This morning as I walked to the nearby lake, there was a glistening in the air that made everything glow. This reminded me of the foliage of Portland, the grassy hills of Ireland, and the cloud forests of South America. Despite the despair in the news, and the constant worry in my head and heart, this end of summer-early fall has been beautiful, as the season turns a trillion new colors have revealed themselves, and the complexity and the contrasts in this ever-changing color palette are mesmerizing. How many hues of green, of yellow, pink, orange or brown, can be layered in a single tree? Now add another tree just behind. A bush. A floral garden. Some creeping vines. Let the sun break through a cloud and transform them all another time, let the wind turn the leaves just so, and the spectacle is renewed, beckoning the gaze, stopping you in place. A dozen times, I was slowed in my tracks this morning, another dozen I stopped completely.
The mind calls me back to the concerns of the day of course, and of the week, and month, perhaps of this generation. I am gloomed over by the news. I am at times despondent in my grief and anger at how we choose to live and co-create this world. And it is that acknowledgement of responsibility that makes it all the more painful, knowing that I am just as liable as the next whose motives I may question. As someone familiar with the history and sociology of humanity, I am aware that all the signs point to a coming ‘winter’ season. A great trying time, during which calamity will occur, and naturally our behavior will change in response. Some of us will shelter around a hearth. Some of us will welcome others with song and story. Some of us will defend our hoarded resources. Some of us will pillage the crucial stores of others.
If it is a continuation of the human story, then we shall participate in a great reckoning that leaves us questioning ourselves and our purpose going forward. Perhaps we will make the necessary changes, perhaps we will bind ourselves to a path that repeats the cycle of despair for another generation. Regardless, we will survive en masse or in pockets, and repopulate and cultivate the land again.
As a therapist, I have been trained to recognize the gifts and survival strategies that allow a person to adapt to their circumstances. The goal, to help make this knowledge conscious to the individual, so that they are able to choose their response, rather than simply reacting to circumstance. In brief, when we are young, we learn strategies to adapt to our environments, and as we grow, we often find that later in life we are still using these same strategies despite the fact that they may have become mal-adaptive. ((This is just one of the ways of thinking about therapy at the micro level and incorporates what is called a “trauma-informed” lens, meaning looking at the responses to trauma,‘survival strategies’ as helpful, rather than bad or wrong.)
As a social worker and teacher, I have been trained to recognize the environment around folks, the systems that impact their responses (mezzo/macro levels). For instance, how does the family or the school respond to a child’s behavior? It is often super evident that when adjustments are made to the system, the child’s behavioral response changes. For example, if a child is hyperactive and treated as a nuisance by their teachers, they tend to hate school and become more reactive to it. On the other hand, if a child’s hyperactivity is celebrated and seen as a gift in school, they tend to find ways to utilize this strength to support their learning or add to the school culture. (This is why you’ll hear helping professionals say they take a “strength-based approach.”)
This meso/macro level understanding, is why teachers and social workers are able to recognize that environmental factors at a societal level are so important. A cut in funding or policy change to schools, healthcare, immigration, the justice system, etc., will all impact families and individuals we are working with. It is also because of this recognition, that many (not all) of us swing to the left in politics, because we believe and hope that careful forethought in decision making can reduce the negative impacts and potentially increase the positive impacts for individuals and families. Ultimately, evidence suggests that supporting people's strengths and treating them with dignity creates the conditions under which they can thrive.
It is because of this knowledge and belief, that I struggle so much with our current society. It feels like careful decision making to improve people’s lives is not only not on the agenda of our leaders, but that actually the opposite is the goal.
-For what reason did the Trump administration move the American embassy to Jerusalem?
-For what reason did the congress choose not to provide basic income, or a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions during a pandemic that kept people from working?
-For what reason did the ‘justice’ system protect the police officers who shot Breonna Taylor?
None of these decisions were made with humanity in mind, they were made to uplift some, and intentionally or unintentionally hurt others. (Embassy, promotes Israel’s authority over Palestinian autonomy, as well as fundamentalist Christians. * Congress safeguarded monied interests rather than the majority of folks who have been impacted by the pandemic. * The system enforced laws that protected the police even though they instigated the conflict and endangered the lives of citizens leading to Breonna’s death.)
And further, for what reason are we sending our children back into schools? Sports teams? Part time jobs? Is it because it is our best or because we have stopped trying to figure out something better… Not only have we been duped into not demanding solutions, we have been turned on one another, and made afraid. In our insecurity, we point fingers and blame, instead of recognizing that we all have the same needs and desires and are simply trying to figure it all out.
As I was walking, I was thinking about the dialectic of the illusion and reality of the ‘natural’ around me. The park, the yard, the cultivated or fallow garden. It is, after all, one of the oldest creations and metaphors we share. Humanity’s adaption of nature, our co-creation, a million varieties across every habitable space on the planet. I always wonder how much intention is put into each plot, each bend on the path through the park. Did a visionary gardening architect sculpt this landscape into this masterpiece? Or was it time and life’s determination to survive?
The students are returning to in-person next week at my program, and our society is headed toward a reckoning. And knowing that the macro is the micro, and the micro is the macro, I can’t help but worry. Not about the spread of a virus, but of the unnatural adaptation we are asking. That like in our society at large, our collective foresight cannot manage the variables, so we will ask the plant with thorns to stop being prickly, and the flower growing pink-orange-sunset petals to stop being so brilliant, and the vine we will say is too choking, and the tree we will ask to stop dropping its leaves or flittering in the wind. We will ask because we are afraid, and then we will demand because it’s painful to feel loss and disappointment, and because we believe power and control are the only way to ensure our enduring, we will fight. The stress will bring out the best and worst of us, our adaptive traits, our gifts, our survival strategies.
AND, perhaps if we slowed down, allowed ourselves to be stopped in place, we could take in the garden as a whole and our place within it. We might be able to see the trillions of colors revealed as the earth tilts away from the sun. And in it, see the beautiful interdependence of our community. Acknowledge the gifts, learn to ask and give, share gratitude for the seasons, the cycles, and also for the survival strategies that allow us to flourish. And instead of demanding and blaming, we might ask each other, what do you need to be a good tenant of this garden? And what can you offer? How can we create a more reciprocal ecosystem? How can I ease your fear and instead leave you stunned with awe and connection? What labor would you willingly commit to, if you could trust that your good will, your energy and your love, would be recognized?
The seasons remind us that change is natural and necessary. And with all change in life, loss and opportunity. Sometimes it’s painful, I just wish we could stop choosing all this unnecessary suffering. Poor humanity... we have just a few needs and desires, look inside yourself and you will find the same ones as your neighbor and your ‘enemy.’ There is no difference between us just beautiful variation. 7.8 billion in a living garden, there is enough for all of us.
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