One morning last week, as I stood at the edge of the river valley, I watched a group of young people walk down the path, well below me. At 9am it was odd to see a group of 20 people walking that were not small children, yet somehow they seemed young, maybe late teens, hiking down the path, full of energy.
Just as I thought to wave, and resisted the urge, someone in the pack waved up at me. I waved back.
“Someone waved back at me,” she shouted.
Then a series of waves, as I waved and paused, as parts of the pack realized what was happening and they joined in. It went back and forth until they moved out of site.
And I cried.
I sobbed as I tried to figure out why this moved me, what cracked open. And then it hit me – my city waved at me.
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This group of young people moved my soul. I found myself wanting to thank them, but they were long gone. And then I heard them. They had circled up onto the road behind. I could see their faces, their smiles, their exuberance, and, of course, we started to wave at each other. And I shouted over to them that they made my day, thank you.
“Thank you river valley friend,” is what they called back, as they continued their hike.
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It didn’t matter who I was, it mattered that I waved.
It didn’t matter who started waving, it matters that someone starts.
I have been moderating a series of election forums across my city and I am in awe of the energy candidates for civic office put into their campaigns. Last night was the third evening I have spent with Ward 6 candidates, and they have come a long way since I first saw them in action a month ago.
In my last post, I asked: In what ways are you an evolutionary agent for your city?
Running for office is one way to be an evolutionary agent for your city. Each candidate plays a critical role in how the city speaks for itself. As I reflect on last night’s forum, I recognize the candidates that are tired and just want the marathon to be over. There are others that clearly have more energy to spend. Some are less clear in what they have to say, while others have honed their pitch. For some, this has been a huge learning experience and you can see it on the stage in their newfound comfort speaking to a crowd.
More importantly, as the differences between the candidates become more distinct, the choices for the city become more distinct. Perhaps this is the real energy the city receives from election season. It fuels our sense of how we see ourselves because we have to make a choice.
And we need candidates with different points of view enable the choice. All candidates, all views, all perspectives, are part of our collective movement.
Elections fuel what we imagine our city needs to be to serve us well.
Electoral energy helps each of us – and our city – learn about who we want to be.
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This post concludes a series of posts on Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
The questions put to candidates in the election forums I have been moderating for the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues this fall are about what city hall can do for citizens. No one is asking what citizens – as communities – contribute to the city as a whole.
While moderating a Ward 10 forum, hosted by Blue Quill Community League, the South West Area Council and the Central Area Council of Community Leagues and the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues, the audience was asked to write questions down on index cards, to be drawn at random and put to the candidates. This question was not drawn and put to the candidates, but it stands out:
What do we owe to the city as a whole?
A number of trade-offs immediately come to mind with this question: welcome the LRT through my neighbourhood to allow the larger transportation network to work better; allow higher density housing in my neighbourhood to make better use of city infrastructure; welcome a variety of housing in my neighbourhood to accommodate a variety of citizens; encourage expenditures for neighbourhood renewal first in neighbourhoods that really need it. To truly serve the whole in these (and many other) ways, we need to co-create a social habitat that allows for them to happen. We need to co-create the space to see what the city needs, versus what my community needs.
Citizens are city makers. We build the physical city in which we live, we build the economic systems in which we work, and we build the social habitat that helps us navigate the world. We choose the city we want by naming it, describing it. When we speak of what’s wrong, we get more of what’s wrong. It’s time to create a social habitat that aims for more of what we want, that delivers on the improvements we seek. This is important work, because at every scale (self, family, neighbourhood/organization, city, nation, planet), what we build lasts: it reverberates for a long time to come. Everything we do shapes our city.
The responsibility of citizens is to be the best citizen possible and prototype social habitats that affect deep systemic change. Here’s how:
Wednesday October 16, 2013 – Ward 6 Candidates Forum at North Glenora Community League Hall (13535 109 A Avenue) at 7 pm
Thursday October 17, 2013 – Ward 4 Candidates Forum at McLeod Community League (14715 59th Street) at 8 pm
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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
A new form of leadership is emerging that cultivates collective ingenuity at any scale (self, family, neighbourhood, organization, city, nation, humanity) by creating social habitats in which we figure out how to serve ourselves well, so we can serve our cities well. When we serve our cities well, they serve us well in return: a mobuis relationship.
