Three Amigas + One Girl

Let’s start with the girl. Listen to Greta… again:

Don’t cry. Remember that has been one of my rules. Most people who know me think that I am fairly even-keeled, which is a nice way of saying that I don’t seem to have strong emotional swings (until they erupt on occasion). People who get to know me better begin to experience my particular brand of stoicism as a sort of impenetrable wall. At first it may be a source of wonderment at what may appear to be a super-human like quality. But those who get even closer still come to the stark realization that, well, I’m not all that. It’s just my very well designed defense mechanisms. Upon that realization, the frustration begins to set in. Sensing that something much deeper is going on, the question begins to revolve around how to get past this fortress I have built (at least for those who are brave enough to go and stay there).

It’s frustrating for me too. Very frustrating. As the people closest to me try to reach me from the outside, I am frantically working from the inside to dismantle this thing I have built. My experience is often- damn, why did I have to build this so well? I haven’t cried uncontrollably to another human being since I was 5. The truth, however, is that I am super-sensitive. I actually cry at the drop of a hat. It’s just that my tears are silent, or if they need to be more than that they are shed in isolation. My very inner circle know this about me. I am bringing this up at the moment because what I want to share with you is that I cried deeply, outwardly, in heaving uncontrolled tears when I watched Greta’s TED Talk. In fact, the tears are still tricking out now as I write. And just to be fully transparent, you will start to notice that I am going to keep connecting these very big picture realities to my very personal experience of them. Notice that. It’s important. 

Before I get to the Three Amigas of Barcelona, I first need to say something more about Greta. Marty Webb, I know you are reading this, so this is for you. Part of the reason that Greta touched me so deeply is because of you, Marty. You know why. Let me explain it to everyone else. Marty is the founder of The Monarch School in Houston, Texas. Monarch is a ground-breaking school for kids with neurological differences such as autism. I had the great honor of being the architect of their campus. In the process, I had the privilege of learning from Marty, the brilliant staff, and their phenomenal students themselves about what it is to be human in this world.

The issue with autism, in a highly over-simplified nutshell, is that people who have it didn’t quite fully complete the individuation process during their early neurological development. That means that they don’t quite know where they end and the rest begins, which makes it very hard to make sense of the world in the neurotypical ways that we do. Stated differently, our social conventions don’t make sense to them because the idea of separation is foreign to them. What they taught me is that it isn’t them that are “off” – it’s us. Autism, as hard as it is on those who have it and those who care for them (Mary and Jim, I am thinking of you), is a gift to the rest of us for one simple reason: it reflects to us at this critical time in our story that we are all living in a state of disconnect. In a very powerful way, the epidemic rise in autism is showing us that our sense of separation is deeply problematic- if we would only pay attention.

People with autism don’t automatically fall in line with our separist worldview the way the rest of us do. At Monarch they have learned to work with each student to build a conscious, healthy connection between self and other, between self and nature. This process involves everything that is required in the regenerative processes that I now teach: self-reflection and self-actualization tied to systems-actualization. In short, it involves understanding that we are each nested into one big interbeing, each with our own unique role to play. I could go on and on about this, but instead I am just going to leave it at this: listen to Greta.

And now for Barcelona. I went to Barcelona to stretch myself. I feel the same sense of urgency as Greta does. So over the past year or so I have been working on entering into new arenas. Bigger arenas. This isn’t to negate the focused work that I am doing on the ground, it is to extend it. On the ground plane I utilize regenerative processes to catalyze Place. Places have their own inherent essence and unique gifts to offer. People as well have their own inherent essence and unique gifts to offer. My job, as I define it, is to unleash those. That is the game, in a nutshell. That is what will save us from ourselves, in a nutshell. 

I went to Barcelona to connect to an international community working on the resilience of humanity. They are primarily researchers who are feverishly trying to figure out what we need to do. There are about a million things that I could share with you about this, but let’s just stick with the nutshell as I see it. My nutshell is always a little off from the crowd. I am used to that, and I value that. In fact, that is probably the only thing that compels me to lend my voice to the equation. I have something to say that only I can say in the way that I say it. That is my unique gift to offer. My gift to the world is my voice. 

I didn’t know exactly what to expect of this particular crowd. It was my first time to be around them, rather than just reading their articles and twitter feeds (they love to twitter!). I don’t abide in the rational processes of research. I abide in vision, zooming in and out of perspective. But we have one thing in common- we all care deeply about the survival of humanity and those species which are threatened by us. If this is a bit too heavy for a Monday, I apologize. Hang in there. The nutshell is worth it.

