Participatory Inquiry, episode 116: Who We Want To Be
“In a network, our performance rests on our ability to change.”
@johnkellden
You need to develop new abilities and you also need to apply your own unique set of old and new abilities, slightly differently. Or, risk falling short of what your true self hoped for. Don’t sell yourself short, grow into the fullness of your unique ability.
There’s four stages to this. And a suggested strategy, once you understand the process.
Contentment
You don’t see any point in changing — why change when life is good and you rest in relative safety and entitlement inside your comfort zone?
why change when life is good?
Well, if you listen to the news, if you remember there’s other people out there not you, you realize that remaining separate from the rest of the world, is not an optimal long-term solution.
Denial
Denial is good, if it is informed by situational awareness, forming healthy boundaries and guided by an understanding of how economics, ecosystemics and eudaimonia are all interrelated and evolving.
economics, ecosystemics and eudaimonia are all interrelated and evolving
Otherwise, not so much. There’s one thing you really shouldn’t do when noticing your own denial: retreating back to contentment, settling for less, turning denial and contentment into procedures, rituals without meaning, routine. If you have ever held a job you didn’t like, you know exactly what this is all about.
choose a different path
Choose a different path than retreat. Any which other path will do.
Confusion
Confusion is your friend. It is a sign of resilience and thrivability just about to be rediscovered. Confusion is also a sign that there’s new abilities forming in your mind, deep changes in the very premise on which your old abilities are founded and developed.
calling your old self
Confusion is also a calling, calling your old self to take the first steps on a slightly different path, seeing things from slightly different perspectives, combining your experience and knowledge in slightly different ways.
Renewal
You guessed it already. You can sense it, you can feel it. If you embrace your confusion, renewal is the outcome. Renewal is not the end-game though, contentment is.
anything their hearts desire
You are eminently allowed to lead a good life and offer anything their hearts desire to all those others who are part, parcel, parsing and participatory inquiry of your walking gently on this bluegreen corner of the universe. It’s just, renewal is of the essence. Without it, you would risk returning to the exact same place of contentment which you managed to leave in the first place.
Contentment
No, this here contentment, is a new place. You levelling up in the game of life.
How long is the pier? How fast do you need to run? How high do you need to jump? How many levels are there? How many do you need? That’s precisely how many there are.
your boundaries have grown slightly more healthy
And don’t worry, in this your new place, your new circles of concern and influence have improved, your boundaries have grown slightly more healthy and you are finding yourself with an improved ability to embrace change and confusion.
Strategic Outcome
Regenerativity. The bottom line was, is and will always be regenerativity, and the only challenges — your willingness to understand synthesis, surrender to selfhood turning sovereignty and perform service.
Strategy: Synthesis & Story
The ongoing synthesis is co-extensive with your story. Signs are co-extensive with life. If your story is vibrant and catalyzes vibrancy in others, it is good.
Strategy: Sovereignty & Tasks
Out of this your true story, which you at all times are free to realize you already are a living embodiment, there follows tasks. Not any which tasks will do though, tasks need to be committed to, in a spirit of sovereignty.
grist for experience and learning
All other tasks are not tasks as much as grist for experience and learning.
Strategy: Learning Journey
Never ever worry though about your not performing perfectly; about unlived, less vibrant, shadow parts of yourself seemingly keeping you from providing and being of service — they are setting you up for all those experiences, forming your own unique learning journey, which will lead you to asking different questions: asking yourself, asking others, engaging in a generative dialogue with the rest of the world.
asking different questions
Strategy: Service & Re-generativity
This learning journey, once you fully embrace it, turns, step by step, into a generative review. An understanding, a rediscovering of your own innate, unalienable sovereignty and what tasks you perform, in order to provide what service.
8bn unique agents, performing
All this boils down to one simple thing: your ability to change in order to be of service.
your ability to change
Thankfully, most of us have always and already a choice of turning any and all of the complex responsive processes around all this, into convivial conversations, making select contingencies all the more interesting, and, when embraced, enacting an abundance of possibility spaces, making for 8bn humans engaging in a participatory inquiry, from 8bn unique points of view. Thinks and things and gatherings halfway along out on a pier, preparing to jump into our own becoming happily descending.
Participatory Inquiry, episode 116: Who We Want To Be
