#newnarratives

[isaac-cruzmac]

Cazador/presa ¿Quién es quién? Retomando ideas. . . . . . . . #origami #watercolorpainting #watercolorillustration #sketchbook #papercraft #newnarratives #animals #origamicat #visualart #contemporarywatercolor #aquarelle #colorista #realism #figurative #figurativepainting #contemporarypainting #mexicanartist #mouse #isaaccm (en Mexico City, Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/Btm0YQoAhk_/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=wx8wu2wmxo5n

[brooklynsoul61]

Blurring the lines between human and nature, neon and moss, sifting thru tattered fabrics and weaving new narratives while my pink skies swirl around in my brain. #nancyrodrigoart #rewritetherules #newnarratives #healingjourney #mentalhealthawareness #serenity #pinkskies #queerartist #artistsoninstagram #intersectionality #naturephotography #prospectpark #bklynartist (at Prospect Park) https://www.instagram.com/brooklynsoul61/p/CX6sOQ5FQl0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[sahana2802]

A New Story

As the world literally burns around us, we have to admit that we have brought ourselves to the brink of everything. The narratives, structures, and perceptual framings that we had assumed and accepted as the 'way things are' have fallen apart. We don’t yet have a credible, alternative, collective narrative that can help us to reimagine a new world – a more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. 

We are now residing in a place between stories – a liminal space filled with possibilities, potentials, and promise. We don’t yet know the exact outline of the New Story. But we can sense and feel the seeds; we know that the soil is being prepared; we recognize that we all have a part to play. It is up to each one of us to be heralds and emissaries of the new story – a story founded on us reclaiming our humanity, recognizing our interconnectedness, regaining our agency, authenticity, and wholeness.

The new story calls for a collective awakening, of making choices that will emanate from a shift in consciousness and impact every aspect of our existence – social, political, economics, ecological, and spiritual. It is no longer about individual preferences or even the choices of a handful of organizations. 

For this collective shift to happen, we must move from a Story of Separation to a Story of Interbeing.

Charles Eisenstein puts is beautifully when he says:

“Is it too much to ask, to live in a world where our human gifts go toward the benefit of all? Where our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people?”

[sahana2802]

Befriending Uncertainty

To fully step into this liminal space of uncertainty-- embodying potential, possibilities, power-- and to become stewards of a new way of being on this planet, we must befriend and welcome the uncertain, the unknown, the ambiguous. Only by learning to dwell in this liminal space with gentle curiosity can we actualize the future that wants to emerge through us.

None of us have a map to this unknown world. I have tried to distill some core qualities we need to embark on this voyage as compass…

Staying with uncertainty and ambiguity is a core leadership skill today. Leaders no longer need to have all the answers but must be able to hold space for the questions, become wayfinders and stewards to usher in and manifest a world that works for all.

[sahana2802]

Choices We Make & the World We Create

Every choice we make is a vote for the kind of world we wish to manifest!

Individual and collective choices intersect and intertwine to create the sociopolitical, economic and ecological realm we inhabit. Many of our choices are coming back to haunt us now—inadvertent and thoughtless choices that directly affect our ecosystem; biased choices that are now showing up as fault lines and cracks in our societies—from vanishing worker rights to crumbling healthcare, from disintegrating supply chains to starving millions—causing untold misery and deprivation for many; selfish choices that are now mockingly emphasizing our ineradicable and intricate interconnectedness and interbeing. 

Covid19 has effectively underscored all the fault lines of our current civilization—from appalling inequality to alarming political apathy to absolute disconnect from the reality of life. All the fissures and fractures of this fragmented world has converged under one umbrella triggered by an invisible virus. And the world has come to a juddering halt. Our choices have shrunk to maneuvering the mundane.

“We are our choices,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. We cannot abdicate the role our choices have played in bringing us to this moment of global reckoning in the form of a zoonotic virus. The signs of catastrophe have been all around us for the past few decades, with an exponential acceleration in calamities over the last few years from the Australian bushfires to the Amazon rainforest fires to the floods in Asia and other significant world events of 2019—all of which portend some sort of disaster—social, political, economic, and ecological. 

