(aka. Don’t just do something – sit there!)

I picked a big mission for myself. A decade ago as part of my Life Coach and Leadership training program – courtesy of Accomplishment Coaching – I distinguished my life purpose as ‘Love’. There was a noticeable ‘click’ at the time of recognition. And then my head got with it and started to work away at ‘what the hell does that mean? How do I do that?’. As I have sat with it, the question of ‘what would love do now?’ has become clearer to me.

Other aspects of myself that had remained hidden also got reflected back to me in my prior work with a Coach and during that program – distilled down to five words; Love . Serenity . Wisdom . Integrity . Joy

And again – my head has wrestled long and hard with those. My ego has grabbed onto them and tried to make them mean something that it could hang onto. In navigating this information – how it resonates with me and what it means for me, I have been moving from a place of recovery (end of marriage, near bankruptcy) back into solvency and growing my business(es). And leaning further into what all of these high words mean right here, right now with boots in the mud.

For most of my life I have been trying to fix what was wrong with myself and the world. That has had limited results. It has had me spend a lot of time in playing right/wrong, us/them, victim/perpetrator games. None of these look like ‘Love’. And then I have wrestled with ‘Love’ looking like passive, inactive acceptance. That does not sit right either. Love is definitely a verb.

And so, a few short years ago when I decided to revisit the activism of my 20’s and early 30’s this movement definitely felt like a deeper sense of ‘Love’ coming to life. How better to Love all of this around me far and wide; people, nature, the Earth other than to put my energy into creating a future in which all get to thrive? I started work. I opened my heart – and, slowly, over 3 years I found myself smashed into a wall that seemingly slowed me to a stop. It culminated in me putting myself in the way as part of a protest and being arrested. It triggered all of my ‘stuff’ around authority, right/wrong, injustice. I was faced with the felt-sense of the change I was looking to create as being impossible. I kept reading the literature on Climate and Biodiversity collapse. And then I found I could not read another article. I was touching despair and so started erecting walls to protect that tender heart. I let the fire dim.

There is a disempowering story of cowardice I could feed here. I choose another. This has been a necessary winter for my spirit. Winter has been filled with reading, conversations. It has not been idle; but I have judged it to be ‘inactive’. And spring is coming.

Here is what Love has to say. I care what happens. I am deeply concerned for the future of my children, yours, people all over this amazing resilient living planet – especially where the twisted knife of capitalism has and continues to lay waste. We do not have long to change course; much catastrophe is already baked-in [sic] to our future. The living world is being ruined by stories. Stories that are so easy to project onto other people. I believe that it is these stories – just like the ‘stories of ourselves’ (egos) that create havoc in our own lives – are the things that we (yes WE) must transcend if we are to change the trajectory we are on. It seems impossible. I take heart from a man who to me exemplified leading from Love; Nelson Mandela. He borrowed from a long line the quote ‘It always seems impossible until it is done‘ [1]. And apartheid in South Africa fell.

Placing myself in the way of the machine; saying ‘NO’ is important. It is not enough. There must be a ‘YES’ to another vision – another story. The only way to defeat a story is with a better story. The threads of this better story are coming together for me, along with an understanding of where I find support and allies. I believe there is no need anymore of a wakeup call. What is needed is a translation from isolated individual despair, to collective action for change. A transformation. It is another Coaching conversation; on the largest scale I know.

It is impossible – from here, to change the course we are on, for my actions to make a difference – from the story I have been living in. It is time to change that story and embrace a larger vision of what Love looks like. It is time to invite others beyond those I already know who are engaged and active. Scary territory – which is how I know it is my path. It feels alive. And I needed this time…

What happens when an immovable object meets an unstoppable force? The unstoppable force – stops, the immovable object – moves. A Koan for our times. The urgent long game is here.

15Feb23

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/01/05/done/