TRANSFORMATION, REVOLUTION, EVOLUTION

Mutuality, Authenticity and Presence 8th May 2020

It was a warm, sunny bank holiday afternoon and all over the country people were celebrating VE Day while eight of us gathered around our computers to talk about confusion and disbelief arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

These are my notes of the conversation... I have changed our names (initials) in respect of privacy.  
Apologies if I have missed something significant or misrepresented anyone.  In my defence, I was at the dashboard at the same time as listening, thinking, speaking and making notes. There may have been a little doodling too but very little, which is testament to the mutuality, authenticity and presence generated in this remarkable conversation.
 

Stress

LW. I’ve realised today that recently I have been driven by an invisible stress level.
MM. Me too. For me it hit around midweek. There is so much change and I’ve felt very unsettled.
A fundamental change
KM I think I may be coming out the other side of some of that. Because of my role in social care I was hit, very early on, by the thought that this was happening on my watch. I had nothing in my armoury to protect me, but I am seeing a fundamental change in emerge in Social Care. It’s an opportunity. It will be painful, but it is an opportunity.

A terrible price…

RN. I’m aware that I’ve been in a nice little bubble. I’m very aware of my retirement income, my comfortable home, and doing less but at the same time I’m very conscious in the disparity between my experience and others’. I hope we don’t waste the opportunity.
FG. That resonates with me. The bubble and the opportunity.

SE. I’ve been angry. Angry about our systems. They are deeply entrenched. A terrible price is being paid. Those in power have been working to retain their power. I’m aware of the pain my anger is causing me. I’m going to work on that anger and transform it.
LW. I’ve been feeling confused. I’m even confused about who to trust. People are playing the system, driven by the profit motive.
KM. I’ve been angry. We have spent years cutting services and now, suddenly, there’s money and I think, why weren’t we doing this before?

In limbo

AW I’m thinking about B’s bubble. To me it feels as if there is an invisible barrier. There is so much going on but I can’t get to it. I feel there is a separation like a mist or a fog. There’s a gap.in
RN. It’s like being in limbo, treading water as if it’s a holding pattern.
AW. And I am thinking of Einstein’s famous quote ‘We can’t save problems with the same kind of thinking that we used when creating them’.
RN. If we could get a group of great thinkers, people like George Manbiot, and say ‘Put your big brains together and come up with something‘.
this is us
LW. and I’m thinking, that’s us.
FG. If we could just set an intention, like the IMF cancels all the debt for the African countries for example
AW. What would we focus on? There is so much…
KM I’ve been in grief, now in this conversation, I’m thinking that leadership has been destabilised, everything is different, there’s no going back

FG. I feel like cheering. I’ve had this chance, safe and safeguarded to get some real stillness, and in stillness there is space for change. Thinking about the difference between change and transformation. Transformation as part of personal evolution. Personal evolution as part of humanity’s evolution.
RN. It reminds me of Jacinda Arden in New Zealand. Wellbeing over money. If she could be some kind of world leader.
AW. Women as leaders have been making a difference with COVID.
KM. Wellbeing over money is happening in councils. People are seeing the human cost.  Emphasis has shifted.
AW. Different conversations. A new willingness.
MM. We depend on each other. The delivery drivers have been amazing.
FG. Where would we be without delivery drivers?
KM. This is what doughnut economics says. The doughnut economy. Doughnut Economics – by Kate Raworth – Working locally like housing homeless people. Putting housing first. Fear of COVID has enabled new conversations.
AW There is power in local community.
 

KM. It’s time to shape a new direction.
LW. money is not the problem so much as people’s thinking
KM. Yes, We don’t have the money was the excuse. We could have done it all along.
MM. I’m thinking of Mr. Hancock announcing the entire NHS debt being written off.
? Universal basic income… Some countries…
FG. Consider choice, and will. Use our will for leverage, harness the energy
RN. Silos, setting things aside and acting as a society, stepping outside.
FG. Joy
? The joy people have in helping others.
LW.  quoting Krishnamurti on joy
RN. You can’t get out of this through competition.
? Bizarre, and alienating, that humanity chose the profit motive.

LW. There was a disconnect.
FG. We need to find something on which to stand.
M. Recognising it as a time for connection.
AW. connection and re-connection, it is happening
KM. The 4th dimension.
AW. Time is the 4th
FG. This is about the fifth dimension
KM. It’s like the story of the caterpillar on a table, surrounded by walls, who doesn’t know (that it doesn’t know) what it can’t see
LW. My grandfather used to tell me that story.
FG. The fifth dimension, that we can’t see, is connection.
KM. Connection, knowing that we have a voice, neighbours, connection, universal income.
LW. I’m reminded of a book: The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace by Lederach:
Stand in the chaos of the present and see beyond the horizon.

FG. This is our opportunity to be still; timeless and boundless.
S. Transformation, revolution
FG. Evolution
transformation, revolution, evolution.