Dancing on the Edge

Sounds rather cliche and a bit crazy, doesn't it? Still, "dancing on the edge" is an appropriate and powerful metaphor for navigating fear and change.

Regardless of the style, tradition, or level of accomplishment, dancing is ultimately about balance and grace (yes, even popping has grace). Often we think of these aspects as evidencing in quiet and stillness, but that would be a rather tedious dance. Balance happens in dynamic movement, in strength and awareness of the web of influences one is playing upon and being played. The balance and grace of dance happens in passionate movement attained over time and practice - on the edge.

To dance at one's edge means to stretch a bit farther than is comfortable and known, to leap rather than step, to allow the music to sweep you away beyond your control. This is learning, this is change. Whether or not you can - I recommend that you do if at all possible - dance, learning about and how to dance can be a very powerful tool for activating the potency of change and fear.

Think about it - which is more scary: talking in front of a crowd (often cited as the number one fear) or dancing in front of a crowd? (I don't even think they surveyors asked about this one.) Accomplishing this feat, surfing this fear can bring you powerful insight into other challenges and fears. Engaging your body in emotional and psychological efforts means you are using more of your mind, which is definitely not limited to the capacity of your skull.

Bill Buxton, one of Microsoft's top innovators, advises: Always be bad at something that you are passionate about. So perhaps dancing doesn't tap that for you - fine - but find something that engages your whole body - yoga, kayaking, gardening - and brings you passion and an edge. It needs to be something which draws you a bit out of your comfort zone, something in which you could make mistakes and even - gasp! - fail. Experiencing, not just "knowing about," the emotional and psychological events of physical endeavor is how adults, and others, learn best.

We need to remain in awareness of the shared value of "dancing on the edge" as we embark on our adventures: balance and grace. Both are gained through strength and practice; both are illusive unless complemented by mistakes, falls, strains, fear, and passion.

Inside Out

One of may favorite parables is about Martin Luther and his tree.

In case you haven't heard this one...

One day, shortly after posting his complaints against the Catholic Church on a church door, Martin Luther was working in his garden. A small group of priests came up to him, hoping to catch him off-guard with an existential question that would lead to his recanting. One of them asked, "Brother Martin, if you knew for certain that you were going to die tomorrow and meet our Lord, what would you do?" Martin Luther was quiet for a moment as he continued to carefully fit a fruit tree sapling into the earth. As the priests waited, Martin sat back from his work and glanced up at them. In a calm, quiet voice, he said: "I would finish planting this tree."

This is a parable that is retold more for its truth than its facts. It reminds listeners to live each day fully, to live your entire being in each moment. It also reminds us that we will all die, regardless of what we do or do not.

But what if we turned this question inside out? What if I were to come up to you right now and demand, "If you knew for certain that you were going to live for two hundred more years, what would you do?"

This really turns our awareness and responsibility around. We would actually be around to experience, first hand, the world we are creating today. Also, no longer responsible for only our own, individual "salvation" we are met with the prospect of - as beautifully put by Sean Penn during his Oscar speech - potentially facing our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren with burning shame for our short-sighted carelessness. This makes the adage about seven generations real and immediate. With the prospect of living out the consequences of today's actions, would we continue with what we are doing today?

I have kept Martin's answer to that existential question in mind for many years. Now, with my growing awareness, participation, and investment (thank you, President Obama, for reclaiming this word and sentiment), I find that doing only what I think is right/sustainable/good for me is a primer for what we are truly called to do.

Yes, keyword: We. We are in this together. There is no "away" to which we can escape the consequences of our collectively unconscious acts. If we are to live, it is we who must wake up.

And it is time to wake up; the alarm is getting louder and the snooze button will not make it stop. Wake up crabby, wake up refreshed, wake up confused, wake up ready to go - however you do it, it is time to wake up and get moving away from the distraction, sleep-walking, and "zoning out." As our president has extolled - it is time to put aside childish things; i.e., time to take responsibility for our actions beyond immediate gratification and power plays. It is time to look deeply and far into how we want to live, not just what we do to acquire phantom wealth/money.

So, how would you answer the question: If you knew you would live for two hundred more years, what would you do right now?

Martin Luther would likely give the same answer.

Can we hear the kids?

You know that little sinking feeling one gets when the kids go quiet? You just know something is not right; they're either getting in trouble or hurt. When kids are healthy and engaged, we hear them; when we hear healthy, engaged kids it signals to us that things are "right."

