Impatient for better stories to live by

“We don’t describe what we see; we see what we describe.” Joe Jaworski

It’s high Spring – a time of blossom, bursting forth, renewal, but also a time of volatile weather, storms and high winds – of agitation. I see it everywhere, from fretful and angry friends, to irritable impatience in public spaces, to the widespread rage against the ongoing wars in the world. I can feel it in myself – a champing at the bit for change, for a more just and kind world and a fury with the state we’re in. Ultimately, I am impatient for better stories to live by than our ossified one of polarisation, violence and war.

What if, let’s ask, instead of linear heroic stories of conquest and glory we valorised circular stories of curiosity, kin and creativity? What if, instead of zero-sum games of death and destruction we promoted win-win-win games of unforeseen connections. I am much taken these days by Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction where she reminds us that the first cultural device is not a knife or axe but a container: “a leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag…a sack. A holder. A? recipient.” [i] Of course! How else would we bring back foraged food for our children?? We were after all, gatherer-hunters (only occasionally boosting our vegetarian diet with meat), and not, as the usual moniker goes, hunter-gatherers.

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If we humans see ourselves as hunters and heroes foremost, then rapacious, killing ways of living make sense.? So words matter, descriptions matter.? As Donna Haraway insists “It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”[ii] Because stories are what we live by – and our current stories are not fit for purpose if we want to have a world left to live in and if we choose to hope that a better way of being humans together is possible.?

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Reflecting on this now I think of my roots in the transpersonal – which I began studying from my late 20s on – for the aspect of transpersonal psychology I love most is that it offers a life-enhancing story to guide our living. ?Transpersonal ontology sees the individual as a cell in a wider whole, with each of our actions contributing to the world we make together. Instead of the male hero at the top of a pyramidal, anthropocentric model of existence the transpersonal affirms a cosmocentric world where everything touches and concerns everything else, nothing too ordinary to be significant.?

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The transpersonal reasserts the importance of what I call ‘secular spirituality’, both immanent and transcendent – both within us and within our natural environment as a constant inter-flowing. This reconnects us with the beauty of our world and the best within ourselves.? It puts both Will and Love centre stage: assertiveness, courage and drive work together with generosity, curiosity and joy for more considered choices. Our anger at the state of the world is legitimate but acting it out with aggression – and expressions of rage seem increasingly socially sanctioned – is the fuel for mutually assured destruction.

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When I see and read about the violence in the world I remind myself that rage is born of despair and fear – spawned by fractured, failing societies, which for too long have prioritised power over care and greed over kinship. That despair speaks to the yearning for a better, and more ethical, narrative to guide us.

The transpersonal offers models and tools for ways of engaging that celebrate our agency but relieve the lonely burden of unbridled individualism. It reunites us with the pleasure of an interdependent, caring and kincentric reality: creating an effective container for working with both loss and creativity, fearfulness and courage for effective change.

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Spring is a time of bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. So maybe our vernal agitation is a sign that old stories are dying, their violent death throes evidence of how long they have dominated… and new stories are possible….

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[i] Le Guin U (2019) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Ignota Books

[ii] Harraway D (2016) Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press