The creation of social habitats that allow citizens and cities to thrive is critical prototype work today that requires people to step into leadership roles to create new kinds of enabling places and spaces that “help people co-sense, co-develop, and co-create their entrepreneurial capacities by serving the real needs in their communities (Scharmer and Kaufer, Leading from the Emerging Future, p. 87).”
The leadership is about people initiating the creation of these places and spaces, but also the co-leadership of people to co-initiate, to jump in on the learning journey. This isn’t leadership work for one leader out front, but for that one leader and all the other leaders who choose to join in. The work to create social habitats that allow us to expand our awareness and consciousness belongs to all of us. It requires all of us to be subject not to change, but to changing.
With my colleagues in the Art of Hosting community (in Edmonton Nov 12-15, 2013), we shift how we meet with each other to create the conditions to co-sense, co-develop and co-create social habitats for changing, social habitats that cultivate collective ingenuity as we have never experienced before.
Here is why this work is important:
Depending on the state of consciousness of a social field or the quality of people’s awareness, social systems enact completely different structures and behaviours. Just like water in the physical system, the makeup of people in a social systems stays the same under a given set of conditions. The difference between natural laws and the social field is that the actors in social systems are able to initiate change. In other words, they are sitting in the water while the temperature changes – and they potentially can get their hands on the temperature control. When their field state of awareness or conversation changes, the actors relate to one another in different ways, and end up creating very different results (Scharmer and Kaufer, p. 69).
Humanity is learning how to consciously notice the temperature changes and how to put our hands on the control. We are learning how to create social habitats in which this can be done as an effective collective – no easy task.
The emerging social habitat is more easily felt, than articulated. We can sense its direction now, but not its destination. It is full of diverse knowledge and opinions. It is full of positions that are cross-purposes. It is full of conflict and uncertainty. It is also full of intention to integrate this massive diversity in an effort to fully see what we collectively know. It is a form of flat, distributed leadership that co-exists with hierarchy when needed. It seeks to meet the needs of many, and trusts that the work we each do is meaningful.
While working on my book, Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, I am sharing some of my thoughts along the way. Here are some plot helpers to help you navigate the posts:
Some friends and I have started a book club to explore Leading from the Emerging Future, Otto Scharmer (Theory U) and Katrin Kaufer’s new book, chapter by chapter. This is my harvest from our exploration of Chapter 1.
The momentum of the world around me is overwhelming at times, particularly in cities. We tell stories about our cities to ourselves and the stories we tell are the stories we create. Do we tell ourselves that cities are big and ugly and inhumane, or that they accelerate the development of our well-being, in health practices, the arts, and economic opportunities?
Eckhart Tolle (in Stillness Speaks):
The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: don’t take your thoughts too seriously.
As a citizen, there is great value in recognizing when I am simply getting caught up in things, particular the drama in my mind. As Tolle puts it, “it is easy for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons.”
We have thoughts, and we ought to notice those thoughts and tell the stories of what we are noticing because we notice ways to improve our cities and this serves the evolutionary impulse. But we do not need to get caught up in the momentum of what we see. See it, be aware of it, and yet hold it light enough that we do not take the new story so seriously that we hold onto it as tightly as we held the first story.
To be comfortable with uncertainty, we need to be able to hold our stories lightly enough to toss them when they no longer serve us as well as they could.
Are you holding a story that limits your experience of the city?
What new story is emerging in the city you see?
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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
As numerous as the candidates were at last night’s election forum that I moderated for the Downtown and Oliver Community Leagues, most remarkable were the 140 people in the audience, attentively listening and taking notes. (For a recap, check out Mack D. Male’s post.) These citizens were taking the opportunity to see their future councillor in action. These citizens are taking the initiative to be informed voters.
Now that’s a good way to serve your city. Exercise your vote.
An even better way to serve your city is to vote consciously. Here are some questions I ask myself before casting my vote:
Who is running for election?
What do they stand for?
Do they have the ability to run a large organization?
Do they know what that large organization is for?
Do they know what they want to do, and can they realistically do it?
Do they have good relationships with people they disagree with?
Are they open to learning new things from any source?