Not knowing how they might respond, I decided not to hold back. For all I knew this would be the one and only chance that I would get to address them. So I chose to speak in a non-researchy tongue. I began by sharing with them that I replace the words “living system” with the words “living being” in my thinking. The former, although it isn’t meant to, objectifies what we are studying. The latter makes it personal. It instantly compels me to empathize with what I am looking at (a particular community for instance) and more importantly to be relational with it. In other words it isn’t something I am simply studying, it is something that I am in a process of becoming with.

Once we understand all things across all scales (humans, places, organizations, communities, cities, states, countries, the planet, etc.) as beings, we start to get the sense of respect that has been lacking. A being is a mysterious and magical thing in the sense that the whole is always greater than the parts. That is a mystery that we can never fully unlock. We will never be able to explain it away. Thank God, because then life would be boring. 

So anyway, I used my 15 minutes to explain how every being across all scales has a unique role to play in the evolution of the larger being. For you to be fully you, step one is to get in touch with your own essence where you will find your own unique gift(s) to offer. Self-actualization then comes from giving your gifts for the purpose of actualizing the larger being of which you are a part. This leads to co-evolution, which is to say the evolution of both you and of the larger being (family, organization, community, etc.) of which you are a part. Now I got a lot more specific about how to apply this to a community, but I’m giving you the nutshell. 

In the conference’s researchy presentation format, there wasn’t much time for reflection or conversation. My session was particularly time constrained and so it ended rather abruptly and in such a way that I couldn’t get a very good read on how it had gone over. But as the day went on a few people acknowledged hearing me in a way that I could tell they actually heard me. Two of those people became fast friends: Hanna Ruszczyk and Shivali Fifield. Together, over the next few days we became the Three Amigas, doing this whole conference thing, Barcelona, and the quest for resilience together. We had deep conversations and developed much respect for how each of us is working outside of the status quo in important ways. They are each doing amazing work by the way. Hanna works on actualizing the feminine voice to build resilience throughout the world, and in the Global South in particular. Go, Hanna! Shivali works on actualizing the voice of the community – much in the same way I do- in Glasgow. Go, Shivali!

Then the day after my presentation, a graduate student named Luca Arbau (from Brazil) approached me between sessions. He sheepishly began by saying that my session had been so intense that he needed the night to sleep on it. I couldn’t help but laugh, and then assured him that was the nature of the beast. He asked me to explain further the regenerative concept of how beings need to relate to the larger whole for the sake of resilience. I happily and slowly walked him through it again. Then we exchanged contact info so that I may continue to support him in his explorations. Go, Luca!

Not everyone who I wanted to connect to made it to my presentation. I was there in the first place because I respect the work that they are doing in the world and want to help them in whatever way I can. Here’s the thing about giving our gift. Can you remember a moment in time when a certain thing happened- a certain person said or did a certain thing for you- that changed the entire trajectory of your life? Of course you can. That’s how this game of interbeing works. Our human trajectory needs to shift. This seems impossible… until we remember that the slightest of encounters sends us off in entirely new directions. 

So I made sure to lend my voice to each of the people whose work resonated with me. First there was Isabelle Anguelovski who works on social justice issues relative to green gentrification in cities across the globe. I reminded her that nature deficit disorder is part of what is driving what her research bears witness to. It is fundamental to explaining why underprivileged communities resist green infrastructure (it’s half of the picture anyway- with the other half being justified gentrification fear), and therefore what needs to be healed in order to reset the trajectory. She knows this and kicked herself for not yet including it in her presentation. She was thankful for the reminder, in particular because it will help her answer to the kickback that she gets from those who are fighting for the inclusion of nature in such communities. Evolving a social-ecological system is complex, because they are complex beings that respond in radically different ways to slightly different inputs… just like us!

Then there was Timon McPhearson, an ecologist at the New School in New York. He heads up a team that is doing extraordinarily sophisticated resilience modeling for New York and other cities across the globe. The work is impressive and comprehensive… and highly technological. That said, they are running up against limits to what the work can do. The first thing that they are noticing is that it is difficult to get people to expand their vision of what is possible. The second is that they are having trouble figuring out how to include the voice of the community. Lastly, they are noticing that it is hard to get action in response to what they are discovering. From my regenerative perspective, all three limitations are related and there is an answer for how to overcome them. I talked to Timon about this and we will continue that conversation. There is no sense in leaving them out there hanging when the answers exist. He was grateful and very willing. I am looking forward to what may come of this.

Lastly, there is Stephan Barthel, who I am going to call my Swedish nature boy (although he is not a boy, he is very much a man who is adulting in the ways that Greta is asking of us). I have been following his work and communicating with him over the last year. He, like me, fundamentally understands that what we need to heal is our connection to nature. The way I understand this is that we need to overcome our separatist worldview. And to bring this full circle (finally!), it is exactly what Greta is pointing to. A non-separatist worldview is the new world that she is calling forth. So I will continue my conversation with Stephan about this and how we go about doing it. For you, Greta. This is for you. (Tears.)