Hold On For The Ride

The Eagle Newsletter N°17 - June 2022

Welcome to The Eagle, a monthly newsletter on strategy, risks, and the creation of safe and thriving business environments by Laurence Duarte, founder of Strat & Shield Co.

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Dear ones,

How do you feel today??

Like all living species, we are permeable beings. And right now we are living in an ambient field of sorrow and grief, anxiety and despair. It is not much to say that these are extraordinary times. We are now in this long eclipse of the ordinary, finding ourselves on strange and unfamiliar ground.

We are map-making animals. But with a map constantly changing, how do we keep at bay our anxiety and distress about it??

Times For New Ways of Seeing

“Perhaps in our times of confusion and forsakenness, the soul is asserting itself, endeavoring to draw us aside in order to speak to our hearts.” - John O’Donohue

What would it be like to accept our confusion - that there are so many things we are going through right now, that we don’t know how to hold it all? And accept our need to be held, and supported? Rightfully so.?

There is no doubt that we are living in troubled times. From the news, we find a constant disequilibrium shaking with crisis, violence and suffering.

At work, it is a confusing situation as well, with no place to hide within any asset; the global economy is being hammered with the effect of the pandemic, supply-chain problems made worse by China’s persistence with strict lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, inflation and the prospect of a recession.?

We feel the heat. The pressure is on, individually and collectively. How can we begin when everything seems to be ending???

Culturally, we have an aversion to endings. And we hang on to permanence as a signifier of success. This epoch pulls the rug out from underneath relationships, jobs, homes, behaviors, labels, status, ideologies, and all forms of security. We all live uncertain of our belonging, our place, and our relationship with the living presence that is this world. And It is painful.

But in this critical moment in our development, the goal is to uncover our true purpose, individually and as communities.?What are we? and how can we fulfill our obligations to ourselves as we are? It is a moment of reflective repose before we devote ourselves to action again.

Reimagining Our Place “In the Family of Things”*

“How could I possibly explain the great freedom that comes from realizing to the depth of your being that life knows what it's doing?” - Michael A. Singer

The times are urgent; we must slow down, advises African wisdom. We must let go of our manic idea that we can?force?our way through problems - and acknowledge that might actually just perpetuate the troubles.

What would it be like to step out from the panic, and slow down as an act of humanity? To begin with humility. To recognize that we don’t have a clue how to respond to these times and live in this unknown territory. We don’t know this ground very well. And it is OK to not have solutions and answers. From there, we can imagine new ways to recalibrate our behaviors, our contexts, our conversations, and our connection with the living world.?

What I “like” with this present speaking ruthlessly through us, is the uncomfortable acknowledgment of the unhelpfulness of many of our cultural Western patterns. The use of consumerism with its promise of filling up our experience of emptiness with things is not helping anymore. Our obsession with image, with specialness, with rank and power, with wealth and possessions, is not helping either. Nor is our way to partition the world into who's in and who's out.?

Paradoxically, the time is right for radical change.?We know now. The amnesia and anesthesia, the forgetting and the numbing, can’t work. In order to gain, maintain and protect peace, we have to take our responsibilities to ourselves,?our communities, and our living world.?

The Choices We Make

We have choices. Always. Every moment of existence confronts us with the alternatives of resurrection or death; every moment, we give an answer.?This answer lies not in what we say or think, but in what we are, how we act, and where we are moving.

So, what now? How do we recover and start building the new world in which we want to live? Whatever is happening, much is asked of us if we are to make it through the whitewater of this narrow passage. We do not know what lies ahead, but one thing is sure:?This is a time for bold gestures. It is time to wake up and humbly take our place on this stunning planet. We belong there. Embracing this beautiful quote from Rumi: “This night will pass, then we have work to do.”??

Discovering Who We Are When Everything Falls Away.?

“The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It is the best possible time to be alive when almost everything you thought you know is wrong.” - Tom Stoppard?

In order to lift, let’s first acknowledge and learn to accept our endings. For the last two years, I found that grief and sorrow haven't stopped touching us all, arriving at our door in many ways. On a personal level, I was touched by traumatizing events that left me too often in a black fog with no way to go. I can rely on Maria Popova’s writing: “In such seasons of life, one is pressed against the limits of one’s being, pressed eventually against the understanding that no matter the outer atmosphere of circumstance, one must lift the inner cloudscape by one’s own efforts, or perish under it”.

