Thursday thoughts: Start again
Chantal Pasquarello
Human rights | Climate justice | Alliance building | Analysis & Strategy
Originally published December 2022
Start again
Probably typical of my own discomfort with inaction that my last post was about endings and here I am, already writing about new starts.
In all honesty, “start again” is less of an actual command I’m giving myself right now. It’s more like a mantra I try (and often fail) to return to. Weeks probably go by when I just forget it completely. But recently I’ve heard it knocking around in my head.
Start again.
On the most elemental (important) level it’s just about returning to the present moment. You got lost in thoughts about the future or the past? No problem, just start again. Come back to breath and to body. To what it feels like to be and stay fully present for maybe a split second before your mind wanders again.
I’m finding it easier to get caught up in the rush towards year end, and the frenzy of all the other endings I mentioned in that last blog. And then perhaps also, once these things do end, easier to rush towards filling the space they leave. I forget to be in my own life instead of just in my thoughts and at my task list. I forget to allow space for ideas and opportunities and openings to emerge.
On a more meta level, though, I think about the systems and structures that have gotten us into what feels like an endless global quagmire of conflict and emergency. And “start again” feels helpful there, because it feels more within reach than “start over.”
As tantalizing as a clean slate sounds, completely and simultaneously dismantling capitalism, racism, patriarchy, coloniality and all the other hegemonic power structures all at once just doesn’t seem pragmatic. How would that even work? And shouldn’t we carry over the hard-won lessons from those systems as we build new ones?
Start again, from where we are, with what we have.
I’m not even sure this makes much sense. I’m not sure a great deal of what I write on this blog makes much sense. But it’s helpful to write it down, to see it outside of my own brain. To examine it a bit more closely in the light of day.?
And then, well.
Start again.