I am reading this book by a community organizer, its one
part journal, one part reflective manual to inspire better organizing.
She has a section on interdependence, and her difficulty
with it personally, but also how essential it is for community work. In the chapter,
she talks about things like: learning from nature, the benefits and pitfalls of
charismatic leaders, the difficulties of finding a balance between personal generosity
and vulnerability - and how they are equally necessary for real connection.
I watch
this youtube channel called “AntsCanada” which is basically a very charismatic
story teller creating little episodes about the dramatic world of ant keeping.
The videos are educational, and surprisingly riveting at times. He keeps it
pretty dramatic with little cliff hangers, and also draws out the tension
through sharing how meaningful the hobby is for him, and how he is constantly
learning lessons from watching the ants. He also lets his viewers vote on the
names of everything in the ant communities, so they feel like they are part of
it. The last few days I’ve been thinking about how some ants (maybe all?) have
a personal stomach, and a social stomach. Because they are a big colony, they
will send out workers to go gather food and fill their social stomachs and then
they come back and redistribute it to the ants that were doing other things.
Sometimes I
like to take a step back and consider whether my particular traits and life are
serving some other purpose than the one I’ve been told about. Like if humans
are actually more collective than we think, maybe (as some researchers have
proposed) homosexuality is an adaptive communal trait that some humans have to
maintain balance, and support the collective –like helping to raise children,
without requiring as many personal needs. I was thinking that maybe our society
does this anyway without the genetics, things like taboos, productivity,
attractiveness, prestige, work, war/military and prison all serve to potentially
broaden or narrow the pool of eligibility. But on the flipside we are also
living in a time when people have so little support – for instance, a friend of
mine just had a baby, she lives in England with her husband. He is going back
to work soon. She is far from her
family… and I’m worried that she is going to end up becoming super depressed
and isolated. Where is her community? Who will bring her food in their social
stomach while she does the very important work of raising a child? Yesterday
when another friend was feeling frustrated, I didn’t know how to help. I was also
kind of critical of the way we end up living… nuclear families don’t make
sense. Sure, we can have them as a core component, but it sets parents up for
feeling like failures, and it sets children up for feeling like they are alone
in their pain.
Maybe all
my desires to help and my caretaking skills are just my role in helping the
community, and maybe I am not supposed to have a personal family or feel individually
fulfilled, because that would keep me from giving to the wider community. I
don’t know that I actually believe this completely, but sometimes I wonder. And
if I could just reconcile myself to that, rather than wanting all these individual
things… would that be a better life? I can be the godparent, the uncle, the friend. Whats wrong with that.
Today I was
walking around the lake and thinking I was superfly or whatever because I was
listening to good music, and the sun was out, but there was enough of a breeze
that it was pleasant and blowing my hair around, and I was just enjoying
it… Sometimes when I am listening to
music, I start conducting or dancing. Sometimes I make faces while I sing or
mouth the lyrics. People walking around the lake will sometimes stare or smile,
and I start to think, yeah maybe I am attractive to some folks? But on this particular day I was thinking
about how aesthetics can be so magnetic and also so distracting. Like you’re all in a good mental place, and
then you see something or someone who is “attractive” and your mind goes
somewhere else. Maybe not a bad place, but a distraction. At the same time,
would you wish them to be “unattractive?” If they were, would you be as drawn?
Would you want to be “unattractive?”
What are the benefits and drawbacks?
This
reminded me of the charismatic leadership thing, because it can be such a
distraction, and lead people down such unhelpful roads. Our perception leads us
to assume that people with charisma have better lives, are inherently worth
more, that they know more, that everything they touch is honey. We start to
cater to the people and things we find attractive, rearrange our lives for it. And
measure our worth by them, questioning the absence of beauty or charisma as
being less worthwhile... Suddenly then, the absence of this very surface level
beauty means we are unfulfilled.
If I walk
around all day and see nothing beautiful, I believe my day was less exciting.
But as an artist, I often find this particularly hard, because I am socialized
the same as everyone else to see certain things as beautiful, and I crave
beauty. However, if I am mindful, I can adjust the muscles of my eyes to
recognize more color, let in more or less light, and see something “mundane” as
“miraculous,” just by bringing awareness to it. Charm and aesthetics then seem
like they must be a distraction, right? NO? How can one know?
I think
it’s especially weird, because we are socialized and perhaps genetically
inclined towards seeing youth as beautiful. A friend of mine has been dating
younger and younger guys, and though I can recognize that she is perhaps
feeling developmentally similar to them, I am also aware that she is an artist
who is drawn to pretty people. I think it’s funny. If she were a man, I would
apply the same lens of judgment that I hold on myself. I am also attracted to
people who look younger than they are. When I am being voyeuristic on dating
profiles, I think that is a common feature of the people who I might swipe for
–that they are my age but look younger. When I look in the mirror and see signs
of aging, I am sometimes ok with it, and sometimes wish I could maintain my
youthful glow. Maybe I just need to drink more water, or less fluoride and open
up my third eye to seeing the reality.
Lately we
have been talking about how easy it is to feel burned by those we are generous
with, but are we generously vulnerable? Do we ask for what we need and
want? Do we share our hopes and dreams
openly? Do we acknowledge our feelings during, and not just after they can no
longer hurt us? I’ve been trying to do
that more often with people, but it doesn’t come easily, especially when I am
feeling vulnerable. And of course, that is just within individual
relationships. Interdependence asks us not just to be interdependent in our one
to ones, but explore and expand our joy in community. I have dozens of folks
who I check in with one on one, but when do I ask them to get to know each
other? How do I promote that type of generosity and vulnerability? And in
myself, how often do I turn down the opportunity to get to know someone else’s
world of relationships –despite knowing it is essential for true
connection. Is it just the limited
capacity? Or is it a fear that I would be held accountable for that deeper
relationship?
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