Fall
Autumn, UK: Nikon D3s
“We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.”
(Zhuangzi)
Autumn is my favourite season.
Life becomes more intense; it’s ‘sweater weather’ and the contrast between cool mornings and midday warmth brings me to life. There is a joyful sensuality in the gentle ‘almost-rain’ that softly refreshes and then, slowly, utterly drenches. Days become shorter, time feels more focussed and, perhaps perversely, autumn signals the start of the new year. As I mentally hunker down for winter, I’m already making plans for renewal and change.
Falling leaves are an easy metaphor for ideas and structures that have served their time and might be let go, but I’m seeing that too firm a grip on ‘form’ leads to poor decisions and wasted energy. The either/or dichotomies that split our thinking and bedevil our politics are born of attachments to decisions and organisational processes that were once appropriate and helpful but now no longer make sense.
When the crackling energy of spontaneous action shifts to a determination to see something through, to preserve something, whether an organisation or an idea, we need to recognise we are in trouble.
As individuals it can feel like we are working ‘in spite of the system’ and the odds begin to stack up against us. But, perhaps, with just one more heroic effort…?
In our collective patterns we see societies that divide and fragment, parliaments that can’t decide, economies and ecosystems that fail.
And heroics don’t help us. We don’t need to ‘man up.’
The philosopher and quantum physicist David Bohm reminds us that most of our troubles are caused by the difference between the way the world works and the way our thinking works. We find security in permanence but the world is continually emerging, shifting and finding new form.
So, as the colours of autumn remind me to take stock, I can relax as the world shifts.
And the processes of renewal continue.
Notes:
My reflections were spurred by a few days at the Academy of Professional Dialogue conference. David Bohm’s ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ were top of mind for many. It’s not a casual read but Bohm deserves to be alongside Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Hawking and all of the other brave thinkers who have shifted our view of reality and how our world works.
I’ve been reading Johann Hari’s ‘Lost Connections’ where he links good mental health to patterns of social connection. Hari tells us that (mostly) commercial forces in our society are designed to make us miserable. His reframe helps us to understand that the drugs won’t work and ultimately, he reaches a reaches a stark but simple conclusion: “You need to have a community.”
And, finally, a book that I have read several times. Take a look at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Finding Flow’ where he helps us to find our way into ‘the zone’ of effortless action when we seem perfectly in tune with our world. Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: during much of the day we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, while during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom. The key, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is to challenge ourselves with tasks requiring a high degree of skill and commitment. Instead of watching television, play the piano.
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