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Pieces of the puzzle

Doesn’t everything we do come together? Each step we take in thought, word or deed being something that will almost inevitably touch upon others as an indelible part of their existence – something completely beyond their control that we’ve essentially placed in their path. We might mainly be concerned with our own story, or that of those we care about, but aren’t we also simultaneously writing in one another’s stories?

As if all that we do is forever weaving in and out of other people’s lives, creating all these forces and situations that will eventually have to be dealt with. Years, decades or lifetimes down the line don’t things tend to make themselves felt? The ripples of our decisions somehow finding their way back as they rebound off the rocks of other forms of existence.

Sometimes it seems quite an overwhelming picture: that each person, absorbed in their own narrative, might be sending forth all manner of choices that’ll impact others and potentially compound before eventually being resolved. All these systemic, personal, environmental, social, economic or cultural actions that stand to combine in any number of ways and spread their consequences out in countless directions.

This sense in which we’re each pieces of a puzzle in charge of deciding what picture we’ll create by way of all the choices we’re making from our own individual understanding of life and how much any given thing might matter. Each person rightly feeling whatever’s happened to them in intensely personal ways as others’ estimation of the worth and value of their existence is etched through every moment of their lives.

Of all the steps we take in life, where did those ideas come from? How well do they still work, personally or collectively? If things aren’t actually working out as we imagined or hoped, might it not be better we unravel our thinking and change? Rather than plough on – trying to make things fit; blind to any pain or unforeseen consequences this might be causing – maybe it’s time to let go, rethink and do differently.

If we’re all part of this – all feeding into so many interpersonal, financial and cultural realities – isn’t the story being told through each one of us? As if, in any moment, we’re holding our piece of the puzzle and deciding what it’s going to be. The choices we make in every given situation “being” the part we play, the link we make in the chains happening all around us.

How are we to navigate such a life? One where the outcome isn’t dictated for us, but rests on our own understanding of the significance each action has within the essentially unregulated whole. As if our role might be to see and feel exactly how “all of this” fits into the bigger picture of our global existence – how it fits and why it matters.

In strange ways, Western society seems to have such beautiful faith in the ability each of us has to appreciate this picture we’re trying to create.

Notes and References:

Situations which ask us to trust
The incredible responsibility of freedom
With our words, do we cast spells?
Gaining clarity on the choices before us
What we create by our presence
Nothing short of everything
Charting our own course

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What’s at the heart of society?

Looking to the heart of society, isn’t it simply individuals? Countless people, all unique in their own way, tangled up in all this activity that, together, makes up the details of all our lives. Society perhaps then being all those grooves of thought and activity that’ve been carved and maintained over the years – blending and evolving as each generation makes its own choices and charts collectively different paths.

All these ways people have attempted to pass on meaning or understanding through how we’ve been taught, told or shown to behave. Vast, diverse ideas of “all it is to be human” emerging from whatever particular communities deem valuable, worthwhile or acceptable. The voices of culture, education, government, media, industry, religion and family all merging into this complex sense of what life is and how we should live it.

Isn’t it the idea of us all needing to understand the whole? Its history, paths, thoughts and all the twists and turns those things have taken through time. Where exactly that leaves us, as the individuals currently trying to make sense of it all and steer things in directions that are good for everyone. Each person somehow coming to an awareness of all that’s flowing through them and how that stands within the bigger picture.

Almost as if life itself – and, society in particular – is a strange blending together of individuals and the ideas of community. Each unique person having their own nature, their own story filled with experiences, hopes, words, struggles, beliefs, memories and concerns. All of us walking our own path; trying to find how to balance what’s within us with the world that’s around us.

As if we’re all simply trying to find ways to be, to belong, to contribute and feel that contribution to be valued. The thoughts of the individual potentially jutting up quite painfully against the ideas of whatever community they happen to have been embedded within. What if the thoughts of modern society can’t contain us? Not leaving room for each person to be who they are and be seen as such.

Sometimes it seems there’s very little space in the middle of it all for communication: for self-expression and the interest it takes to genuinely listen to another, put yourselves in their shoes and see life through their eyes. As if – in this increasingly global community – we’re all talking at once, with nowhere for the conversation we’re wanting to actually happen.

