I haven’t written very much the last few years, not for someone who would call themselves a writer. I haven’t written because the words that would come out felt forced and contrite. They felt like words that I was supposed to say, stories and advice that belonged to someone else, not what was actually true. And so, with some exception, I held my voice back.
Crisis may be too strong a word, but I have been on a reckoning of sorts. A questioning of where my life has been, where it stands and where I want it to go. Questioning my career, my values, my sexuality, my truth; trying to answer the question that has been a predominant theme in my experiences: what if life doesn’t turn out like I thought it would?
While I’ve been on this reckoning of sorts, stepping back from areas I thought I was meant to serve, I’ve been discovering new paths and trails ahead of me. The ecological crisis, with its companion fear and grief, has fuelled my activism, allowing me to step forward in a way that perhaps I would not have without. There’s this voice that beckons to me, the time is now; there is nothing more to wait for. The world is unravelling like that thread you pulled on your sweater, and it’s too far gone to remain the same. So, what do you want to make of it?
On culture
Our culture has this wonderful myth of the linear life. That you finish school, start a career, get married, have children etc, and eventually you reach the place you’re meant to be. And even when you know this not to be true, or maybe not true for you, this myth pervades our consciousness with its idea of the upward trajectory. Life is always in the next place, and the next place is always better than here. The goal is always to be reaching somewhere else, because that is where your happiness will lie. It’s mimicked in the cultural beliefs we hold of eternal growth, of cities and economies that never come down, and in our ideas of “I’ll be happy when…”. It’s an alluring story, if only it were true; that life is this simple line, and if we follow the steps we’ll eventually arrive.
I remember a video with Stephen Jenkinson; he spoke about how in the western world growth is a precondition of happiness, but that growth in and of itself is not a good thing. A tumour grows itself to death, he said. It proceeds absolutely undisturbed by the consequences of the actions it takes. The myth of eternal growth, our continual seeking of the next place: this is our tumour. The symptoms are screaming at us through soaring rates of depression, inequality on unfathomable scales, and now mass extinction. The systems that run our world are, without a doubt, dying.
I keep reflecting on this, the way we still assume we have time, that one day when we have ticked all the boxes we’ll be happy, that the system as we know it is the only one there is. Climate change and ecological breakdown has assured us however that this is not true. The lives we thought we were going to lead, the world as we know it, is no longer possible. So, what do we want to make of it?
The Deeper Way
If life is not a line, a way to get from here to there, I ask myself what it is. I hear whispers of a deeper way, of a life in deep time, of communities grounded in common good, of lives lived as circles. It tells me that the future — of my life, of the world — cannot be what it is, and cannot be what we all thought it would be, but it can still be something beautiful.
There are times I can sense an arising; the antidote to our constant seeking. It’s hard to hear in the everyday. We see thousands of ads a day, surrounded by noise in every sense of the word. Callings that come from nowhere, that beg of us to make a radically different life and world, to disrupt the system — to disrupt the parts of our lives that are no longer true — would rightly be ignored by most who call themselves sensible. But the arising knows; it knows when it’s time for something to be born and when something is to pass. The arising lives in time, but not our time. It exists with its own knowing of what is needed and I can hear the arising now; this is the time. There is nothing left to wait for. Trust where you are called.
This deeper way tells me that life — and everything that makes a life — is a circle, not a line, and when we reduce it to a story as simple as from here to there, we lose the capacity for depth, we negate the role of Mystery. And Mystery, I’m learning, is a living, breathing thing, as real as you or I.
I’m not sure I can explain the Mystery, or indeed if anyone can. It speaks in art and story, songs and poems, acts of beauty and terror. It’s a force that permeates everything and yet remains untouchable. It’s the Mystery that reminds me the world is unravelling, but that the deeper way exists as both an ache and an anchor. It asks us to stop fighting, to lean into its beauty and its grief, to trust its process through the unravelling. It asks us to build the foundations of a more beautiful world within it, and while it never assures us that this world is certain (it assures us that nothing is), it demands to be lived nonetheless.
The hard part of all this — of listening to the arisings, of choices that make or change a life, of the ecological breakdown unfolding around us — is that we don’t know what will happen. The anxiety and grief are all so grounded in uncertainty. Our lives will be irrevocably changed through actions we can’t control, by forces greater than ourselves, and I’d argue already are. The future is not a straight line. Climate change is not a straight line. They are figure 8’s and twisted knots, circles out of balance.
So how do we put our heart, our souls, the depth of our being into this work — the work of creating a more beautiful world — with such uncertainty? The deeper way requires us to practise a form of faith, but how do we do this without being attached to outcomes? Maybe this is what parents go through, I’m not sure. It certainly feels like a pregnancy of sorts. The birthing of a new life and a new world, with all the beauty, anticipation and anxieties that follow.
Questions are where I’ve found some solace; I see them as the home of the Mystery. It’s easy for them to appear self-indulgent (why me?), for their honesty to be hijacked by underlying anxieties and fears (what if?), it’s then that we must make them larger.
We often assume that every question is supposed to have an answer, that this is where the truth must live. Questions, however, contain their own form of magic. Questions, doubts, reckonings, the grappling we experience in the face of the unthinkable and unanswerable, all are portals to a deeper expansiveness. A spaciousness that we so rarely get to see in a culture obsessed with solutions, soundbites, quick fixes and empty truths. Questions have their own form of energy, they arise in us exactly when and how they are meant to. They hold a space from which possibility can arise.
Wisdom
So where is this going? I suppose it’s to culminate in this. Pockets of truth that called to be written. Lessons that my reckoning (the Mystery?) and the global unravelling has given me, that I hope may resonate for others.
The life we thought we were going to live will not happen. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful.
When my heart feels heavy, I remember the wisdom of Rumi, whose words have lived for 700 years. Let your heart break until it opens.
Seek out the good, the beautiful and the true. The world as it exists will not feed it to you.
Cultivating uncertainty, living with the deeper way, is a blessing and a burden. The trick is to remain unattached to outcome. Uncertainty does not negate the work, but rather gives rise to it. As someone much wiser than me wrote two millennia ago, “You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.”
Bear witness. Bear witness to it all. If our grief cannot be tamed, then may it be our companion, reminding us of all that we love.
Have the courage to question everything — and I mean everything. Take nothing for granted and nothing as truth, until you know it so deeply you feel it in your bones. Even then, know that truth has the capacity for change.
The magic lies within the question, the answer is just bonus.
To quote Charles Eisenstein, only to the extent that we believe in a more beautiful world, can we serve it. And so I choose to believe. Not blindly, and not without doubt. But actively, with fervent hope and faith, and the choice to sow the seeds of a deeper way in each and every act of compassion and rebellion against a system that does not serve us.
My life and my work is about serving a deeper truth, allowing the Mystery to guide me. And if there is a way that I can help you, that we can be of service together, reach out.
The deeper way is calling for all of us.