This is not my beautiful Life
I wonder what it would take for us, collectively, to be Brave. I struggle alone with the practices of my own Courage daily. I have thought around this place deeply, well and often. Courage involves putting a stake in the ground - but it is like someone once said - do the work before you write the memoir. And in that quagmire of people having done work and others that haven’t or won’t - things get blurry.
We go on wild goose chases, down rabbit holes searching for that Purpose we actually do know already. As a poet, a performance artist, a singer, a teacher i believe in the notion of a Wild Heart - those rare precious creatures that act out scenarios, that give us precious indicators of things to come. i read a lot.think a lot.do a lot. but i know that there are blind spots where we don’t know what we don’t know and it troubles me.
Too many people recently have taken their life into their own hands, been arrested for saying NO. Does it galvanize us or make us quieter? I think the latter. This is not the kind of world I want to find meaning from. You are not my beautiful people, this is not my beautiful life.
I cannot just make this a rant. I am not 20, 30 or even 40. I have a responsibility for what I tame. I watched something today that gave me hope. A developer speaking about having inhabited the world of Agile Development to discover on the other side that despite the elegant processes, the clearly boundaried practices, that in the end it boiled down to people- he gave four truths - you get things done when you have 1. Simplicity 2. Conversation (outside your own head) 3. Feedback (giving and seeking) 4. Courage
I live in a country which has been described as the the most unequal in the world.Our communities are oftimes set on fire by the selfsame people that live there.
It is not a narrative of Hope and yet i want to remain. Because I believe Courage arrives from tragedy, from Grief, from things unravelling.
And that is what I care about - for if we can be brave and collectively courageous we can stand for something - and frankly, it does not matter what that thing is Yet. Indeed the best interventions happen from a place of Surprise and Emergence. I am hoping I can swalllow enough of my Grief and Disappointment to put my hand up when it is decided that Conversation Matters.