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 I am a self-identified possibility seeker. Or am I?
Over the last few years I came to realize that when it came to investing my energy into helping to bring forward “possibilities” for how we might create a new “possibility” in the world – that is one of collective action towards collective change towards a healthful relationship with the earth – I was rather biased. Rightly so perhaps, as both the science and now the lived evidence is clear that humans have altered the biosphere in a way that could lead to our own extinction. But still the question arose…can I really explore possibility when I am NOT sitting in the energy of possibility myself? Seated from my own place of very focused will, aim and outright need whilst talking about possibility started to seem a bit contradictory. Not to mention increasingly stressful. The more I talked about “possibility” (from my place of extreme attachment to outcome!) the more contracted I felt. What was going on? Through a lot of personal inquiry I found that an archetypal aspect of me, my very own eternal child, had been running the show in both my first career in environmental science, and more recently in my Possibility Project Podcast. This eternal child part of me is just that…forever young! And as all wee ones do, she believes in magic. Her magical thinking is a beautiful thing and has in fact helped me through many dark times, BUT this is the ONLY kind of thinking that she has. She believes in magical possibilities long after reality has shown her something else.  This summer I’ve gotten to sink into some great listening with a podcast club that I have been hosting. And one of the episodes that we listened to really has got me revisiting a story from Greek mythology – that of Pandora and her box!*
You know it I’m sure…the one where the Gods create the first mortal woman “Pandora” and send her to the world of men to stir shit up! Zeus gives her a box and tells her to take it with her but to never ever open the box. Well, she’s also been endowed with the entire force behind evolution…that great questing force of CURIOUSITY…and so she just can’t not open that box! What’s in the box? All of the “evils” of the world of course. She opens the box one bored day and out flies all of the various forms of suffering that would henceforth be inflicted upon humanity for all of the rest of time – war, plague, famine, despair, etc etc etc. But wouldn’t you know it, there at the very bottom of the box, one seeming gift – that of “hope”.
With the passing of the Queen, arguably the last monarch to so clearly live as mascot for the entity that is Britain, all of us who descend from the people of Great Britain have the opportunity do our own piece of reconciling work with this nation that ultimately gave us life.
The ruler or leader of any field of belonging (e.g. a country, religion, business, etc) is like the center pole on a circus tent. Yes, there are other supports, but the leader is the central point upon which everything else is strung. When this pole is removed the entire field wobbles and in this instability there is most likely uncertainty, perhaps fear and loss, but there is also an opportunity for something new to enter a space that was previously so well secured and clearly defined that change was unlikely, or even impossible. |