In that light, is the heart of society currently confusion? Everyone pulling in their own direction, caught up in their own thoughts, struggling to be heard or find the time to hear others. As if, everything tangled in this strange free-for-all of “choice”, we’re struggling to articulate exactly how everyone’s decisions are unavoidably knocking onto everybody else and creating increasingly unmanageable situations.

Doesn’t it all matter? All the accumulating damage being done within this reality we’re all sharing. The roles we play within it all. The individuals being crumpled and scarred instead of healed.

Notes and References:

Understanding what we’re all part of
Thought, knowledge & coherent vision
Value and meaning in our lives
All that we carry around with us
Responsibility for the bigger picture
Voices within cultural life
Can our thinking match realities?

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Belonging & believing

Does society need us to believe in it? To believe that we’re valued, not just materially but also personally – that our lives are important and everything going on within them plays vital roles in sustaining or enriching the life of our community. This sense in which all that we do feeds into this vast, convoluted tapestry of our shared lives together; everything mattering and meaning something at the points it inevitably hits home.

Almost as if society might benefit from us believing our presence was valuable and made all the difference. That we weren’t replaceable, interchangeable masses so much as individuals making their own unique contributions through every little thing that we do. That those around us care deeply about our wellbeing, everyday experiences, and all we’re undertaking for the sake of the whole. That everything “counts”.

Equally, perhaps, “we” need to believe our lives hold meaning. That, despite no one seeing or noticing, all the details of our daily existence matter for how they make us feel and for the ways they serve to uphold the many threads that go into making up “society”. Invisible as those ties and connections may be, what are we doing if it’s not somehow helping our lives run more smoothly?

Community may be something seemingly arbitrary – something we’re born into without perhaps asking, while those around us perhaps never asked that we’re here – but isn’t that its very nature? That it’s something emerging from the sum of its parts; something essentially constructed and held together by the sense we have of belonging and the needs which arise from humans living together and sharing the load.

How is that relationship to work if we don’t believe we belong or believe our participation matters? If we’re thinking that no one cares, nobody notices and nothing we do ultimately makes a difference then what kinds of life will we lead? If we’re thinking “all this” is simply some twisted joke where we might give of our time, energy and intention but be treated only as invisible cogs in the machine then how would we feel?

Isn’t this a relationship that needs, in some way, to be warm? That we’d feel ourselves engaged in something meaningful and purposeful yet also heartfelt – all our disparate activities coming together in a crescendo to forge the appreciative embrace of people mutually providing all that’s needed as best we’re able. Each person playing their part, offering their all, and taking only what they truly require.

Often, though, it’s seeming strangely cold and transactional: as if we’re all arranged in detached independence fulfilling the obligations of some loosely defined contract while yelling at others to do the same. Each person perhaps mainly being valued on the basis of qualities that are so largely determined by circumstances quite beyond our control. As if we really were all just anonymous, replaceable entities.

What is the “right” picture to have in mind about our ties to one another and the value of our collective efforts?

Notes and References:

How would we like to live?
Lacking the human side of community?
Valuing people more
What does community mean?
Rich complexity of human being
Understanding what we’re all part of
Integrity and integration

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Living through the changes

Imagining that how we’re currently living might not yet be the perfect realisation of our finest ideals, how are we to live through the process of unpicking and weaving things back together more perfectly? If, in almost every area of life, we’ve been getting things wrong to a greater or lesser extent – the consequences working themselves out through the lives surrounding ours – it’s seeming quite a daunting prospect.

Ideally, I suppose, the ideas upon which civilisation was founded would be perfect enough to evolve seamlessly alongside the lives of its people: thinking that was precise yet flexible enough to match all our needs, lead in good directions and provide us with the tools to confidently navigate moments of transition. As if people could’ve had the foresight and understanding to see exactly what was needed.

That kind of perfection being far from commonplace, however, wasn’t it fairly likely we’d need to live through painful moments of course-correction? Times when everything we’d accepted, believed, trusted in and built our expectations upon would somehow have to be dismantled, reworked and re-established in new form. Disconcerting moments of unravelling; rethinking; conceding error; finding better paths.