Well, in the circles of community development, transition, and improvement I have not heard the kids.

One recent evening I attended the latest one of these circles of people talking...and talking...and talking about what to do to bring about vital, sustainable change for our communities. When my daughter (age 12yrs) asked, "What are we actually going to DO?" she was commended for her insight and then the adults proceeded to talk about how she was right that we had to do something. The one other person under 18yrs in attendance said nothing the entire time.

The day after the meeting, my daughter and I debriefed. We thought of ways kids could be included in this work, rather than just tolerated or added to what the adults are doing. We came up with ideas for creating "pods" for the kids during meetings: when the adults are theorizing, the kids could be working in another space to brainstorm what they can do, start networking with friends, create a website, plan an event to take the theory into practice. At one point, the pod would rejoin the adults and meld what they've been working on with what the kids have brought. I asked her if she thought it would be helpful to have one adult along in the pod to guide, not rule, the process (aware of the pitfalls of distraction). Her response: "No - trust the kids." She beautifully brought me into awareness of my own projection of my frustrations with adult meetings! I then asked her what kind of age range could be encompassed by our ideas of inclusion. She undercut my guess by three years; in her opinion, everyone over the age of five could and should be a participant in shaping a nourishing world.

Two days after that meeting, she had established a group of 20 people - including four adults - who are interested in working for sustainability, particularly in the area of consumerism as it is targeted at kids and teens. My proud-Mom buttons are pinging everywhere!

This is what our efforts need - the energy, creativity, perspective, and experience of our most vital resource! Our children need to be engaged with the work of building their inheritance. We all know stories of "spoiled rich kids" who have no clue as to how to manage the enterprises that have facilitated their lives. Well-meaning parents mistakenly "protect" them from the hardships of the work they've done to secure a particular incarnation of "the good life." How much more important it is for our children to know what it takes to guarantee clean water, air, and soil for everyone! What a waste of time, energy, and resources to constantly reinvent the wheel as young adults have to learn anew, reclaim what their parents and grandparents knew and did.

The sustainability of any movement or enterprise is predicated on legacy planning - who will do this work when you don't? How long will it take someone else to be in a position to replace you when you move on to something else? So often, the answers to these questions arrive in multiples; one trailblazer or hub is replaced by many.

Beyond technology and getting things done, our kids need to learn from us how to do it together over the long-haul. As with so much in life, sustainability isn't just what we do - but how we do it.

In a 21st Century world of collaborative leadership, we need to be listening for and to our kids. Their engagement will made all the difference.

Doing It Anyway

This is one of those times that I'm really not in the mood to be thoughtful, inspiring, or insightful - and I'm going to do it anyway, I hope.

Today, I'm feeling really sad and scared - as so many people who are losing their jobs, incomes, houses, livelihoods are. Those of us who have worked hard, been good people, played by the rules (mostly), and absolutely did our best are being trampled by the fighting elephants of unscrupulous, greedy financiers and power brokers who don't seem to notice and certainly don't care for our suffering.

I have been "following my bliss" for years, and the money has not come. I realized yesterday that my embrace of this mantra was naive, at best. This phrase was uttered by a very privileged, white, American man who had access and opportunities that very few of us have. It's all well and good to have dreams, but I really wish someone had shown that idealistic girl of twenty (me) that bliss needs to be balanced with awareness of shared reality; that the world we inhabit is not conducive to nurturing bliss for everyone who wants it. Also, the evil American paradigm of getting ahead if you work hard enough is complete, toxic crap - so many people are ahead of me who have done very little; so many people are behind me who have done so much. As I face, again, the abyss of the financial unknown I am overwhelmed by weariness and anger; I hate feeling duped.

Dr. King said that Pharaoh kept the slaves enslaved by getting them to fight amongst themselves and that only when the slaves come together can freedom be achieved.

We are wage slaves. All of us who "have to go to work" whether or not we're sick, maltreated, the sun is shining, our child is in need, we need rest, or we'd just rather read a book and have tea with a friend. How did we get here? Who sold us? What was our price? Can we earn our freedom? Must we fight for it? Can we possibly come together to end this slavery once and for all?

We are good people; the vast majority of us work very hard for very little. Why?