It starts with an understanding that life doesn’t owe me anything and accepts the ever-presence of grief in my life.?Life is hard, riddled with failures, betrayals and deaths. This is a difficult realization, but It helps to make peace with the imperfections inherent in life. And to transform the wounds and losses we encounter into a nutritious material with which to shape a life of meaning, humor, joy, depth, and beauty.?

It is not a remedy from suffering, nor a wish to be exempt from the inevitable losses that come. It’s more an opportunity to open our hearts to a deeper love for our singular life and to radically receive the stunning elegance of the world.

We are all grieving something, someone. Whether It is a relationship, the death of someone dear, the terror in front of mass shootings, the horror of war crimes, the ravages we witness daily to watersheds and forests, the extinction of species, the collapse of democracy, or the fading of civilization. Left unattended, these sorrows darken our days, blocking our clarity and path to healing.??

But I know; I understand. In the face of so much overwhelm and despair, where we feel the heavy weight of grief and sorrow, how can we stay alive and not just collapse? How do we stay current, fluid and alive in the face of so much loss and grief??

We need to become capable of meeting the world’s pain and suffering with a dignified and robust bearing.

Grief is more than an emotion; it is also a faculty of being human.?Grief invites gravity and depth into our world. With grief, we possess the profound capacity to metabolize sorrow into something medicinal for ourselves and our community. The skill of grieving well enables us to become current — to live in the present moment and feel the electricity of life. We gradually turn our attention to what is here, now, and less to our need to repair history.????

I would like to invite us with this reading to pause and become more accustomed to our individual and collective grief to help ourselves and those around us.?

The Core of the Sorrows

“The grief and sense of loss that we often attribute to a failure in our personality is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered.” - Paul Shepard

Reading the excellent work of psychotherapist, author and soul activist?Francis Weller?on the apprenticeship on grief, I found that,?at the heart of our sorrows, there is a pervasive feeling of emptiness and loneliness.?We experience it in our body with the feeling of lack, the “there is something missing in me,” some gap, some hole in the center of my being.?

I found in the words of philosopher Bayo Akomolafe so much resonance to where we are at: “To be modern is to be in the constant state of ornamenting our exile, constantly changing the wallpaper to screen out the jarring effects of the world, a mass forgetting.”

In order to stop blaming ourselves for this feeling of being empty, lost, worried, unsure, and anxious we choose to feed ourselves with things, projects, rewards, etc., and, of course, numbness. Everything to not feel, to forget. But it will never be enough. We know that.?

It is where we are at when we position ourselves as separate from others. With this private, interior, highly armored identity, we get stuck in the comparison, with the language of better or worse, the win/lose attitude, the blaming game without realizing that we are choosing separation and division, and so, emptiness and loneliness.?

With grief, we think of the missing parts, whereas we should think of the forgetting parts and start remembering. Let’s remember our unconditional mingling with life.

It is time to change our language for one of alternatives, choice, and freedom. To finally remember and recognize our deeply participatory identity, and entanglement with the animated world.?The opposite of emptiness is not fullness but embodiment and entanglement. We are not autonomous agents. It is impossible for us to be separate.?

Feeling At Home In The World

“Everything is beautiful, and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief.” - Mark Nepo        

In times of great despair, may we remember that we are never, never, never alone.

As the poet David Whyte wrote in his poem “The Bell and the Blackbird”: “You walk both alone and completely accompanied in friendship by every corner of the world crying Allelujah.”

We are relational beings, parts of something far larger than ourselves, held by the air we breathe, the nature, the moon, the tides, the stars, the soil, the fauna, the flora and, of course, our human fellows.??

Creating Places that Hold Us

Lately, I heard many conversations about toxic work environments. No one should work feeling frustrated, uncomfortable, or even fearful. The damage is enormous, from the depletion of energy, damage to our self-esteem and burnout to a decrease in productivity, serious disruption in the workflow and an increase in resignations. And unfortunately,?toxic workplaces rarely stay at work. They typically follow us home. They take over our conversations with loved ones, steal away much-needed sleep, and generally cause worry and stress.?

How can we change that? As leaders, we can’t let it happen: We must let our courage and vulnerability open up difficult conversations and challenge the toxic status quo in and out. A healthy and functioning world, community, and workplace starts with us.?

Especially now. We need communities to heal.?When we are feeling overwhelmed, it is crucial to find shelter, some places to be held by something larger than our own private interior life.?Places where we can recall what bind us together. We are entangled together. The sooner we accept it, the better we can converge with our share of love and sorrows in the world. It is how we unfold, open and find our place in the world.