If the thoughts of the past were essentially these visions, growing out of hard-fought philosophical battles, that came to inspire people with the idea of what’s possible – picking people up with this hope for the future their lives could construct – what’s it like to fall out of the crest of those waves and realise our efforts hadn’t quite got us there? Is it that the ideas were wrong, the effort not enough, or the reality not as we thought?

Presumably there’d be anger, frustration, thoughts of betrayal or being let down. Grief at the lost dream and years spent crafting something that turned out to have cracks, divisions and counter-forces we never imagined would be there. Almost this mourning over what we thought we had falling away – the vision we had in mind perhaps fading apart to reveal the reality of where we stand.

Looking at all that’s around us, though – the consumerism, waste and careless attitudes – maybe it’s simply a bubble that had to burst and fall away? Much as we might’ve sought our sense of self-worth, identity, expression, belonging or happiness within it all, if it’s not a sustainable way of living alongside one another on a finite planet then maybe something had to give?

If our lives were built around mistaken ways of valuing ourselves and the world – ways of being so unhealthy they threaten to tear apart our natural environment as well as the bonds tethering us to community – might it not be better to have things unravel? Some form of conscious breakdown perhaps being wiser, in the long run, than the chronic management of something unworkable.

Thinking of life as a path of progress, don’t we need to truly see where we stand, what we were aiming for and how well we’ve been managing to work towards realising that inspiring vision for the future?

Notes and References:

World, heading for a breakdown?
Times of revelation
Bringing things into awareness
Desire to retreat, need to engage
Where’s the reset button & can we press it?
How fast can it all unravel?
Thought, knowledge & coherent vision

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Has everything already been said?

Given how many words have and are being spoken each day, particularly in recent years, how much of all we’re now adding can be considered original? Isn’t it conceivable that almost everything’s already been said? All possible combinations of thought, perspective and opinion already having been spoken out there into the world by someone, somewhere, at some point.

Almost as if there’s nothing new: that it’s all been thought, done or discovered and we’ve nowhere further to go in our thoughts about reality. That, somewhere in the dark recesses, someone’s always going to have spun a theory or articulated the details of whatever it is we might be struggling with. That someone’s always able to say, “Of course, we’ve been talking about this, weren’t you listening?”

How are we to broach conversations where so many experts or interested parties have been delving deep to chart every particular corner of reality? Aren’t we always going to be cast back as ignorant or uninformed whenever we attempt to expand our understanding? Inevitably wandering into areas where others are already specialists; having taken whatever conversation’s to be had into specific, convoluted places.

Thinking of reality as a landscape surrounded by our thoughts about it, though, isn’t there always going to be a process of sharing those ideas with others? Each person’s perspectives and opinions inevitably sitting within the whole; their unique viewpoint speaking of what it’s like to be the human living that particular life. We might each be touched by different aspects of reality, but doesn’t it all relate?

Rather than thinking we’ve nothing to add – that we’re all simply treading old paths without anything new to contribute – maybe the expansion of our awareness into seemingly unrelated areas is the challenge we face? That, instead of defending our own area of expertise, we need to somehow welcome others into them and find ways to mutually share and appreciate one another’s concerns.

As if the knowledge is there, the landscape already mapped by advance guards of concerned or interested people, yet we still have to find ways of tying it all together. Each of us somehow needing to inch our way towards understanding what everyone else is passionate about – how life is from countless perspectives and all the issues we rightly need to concern ourselves with and help to resolve.

Within that place, how are we to address one another? If the goal’s essentially awareness and change, isn’t it important we communicate in ways that are likely to sustainably achieve those ends? Not alienating our audience or causing ourselves to burn out in the fiery flames of indignant frustration. How else are we to get up to speed with all these specific ideas of progress, plus the history of their development?

Sometimes it just seems that, despite our fine intentions, we might often be pulling at the seams of mutual comprehension; that the meaningful communication needed to address our many problems is buried under so much that it stifles our ability to listen.