I am privileged and oppressed. I have a warm, safe place to sleep; enough good food, a loving, support network of people; a decent place to earn money to pay for my basic needs; and a healthy mind and body. I don't have enough money to get appropriate care for my daughter; I am not considered an asset in business due to my background in academia and non-profits; the only job I could get is impermanent and far below my capabilities; and "following my bliss" has cost me hundreds of thousands dollars in tuition I will likely spend the rest of my life paying off - with interest.

We who aspire and desire beyond what we have are schooled in acceptance, compassion, and "the power of now." What if we defy our lessons? What if we throw off the yoke of the hourly wage - what would that look like?

Imagine for a moment:

Tomorrow you tell your boss you want better stories to tell from your deathbed. One or two of your co-workers over hears you. All of you are moved to silence for moment. A nod moves like a wave among you. You all take the rest of the day off.

- Or -

You all beginning talking very actively about how you could spend the majority of your waking hours creating better stories, stories that aren't about enduring, oppression, seething anger, or quiet desperation. This conversation spreads into the hall and the group email posts. The head man (and it is most likely a man) hears a rumor that production is down due to too much staff interaction. He reacts with new policies and penalties for talking to each other, blaming a few bad apples for endangering the company and "your families' well-being." These are ignored in favor of a "field trip" to another company where some friends of friends have come into the conversation to create new stories.

Imagination is sparked and breathing eases. People trade jobs or share jobs or go on sabbatical - all with full pay and benefits because the non-violent protests in HR offices throughout the region have reached the state level and the combined force of wage slave rebellion has awakened the minds and hearts of sonambulistic governance. People embrace the idea of working to live, rather than living to work.

Siesta becomes mandatory and childcare workers can pay cash for their children's tuition.

Fantasy - yes. So was travel to the moon. So was having a black man in the Oval Office.

Yes, we can!

What a trick! Following my bliss was misleading - and my hope and perseverance has led me into bliss!

In Gratitude for Being Broken Open

I'm feeling rather low energy tonight (fighting off a cold, actually), so I'm fishing around my journal entries for something good to share - since mustering creativity is more than I can manage at the moment.

Here's what I found dating back to July 2008:

Thank you, Anna Deveare Smith.

What we do for our kids! I was on the return leg of a bus trip from to Federal Way to drop my daughter off with my sister so she could spend some time with her cousin. My sister, a nurse with her own 3-bedroom house and an SUV, “couldn’t afford” the gas to come to north Seattle to pick up her niece; so I, an office temp trying to start her own business with no car and renting a one-bedroom apartment, get to ride the bus two hours each way for my daughter to have a day with her cousin. But I have my book. Borrowed from the library after listening to her speak on Democracy Now!, I’m reading Talk to Me by Anna Deveare Smith. As I board the same bus (“Didn’t I just see you?” asks the driver), I am consoled by the presence of this rich, consciously streaming narrative and am looking forward to diving in for the next couple hours. But the highway is too bumpy and I have to stop reading. Now I have two hours of looking out the window; not all together unpleasant, but not what I wanted (I’ve been down this road before).

In Sea-Tac (a city created and named after an airport), we are held up at each stop by tourists heading into Seattle who are unfamiliar with riding buses – I suspect not only in this city but in any city. One woman is noticeably gregarious and plops down in the one seat next to me, effectively separating herself from her party with the declaration, “I’m sitting right here – you never know who you’re going to meet.”

I didn’t exactly jump at the chance. She wore a lot of perfume, had the barrel shape of the uncomfortably privileged middle-aged, white middle class, and a southern accent. A whole bunch of prejudices leapt to my forebrain. In a matter of seconds, I had decided we had nothing in common. Still, somehow I unconsciously bypassed these prejudices – and before I was aware of what I was doing, I extended my hand to her and said on the tail of her declaration, “Hi, I’m EV.” She returned my handshake in a firm grasp and said, “How sweet! I’m Nancy and we’re just back from a cruise.” Ugh, more prejudices crowded for attention.

I ignored them. Something greater was at work here. As I was holding Talk to Me in my hands, I was sitting on a Seattle bus next to Nancy who wanted to meet people, to talk. Anna had written about her project to find American character between the well-rehearsed lines of everyday speech, she was looking for the treasure that appeared when language, syntax, grammar broke down. Now, plopped down almost in my lap, was a living American character who wanted to talk.

