“You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do.

Act accordingly.”

(Colin Wright)

We’ve become newly aware of our choices.

I know we’ve each had differing experiences of lockdown but, for most of us, the prospect of a return to the lifestyle that was running us all into the buffers; personally, socially and ecologically has become less appealing.

This period of enforced reflection has led many to rethink what is important for a life well lived. In fact, lockdown has led us to notice the ‘system’ that confines and entrains us, and generates large swathes of disengagement and despair in working lives and communities.

The good news is that we seem more conscious of a whole raft of issues such as travel, carbon consumption, pollution, littering, clean air, and sedentary work and lifestyles. The less good news is that we seem to be laying blame for anti-social, apparently unaware behaviour at the door of others.

It’s easy to become enraged when I see crowds dropping tons of plastic on beaches or emptying the contents of their cars at beauty spots. It’s less easy for me to consider how each of us is finding our way through a consumerist lifestyle where we literally ‘buy into’ that kind of behaviour. Even more difficult when I consider how I might have benefited from my participation in the ‘system’ that I criticise.

We are adept at breaking the ‘whole’ of our experience into smaller fragments. And we easily separate ourselves from the parts we don’t like. To some degree, we are one of the littering crowd on the beach, we are each part of the traffic jam that slows our journey or part of the insanity of overcrowded trains.

We are those others, we are the crowd.

But as we have started to see and become conscious of the way our culture and relationships work, we face the choices we have made around our compliance and collusion.

What would it take to develop our capacity to influence and contribute to a different world?

Perhaps we could give ourselves a good hard stare each time we mindlessly choose to be part of the ‘system’?

Notes:

This blog was provoked by an e.e.cummings quote tweeted by @JuSummerhayes: “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

Calling for their ‘Great Reset’, The World Economic Forum recently quoted Jane Goodall’s stark message: “If we don't do things differently, we're finished.”

Be haunted by Drew Dellinger’s prophetic and questioning poem, ‘Hieroglyphic Stairway’ about ecosystem collapse where he pointedly asks: What did you do once you knew?

Take a look at this @BBC article on climate change. No, we can’t all be Greta, but….

My opening quote is by Colin Wright; his writing and podcasts come highly recommended.

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