Notes and References:

What is the public conversation?
Anger, and where we direct it
Can our thinking match realities?
Is there any end to the power of thought?
Will things change if we don’t make them?
What should be leading us?
Words & relating as paths to change

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If environment shapes us…

How free are we ever likely to be of our environment? In so many ways it must shape us – our identity, experiences, thoughts, relationships and expectations – as everything we’ve ever encountered leaves its mark and becomes some part of who we are. Almost as if this large part of “being human” is the imprint the world is making upon us.

It seems like an interesting relationship, the one between us and environment. This sense in which we’re almost breathing in all that’s around us, forming our own ideas about it and then taking up our place in the flow of events. All these ways we find meaning or seek our worth within whatever face the world turns toward us; somehow charting our path between all the praise, judgement or shame.

As if all the ideas around us, the explicit ones and all those embedded in the nature of society, seep into the mind to become our understanding of life, how to live it and what matters most. The “meaning” within our environment perhaps informing how we are in the world, towards others and within ourselves: the conversations we’ll have, assumptions we hold, judgements we’ll make and things we think we can get away with.

Where do any of those things come from if not from our environment? All the subtle cues as to what our community deems valuable, admirable or worthwhile. The warmth of recognition, acceptance and approval set against the fear of rejection, criticism and error. Our whole landscape letting us know what it thinks and how we should be if we want to thrive in this setting.

Almost as it “to be human” is to step into our world, come to an understanding of it, then decide what we’ll add: how we’ll respond to whatever we’ve found here. The contents of our environment becoming the contents of our mind; everything having found a home there somewhere on the bookshelves of our mental spaces. Each person picking up their threads and weaving something new into the mix through their choices.

What, then, are we to make of the modern world? All these ideas, artefacts, opinions and struggles blending together into one vast global landscape filled with differing perspectives, lifestyles and values. So few conventions or agreed-upon notions of how to think about life and take our place within all this. Very little by way of reliable guidance or oversight as we each decide for ourselves what we’ll make of it all.

Surrounded by so many attempts to influence, belittle or coerce us into various courses of action. All this effort to make people feel inadequate, afraid or uncertain, just so we’ll buy into whatever solution’s being offered. In many ways, an environment seemingly designed to undermine us and any sense of our own worth; a place full of threats, attacks, promises, lies and strangers.

If we can’t help but somehow absorb what’s going on around us, how are we to respond to this strange atmosphere we’re currently living in?

Notes and References:

World, heading for a breakdown?
Seeing where others are coming from
Why assume there’s only one set of values?
Lacking the human side of community?
Systems, their power, whose hands?
Shaping the buildings that shape us
Visual language and spaces

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Culture’s conversation as a way of life

If we all thought and behaved in the ways modelled for us by culture, what would life be like? All that we took in becoming forces capable of transforming society, for better or worse. Every suggestion an example or condonement of how to be: how to view things, judge and act towards them. Is that what culture is? The palette of options from which to construct ourselves and build our community.

As if we might adopt any one of these examples and make that how we’ll live: the attitudes, gestures, language, assumptions we’ll weave into daily life to inform our relationships and set the tone for who we are. Shaping how we might see people, the thoughts we’ll have about them and interactions that’ll soon become part of everyone else’s lives.

Yet aren’t we surrounded by increasingly questionable suggestions? Strangely unsustainable and unwise ideas for how to live, either socially or environmentally. Ways of being that, if adopted, could cause fairly significant amounts of strain on society and all the lives tangled in its web; relationships between genders or generations perhaps veering off into uncharted territory.

Or is this a conversation we’re better off participating in rather than imitating? A slightly one-sided perspective that relies on us bringing something more to the table. Like a mirror held up to society, reflecting on us and asking that we consider what it’s offering before deciding how we will be in response. Almost this collective mental process where we can contemplate ourselves as individuals living within the whole.

As if culture might be the place we go to make sense of life: its activities providing the insight and oversight we need but that reality rarely supplies. This vital conversation running alongside society, drawing out the threads and pulling together the bigger picture with all of its details and significance. A place of representations, possibilities and scenarios playing out safely set apart from the risks of everyday reality.