I discovered that Nancy knows and is related to a lot of people who are having babies. She takes special care in not just choosing gifts for these babies, but described in detail how she would wrap each present around a theme and how the use of the elements could be extended beyond the visual aesthetics of gift wrapping. She sees herself as “keeper” for her husband (who looked to be at least ten years older) and they had just completed their latest cruise to Alaska – a rather subdued affair due to the “elderly” passengers. She hails from Baton Rouge and her form of racism is rather more raw and overt than mine; I live in a city of mostly whites, she lives in a city with a robust black populace. She is polite and thoughtful enough to cosset her racism in firsthand accounts and CNN news reports. Her rendition of one of her husbands employees was caring, for all its assumed superiority. This employee is a young, black woman who relocated after losing her home in Hurricane Katrina. I felt my heart break open when Nancy told me this young woman’s name, Katrina, and how she now hates her name.

Nancy and I talked for about 45 minutes - she asking me some questions, me challenging her assumptions about political candidates (I just can’t help myself!), and each of us holding space for, in Parker Palmer’s terms, the “other.” Just as I was thinking, “Well, this has been a good exercise,” the treasure appeared.

In the midst of public transportation, gas prices, and personal values as expressed by vehicle choice, I mentioned that I felt it ironic that in a few hours I would be heading down this highway again to see a live performance of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Tacoma.

Even from behind our sunglasses I could see her eyes light up.

“You’re going to Rocky Horror?!” she almost squealed.

She started doing moves to "The Time Warp" sitting down! Her voice got higher and her sentences dropped in and out, got clipped in the middle, and came faster and faster as she talked about how much fun I would have. Her excitement overtook mine for the evening, but I soon got caught up and started feeling really excited about the show for the first time (I’ve seen RHPS many times and was going at the behest of a “virgin” friend).

We hopped off the bus at the same stop and I wished Nancy (white, Southern, Republican, married, nurse, grandmother, tourist, Rocky fan) safe travels and she told me (white, Northern, anarchist, mother, divorced, working a temp job while starting a business, new transplant, Rocky fan) to “Have fun tonight!”

Thanks to Anna, I opened up with someone who was very different from me and got to really listen. Thanks to Nancy, I spent the transfer to my next bus and subsequent ride planning my outfit and listening to how much I love being surprised by people who show up from behind their labels.

Shadows of "Emotional Intelligence"

I have some "issues" with the concept of "emotional intelligence;" these are many and varied, but the one that's popped up lately is how this concept of "managing emotions" is again being used to set one group above another, to reinforce the hierarchy of "good emotions" and "bad emotions." As with the diatribes about "living fearlessly," the notion of managing one's way into a life without suffering is overly simplistic, reactionary, and potentially dangerous. We need fear and suffering - always present/always in balance with love and joy. The dynamic balance of emotions - all emotions - is what brings us into rich, vital lives.

To be fair, perhaps we (I and the proponents of E.I.) are conceiving of suffering in different ways. This is my take on it: Yes, suffering – not one of my favorite feelings. Still, to devalue any of our vast palette of emotions to is participate in perpetuating white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy (thank you, bell hooks). Efforts to suppress, manage, and intellectualize emotions have led to efforts to suppress and oppress people who have expressed emotions deemed “bad” or less mature – particularly women. While I certainly agree that suffering is not desirable, I would die without it. I do not seek pain, suffering, or grief and neither do I seek to eliminate them from my experience of life. Without suffering we do not have compassion (“suffering with”); without suffering I would not know what it is to feel relief, joy, or peace. Some of us have the privilege of limiting our suffering to that which we can control – our own actions and reactions. Many, many people do not have such privilege; their sufferings are neither chosen nor optional.

In the midst of hunger, war, addiction, mental illness, abuse, oppression, and a sick plethora of plagues on our existence, people suffer; and as long as one suffers, we all suffer regardless of how present, mature, or “good” we are. This is where the dynamism of living consciously can really serve to move us into lives of abundance. I am vastly grateful for all my emotions; they teach me, make me more present, and connect me with Life. It's not just that I suffer with others through our ultimate connection, I'm also joyous (OT: why is 'suffer' a verb, but 'joy' isn't?) with others - my joy potentially easing some suffering, my suffering potentially eased by the joy of others.

The shadow of "managing emotions with intelligence" is that rationality is not usually the best tool to address imminent or existential experience. Perhaps we could try choosing how we feel about our thoughts, rather than constantly choosing how we think about our 'felts.' I feel this would lead us to focusing on our strengths, appreciative inquiry into our work, and including more and varied voices in our conversations.