We’ve known for a long time that our civilizational trajectory was heading toward catastrophe. Yet, most of us have chosen to carry on with “business as usual” in spite of dire warnings from scientists about the untold suffering we are heaping upon our planet. Apparently, even the coronavirus pandemic had been predicted. 

And perhaps, “Like a crucible, it has the potential to melt down the structures that currently exist, and reshape them, perhaps unrecognizably. What might the new shape of society look like?” ~Jeremy Lent

[sahana2802]

Pandemic as a Portal

Do we dare to befriend this uncertainty? Do we dare to dream of a different destiny? Will we use the pandemic as a portal to magnify all that is magnanimous within us? Is this our collective tryst with destiny moment? 

What behaviors do we need to demonstrate and embody to lead us into a regenerative future?  What narratives can we energize and envision to act as compasses in an unknown territory?  What old stories, patterns, and structures must we hospice to move toward a regenerative future?  What are the new stories, patterns, and structures we must midwife to step into a regenerative future?  How can we hold space for meaning-making, sensing, and emergence?  Above all, how do we “need to be” to stay with uncertainty, to welcome uncertainty?  What messages will this liminal space yield up, whisper to us if we have the nerve to step back, slow down, let go of our resistance, and care to listen deeply?

None of us have the answers. But if we live into the questions, I trust that the answers will emerge from our collective intentions and actions. We need to acknowledge uncertainty, dwell in the unknown, and hold space for ourselves and others as rapid and irrevocable change tears down every known bulwark and buttress.

I’m witnessing this pause as a crucible where the new world order is churning itself into a different order of being. To fully step into this pause, to become stewards of a new way of being and relating with this planet, we must befriend and welcome the uncertain, the unknown, the ambiguous, the unfamiliar, the unthought. Only by learning to dwell in this liminal space with gentle curiosity can we actualize the future that wants to emerge through us.

[sahana2802]

Radical Renewal: The Way Forward

Human beings are psychologically addicted to predictability. We prefer to be cushioned by the mundane ordinariness of life rather than dwell in the discomfort of the unknown. We will grab at any distraction to escape the awful, hollow, and helpless void of the unknown. 

With the onset of the pandemic, our routes of distraction have been snatched away without any promise of return. What we have been offered instead are revelations into the fault lines and inequalities in our societies we would rather not see; exposures to the absurd and ludicrous ineptness of governance that leave us stupefied; and experiences of the creaking and collapsing public infrastructures that are woefully inadequate in meeting the demands of the moment. And the exposure to the brutal and unimaginable divide between the top 1% and the bottom 50% of the world’s population. 

The virus has laid bare the pervasive brokenness we had papered over for far too long in their shameful, pitiful, and burning details. Our privilege is no longer our refuge. Our privilege now bestows on us a grave responsibility. A grave responsibility to reclaim our humanity and all it entails—compassion, care, empathy, connection, justice, equality, and dignity for all. A responsibility to remove the viciousness of social pathologies where we have lost touch with our own humanity in the pursuit of power, profit, privilege, pleasure, and political perversions. It is our opportunity to heal ourselves and our only home.    

Vaclav Havel said, “The main task in the coming era is… a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility… for ourselves and for the world.” https://citizenstout.substack.com/p/care-connects-us-all

[sahana2802]

Holding the Questions

What would a world where all sentient beings and the Planet flourished feel like?

How would it feel if our inextricable interdependencies and interconnectedness were deeply honored in all our decisions—social, economic, political, and spiritual?

How would we behave if we could touch the profound core of our entanglement with each other and the Planet?

How would we reimagine a world where the unheard, the unseen, the disavowed are no longer invisibilized and delegitimized? Where humanity is not divided into hierarchies…

What do we need to imagine a world where we hold space for each other in fearless, generative dialogues of possibilities?