental pollution in the world comes from big company supply chains supplying the food and energy consumer industry.
The simple, innovative solution is to shop smarter. We have legitimate power there.
Buy products that you know are sustainable and will give you sustainable energy and a solid and staple diet. It doesn’t have to hurt your wallet. We’ve been surviving on root vegetables and gruel forever. Throw in some treats, like green vegetables and fruit, and you’ve got yourself a deal.
The new fad of the architectural industry is TIMBER! Come on, people, timber?! At a time when we need trees more than ever! You couldn’t make this shit up.
My friend and colleague gave me a coaching session today where I expressed frustration at how little I felt that I had and how much I had to do.
He understood me compassionately, but he did not pander to my request. He asked me where it was in my life that I wasn’t setting boundaries with my time and my resources.
This gave me a huge amount of agency. I was able to feel like I could take some direction back.
I was able to surrender from trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution, which doesn’t exist, to knowing that I’ve been going through a lot, and sometimes I don’t know.
We are going through a lot, and we don’t always know. As a world.
We are lost in the pea-soup fog because we don’t know which way to turn, and we don’t know who to turn to.
One of the best aspects of working with musicians is that they’re open to admitting when they don’t know something. Very often, if they fully surrender to the song, it will guide them — through their developed techniques, to a redirection of the flow.
We all have dead ends. It takes us owning up to them to open to creativity and find innovative solutions to the uncertainty we’re facing.
We’re at a dead end.
If you don’t know what to do, here are a few starter points:
- Ask a friend to be with you in the uncertainty.
- Be open and curious. Throw your solution based and fixing minds out the window. Allow your mind to be a translator of experience.
- Find a therapist to listen to your deepest feelings in safety.
- Surrender to uncertainty and trust that an innovative solution exists that you’re not yet aware of.
- Listen to the song.
- Plan a long term arrangement to buy an electric car, insulate your home or buy solar panels.
- Be in relationship with the world.
- Say no to unsustainable demands.
Best wishes and be real.
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Previously Published on Medium
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