In the confines of our minds can’t we consider things we’d never choose to do? Options we might wisely file away as unethical, inappropriate or dangerous. The takeaway perhaps being that much of what we’re seeing paraded before us may be best viewed as cautionary tales of entertaining yet otherwise unhelpful notions of how we might be.

This sense in which culture can spark a conversation, a further digestive process around what’s offered, wherein we might conclude its examples are terrible ways of being that fly in the face of so much of what social life demands of us. That we don’t have to agree with or accept these suggestions unquestioningly so much as call up our own thoughts in response to it all – our own decisions around how we will live.

Ideally, then, would we all respond the same to what’s put before us? All judging culture’s representations the same way – in light of the same understanding of what’s healthy or constructive for individuals and community – before letting things filter back through us into society.

Notes and References:

What are we building here?
The battlegrounds of our minds
Nothing short of everything
Treading carefully in the lives of others
Going along with what we see
Navigation, steering & direction
All that we add to neutrality

Ways to share this:

Does money crowd out other values?

When it comes to making decisions in life, does money really have to speak more loudly than other ways of evaluating our options? Sometimes it just seems that, at every choice point we face, financial interests are standing there beckoning us down “their” path – asking we view things predominantly through that particular lens and cast everything in the light of gain, loss or wisdom on that material level.

As if, in some way, every other conceivable value we may hold – kindness, compassion, fairness, empathy, restraint, consideration for others, harmony, preservation, love – has to stand against the value of money and see which will win. Because it really seems that money has a logic entirely its own: its own set of values, principles and priorities. Its own morality, perhaps?

Fundamentally, it perhaps “is” its own reality? This sense in which the world was carved up and placed in certain hands, giving those people the power to negotiate, control and trade whatever assets they held. All our resources effectively shared out, owned, defended. As if the planet were simply converted to money at some mysterious point in the past and, since then, things play out as they will.

Not every culture seems to see material resources as ownable assets, though. Many view our relationship to reality differently; more in terms of custodianship, conservation or cooperation. Maybe, assigning anything a distinct value, we created this conflict over ownership and the power that inevitably brings? As if the very notion of “money” divides us and sets us against one another.

Might it not be that our ideas are simply mistaken? Destined mainly to lead us into competition and otherwise questionable decisions regarding our environment. As if this fundamental value-system set up in the past is somehow distorting how we’re looking at things and the courses we’re taking within this one shared reality.

If money weren’t a factor, how would we act differently? If, instead of crunching the numbers and letting that be decisive, we had to stack up all our ideals, principles and beliefs and have them determine the paths we’ll take in life. As a fundamentally different conversation, stemming from the world of thought rather than the world of limited financial concerns, wouldn’t the realities of our lives potentially change quite dramatically?

Not that we can do such a thing. In reality, money being incredibly powerful in terms of the opportunities it affords, few seem likely to relinquish that advantage and let things evolve otherwise. Seen through evolutionary eyes, money seems to be what pushes some ahead while keeping others behind – this line along which modern society is, perhaps, splitting itself in two.

At the end of it all, though, if we had to account for what had been our driving force through all the decisions we’ve made, will it be enough to say we let money take the place of any other value judgements? If we’re standing here deciding what matters most to us, what kinds of choices are we really making?

Notes and References:

Values, and what’s in evidence
Does it all come down to money?
Gaining clarity on the choices before us
Do markets create strange social forces?
If life’s a sum, are our choices calculations?
Values, compromise & how things are
Are we wise, living this way?

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Conversations we agree to have

Of all that’s flowing towards us, all the thoughts, assumptions and foredrawn conclusions, which of the threads do we agree to take up, work with and make part of our lives? Almost as if life is this large free-flowing conversation between all of us and all the ideas that’ve made their way through our communities and into our heads. So much demanding our attention, hoping we’ll engage with it and move it forward.

Some of it we perhaps don’t have that much choice over: those situations and relationships we’re essentially born into as our family, culture, society and way of life. Realities we don’t necessarily have the power to walk away from or renegotiate; instead having to live within them while somehow finding ways to articulate our perspectives and shift things toward a better expression of human worth and individuality.

