There is a lot of fear and despair in the world right now. It's understandable. There's a lot going on. In some cases it seems like we are going backwards. In other cases, it's incomprehensible how people or countries are behaving in this day and age. And all this on top of pandemic exnahustion, climate grief, recession fears, health challenges on a personal and collective level, and the stresses and strains of daily life.
It's a lot. There's no time to stop and check in. So let me do that now. How are you? Really. In this moment. Stop and pause for a moment, and check in with yourself. How are you feeling? How are you doing? You don't have to tell me. Just make a note of what's true for you, noting that a myriad of things might be at play in you in this moment, swirling through you seeking attention. It's ok. It's normal.
Sometimes we are afraid to feel what's at play in us. We may be afraid that it will overwhelm or distract, or lead us astray. It might for a moment, but perhaps there's utility in that. When we suppress or deny, we only tend to amplify in a way that leads to dis-ease and ill health.
So often the way forward is through.
As Mary Oliver states so beautifully in the first half of Wild Geese:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Hermann Hesse, in Letters to a Young German, excerpted in The Marginalian, wrote in the aftermath of WW1:
"You write me that you are in despair and do not know what to believe, what to hope. You do not know whether or not there is a God. You do not know whether or not life has any meaning, whether or not love of country has a meaning, whether, in the wretched condition of the world, it is better to strive for spiritual goods or merely to fill your belly. ... I believe your state of mind and soul to be the right one. Not to know whether there is a God, not to know whether there is good and evil, is far better than to know for sure."
This not-knowing is a beginning.
In The Journey to the East, he wrote:
“Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.”
Verse 13 of the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell's translation) states (I would substitute despair for fear):
Hope is as hollow as fear.
...
What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?
Mary Oliver continues:
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Listen. Listen. What is calling to you? Calling you to take your place in the family of things as the world continues to turn and transform.
We know there is more breakdown and disarray coming. But what if it is a way through? As the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change, what inner and outer shifts will follow?
Of course, not everyone wants to shift or change. For many, the uncertainty of all these shifts is destabilising. For others, it is disabling. For still others, meaningful change seems impossible, against the odds even. And so the world keeps turning with these myriad of responses playing out in our micro and macro environments, mirroring our inner worlds and provoking further inner shift. We are swirling together in this dance of life as the world continues to turn.
The only antidote I know is to stay grounded and centered in the midst of it all and to have the courage to do our inner work and keep evolving ourselves so that we can be ever more ready, present and available to the call to inspired action. Not a call to arms, but a call to inspired action, in flow, in harmony with the evolutionary shifts even when it seems like things are moving backwards.
Listen for and work with the creative impulse of life. Listen within. What is stirring in your soul? What are you uniquely being called to? How are you being called to respond in these times? There is always more than one way. And the way that is right for you, is a way only you can know. Let it be one born of inspiration and knowing, so that you can respond with readiness, wisdom, love and compassion for yourself and all of life. This is the beginning of true leadership.