Happy Friday! This week we began practicing contextual thinking[1] by dipping into the question, “What Time is It in the World?” On Wednesday we named that we are living in “A Time of Transition.” We’ll end the week by recognizing that this is “A Moment Without Precedent.”
“A Moment Without Precedent”
Fasten your seatbelts! Dee Hock’s emphasis on “a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced”[2] provides a segue to another defining feature of this moment…
The magnitude of shift from “what was” to “what is coming into being” is unprecedented. To better wrap your head around the scale of magnitude, think in terms of an epoch:
“The crisis we are experiencing is not the sort of upheaval that marks the passage from one historical period to another. It can be compared only to one of those biological or geological epochs in which new, higher, and more perfect forms of life appeared, as totally new conditions of existence on earth came about.”
~Maria Montessori, Education and Peace
Takeaway Tip: Check in with your body. How are you feeling? If you feel detached or anxious, I get it! It can be challenging to “fathom all that is going on, in a way that is fully human, embodied, and present.“[4]
Feelings of numbness and detachment can sometimes indicate overwhelm (shutting down can be a protective function when something feels “too much”). Anxiety and feelings of “activation” ~ while they can feel uncomfortable ~ are actually trying to help us. Emotions ~ “energy in motion” ~ are what we need to change along with the epochal shifts happening around us.
This brings us to our next topic: The Need to Adapt, where we’ll pick up next week. But in the meantime, I encourage you to be taking care of yourself.
As we chew on and digest ideas that are important yet challenging, how do we support ourselves? Some ideas: taking breaks when you need to, talking with heart-nourishing friends, connecting with nature, moving our bodies, journaling, meditating, yoga, breathing, etc.
[1] Theo Dawson, VUCA unpacked (4) — Contextual thinking
[2] Dee Hock, One from Many
[3] Maria Montessori, Education & Peace
[4] I heard this phrase from Terry Patten when he spoke in Ithaca several years ago, Here are highlights from his talk on this very topic, “What Time is It?/ How Do We Become the Humans Our World Is Asking For?“