This sense in which we’re born into a world that already exists, filled with all the people and ideas that came before us and charted their own course within this environment we now share. Everything having played out in a long, convoluted string of choices and consequences as “whatever people thought best” worked its way out through the lives, relationships and systems we’re now finding ourselves in.

Doesn’t it all have a knock-on effect? Small things perhaps dramatically reshaping individual lives as paths get shunted off course by erroneous ideas having found ground and blossomed into potentially quite mistaken chains of events. As if, with our growing freedom over recent centuries, strange directions may’ve been taken within society that leave us stuck in the middle of increasingly difficult situations.

How are we to find ourselves within it all and gain clarity over the best response we might make? So much must be incredibly personal: intensely lived moments and lifetimes as countless individuals had to live through whatever was set in motion around them. And so much must have been formative: shaping the very ideas we have in mind and conclusions we’ve drawn about life and how to go about it.

As if we’re all folded into this “conversation” long before we have the ability to see it for what it is – before we had the power to consciously disengage or not let certain ideas affect us. All of it flowing round us as a given; becoming the circumstances of our lives and thoughts we quite naturally had in light of them. As if we’re part of the conversation before we’re even aware it is one.

Once, though, we see that our interpretation and contribution to it all is something we have a choice over, how are we to extricate ourselves from the rhythm of the conversation and create something different? As if, waking up in the middle of a flowing river, we might see the need for another approach. How, then, can we break with momentum’s expectation and engage differently?

This idea of stepping back, finding new words and somehow cracking open the lid of a different form of communication.

Notes and References:

Do we live in different worlds?
Things we give voice to
Voices within cultural life
Can there be beauty in communication?
Responsibility for the bigger picture
Pace of change & getting nowhere fast
Charting our own course

Ways to share this:

The questions behind EbbSpark

What kinds of questions can we ask in life? As children, questions can be so deeply insightful or challenging as young minds attempt to make sense of all they’re soaking up and drinking in. As if the mind simply spreads into its environment, questioning everything it might find there to establish the words, the meaning and significance of it all.

Over time, that insistent curiosity often seems overtaken by “how things are” – the desire to make the best of things, fit in and not be left behind. Social or practical pressures and incentives perhaps breaking the spirit of questioning. As if we’d rather appear confident, impressive and sure of ourselves than expose any uncertainty by asking others or seeking more of an answer.

As if the demands of society – the relationships and expectations – overshadow the needs which fill it. Like the very human need to understand, to believe, to have faith in what we’re doing, why it matters and where it leads. If what distinguishes “us” is the capacity for thought, aren’t questions some of our most important tools? This sense in which we can examine the thinking behind our lives.

If we’re here to learn what it means to be human – then, for our lives to inscribe that meaning on the world around us through all our words, choices and commitments – don’t we need to understand? To see what everything means, what it is we’re really “saying” and where those inevitable consequences will be felt.

Otherwise, trusting others have that safely in hand, aren’t we acting blindly? Agents embracing courses of action without fully bearing the responsibility of foreseeing what it will mean for the world surrounding us and all those filling it. As if, despite lacking the insight of understanding, we might simply plough on regardless.

Where exactly are we placing our trust? That those around us – now or back when the patterns of thinking or organisational systems governing our lives were set in motion – saw that bigger picture and have everyone’s best interests at heart? That this vast human experiment of “how we’ll live on this planet” is somehow going to head in wise directions without our questioning involvement?

Who’s to say, really? Sometimes it seems unlikely we’ll ever get the truth. And that, standing back in the hope of understanding, the world would quickly push us to the wayside while others ran ahead. As if we’ve no choice but to jump in and make the most of “this”. That we “must” get on board and perhaps only raise our doubts from the inside as we’re hurtling toward a questionable destination.

Does it matter what our lives get swept into? All the assumptions and foredrawn conclusions hemming us in. The unnegotiable paths to walk, conversations to have and parameters to accept. Society may “always” be some form of brainwashing or coercion, but isn’t it important that we hold to the essence of being human and not let our lives become part of something we’d rather they weren’t?

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