Before going further, I would like to remind us of the advice from American educator Stephen R. Covey: “To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.”?Everything is perception, and, more often than not, conversation and dialogue allow for a reset and a restart.?

As leaders, in order to welcome fruitful interactions, our role is to understand rather than judge. If we want to get better at being understanding, then, we need humility to maintain a respectful attitude to the otherness of the other, and we need vulnerability to make sure we’re really open to whatever it is the other may be going through. If we join these in a disposition of loving attention, of patiently looking and listening, we should make progress.

I Am Because We Are

“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” - Ansel Adams

When we are victims of, or see, our fellow humans behaving in ways that are greedy, selfish, violent, or uncaring, it is natural to feel let down, disappointed, depressed, angry, or depleted. It hurts us so much. Often it seems as if people are simply not capable of behaving in a way that is coming from a place of awareness, as if people are actually geared to handle things in the worst possible way,?repeatedly.?

How can we not want to shut down, resist, blame, hate or escape??I found the most challenging part in front of toxic and harmful relationships is the acceptance of my responsibility. How difficult it is to realize that the people we engage with will always mirror who we are on the inside. They reflect/awaken our insecurities, self-doubts, tendencies to over-give, and feelings of unworthiness.

Curiosity helps. It helps to check on what is going on inside, feel our feelings without judging, and then we can begin to consider ways that we might help the situation in the best way possible. From taking care of ourselves and extending the courtesy to serve people who are suffering injustices, to beginning to speak out when we see something we don’t think is right.

Finally, when we assert ourselves toward people and circumstances, we cease to feel powerless. Only by such affirmation of our will can our energies be liberated and our mental balance restored.?

As always, we start with ourselves, utilizing our awareness of the failings of others to renew our own commitment to be more conscious human beings.?We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, and remembering this keeps us in check, and allows us to find understanding and compassion for ourselves and others.?

The choice is ours, whatever the case. The only thing we can do is pledge to serve the best, rather than the worst, of what humanity has to offer, both in the world and in ourselves.??

Here is an invigorating song to help:

What Does It Mean to Be Human??

The best, like water,
Benefit all and do not compete.
They dwell in lowly spots that everyone else scorns.
Putting others before themselves,
They find themselves in the foremost place
And come very near to the Tao.
In their dwelling, they love the earth;
In their heart, they love what is deep;
In personal relationships, they love kindness;
In their words, they love truth.
In the world, they love peace.
In personal affairs, they love what is right.
In action, they love choosing the right time.
It is because they do not compete with others
That they are beyond the reproach of the world. - The Best - By Lao Tzu        

Every time we face a hurtful situation, we are challenged in our humanity and our reliance on others. From our ability to respond to these challenges, we are — or not — capable of overcoming our sense of lack, emptiness, and loneliness.

We can decide to develop our capacity to love, to use our reason to create and enjoy beauty — beauty not seen as the opposite of ugly but false — and share our humanity with all our fellow humans.?

When we remember the bond, the sisterhood and brotherhood with the world in which solidarity and human ties are not vitiated by restriction of freedom, either emotionally or intellectually, we satisfy the two needs of our humanity: to be closely related and at the same time to be free, to be part of a whole and to be independent.??

Then we can move on and fulfill our obligation to ourselves and the well-being of the world.?

As this newsletter is coming to an end, I would like to leave you with two invitations:

The first one is a quote and invitation ricocheted from the poet David Whyte's last?webinar:?“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.”?

Then what would it be like to take it a step further — that our significant other, our friend, our colleague, might also be a mystery to be lived and not a problem to be solved?

The second one is a “Prescription for the Disillusioned” from the poet Rebecca del Rio, as an invitation to renewal and beginnings:

Come new to this
day. Remove the rigid
overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud
your vision.
Leave behind the stories
of your life. Spit out the
sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs
waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.
Arrive curious, without the armor
of certainty, the plans and planned
results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you, new
every breath, every blink of
your astonished eyes.        

As always, I thank you for taking the time to do this reading with me. I am so grateful to journey alongside you. Please feel free to drop me a line at?[email protected]?with ideas, suggestions, or comments.?

Your presence is my purpose.?

Be safe and be watched over until we meet again in July.

With care,

Laurence

*?From the book "The Revolution of Hope" by the Social Psychologist and Philosopher Erich Fromm

*from the beautiful poem from Mary Oliver: Wild Geese