These last two are important, because it is not possible for a councillor or council to please everyone. It is unreasonable to expect every citizen to be happy with city hall, because we will all be unhappy with something. The real question is whether the people we elect are smart enough, skilled enough and have the emotional intelligence to build relationships to get things done. I don’t have to agree with everything they do, but I do have to trust that from their vantage point, they see things I don’t see. To trust them, I need to see that they are open to learning from anyone wanting to have their ear.
That’s how I vote consciously.
What action do you take to vote consciously?
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Want an election forum in your league? You have the support of the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues. I will help you design your event and moderate it. Just get in touch – beth@populus.ca
Did you always know you would be doing this kind of work? This is the question a young reader just asked me. My simple answer is no/yes.
On the surface, no, I did not know I would be doing this work. I remember finishing my undergraduate degree in canadian studies, and public policy and planning, feeling like it wasn’t specific enough. I could read and write, but in a family of teachers, engineers, pharmacists and business owners I couldn’t say what ‘I’ was. So I kept looking.
I have one of those personalities that likes a wide variety of things, so career counselling based on interest was always expanded the options, not narrowing them. Somehow, in that wide mix, city planning appeared. Frankly, I had no idea what it really was, but it was intriguing. I moved to a new city to do a masters degree in city planning, and on my first day of school I knew I was in the right place. It felt good.
Choose work that feels good.
As I look back on my years working, I see that the spirit of that first day of school is still alive. When jobs started to feel less energizing, I actively found ways to make the work more exciting. Sometimes that meant having a chat with my boss and/or co-workers recreate the work on the job, or finding a new job. I have the privilege, in my part of the world and in the life I have, to choose my work.
I see now that as I choose work that feels good, I am not surprised by the work I am doing, because I realize that it was always in me to do. Choosing what I like to do all along means that what I like to do grows. Its a natural progression. Its a natural extension of me.
Work is a natural expansion of You.
As I follow the work that makes me feel good, I become a more full Me. Not the ego ‘me’, but the larger, fullest possible potential of Me. And as I do so, I expand the contribution I make to the world around me. Deep down inside, I always did know I would be doing this work. Years ago, ‘i’ couldn’t see it yet.
Your work is in You.
What is the work that energizes you?
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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
These words of Andrew Cohen, in Evolutionary Enlightenment: A New Path to Spiritual Awakening, jumped out at me last week. I realized that the chapter title I have been using for Nest City’s 9th chapter, “Be the best citizen you can be” is something else: be an evolutionary agent for your city.
As citizens, our openness to the creative, evolutionary impulse within each and all of us to pursue our passions in our work allows us to make continuous contributions to our personal and collective habitats – cities.
Cohen presents 5 tenets of evolutionary enlightenment, which as both practice and goal, allow the infinite possibility within us to come into Being:
Clarity of Intention. Make a bold, foundational commitment to be a vehicle for the evolutionary impulse in this world. “You are a potential bearer of the future, and therefore the impulse that is driving the evolutionary process is only interested in you according to how much of that potential you are able to fulfill (p. 122).”
The Power of Volition. Embrace unconditional responsibility for what has been yours and ours all along – everything – and make it conscious. This is necessary to make you “available to participate in the present and future in ways that would otherwise not be possible (p 128).” The evolutionary process does not need “the burden of your own, unresolved negative karma – both personal and cultural (p. 132),” and so you have a free choice, to choose to “activate the process of evolution in and through yourself. You become the evolutionary agent (p. 133).”
Face Everything and Avoid Nothing. Be “emotionally willing to bear a degree of reality – both in regard to yourself and to life itself – that you may have been unwilling to tolerate before (p. 141).” Allow the walls of self-protective denial and avoidance to crumble, and you will wake up to the nature of consciousness, human experience, the complex workings of individual and collective development (p. 142).” Stand tall when you are no longer hiding anything from yourself (p. 143).
The Process Perspective. Conjure a bigger context, a perspective from where you “see your personal experience, which at times can feel overwhelming, within an infinitely larger context. The drama of your personal desires and concerns is … always secondary to the prime directive of the Authentic Self, which is the evolution of the process itself. When you are lit up by the evolutionary impulse, there are times when its creative passion completely overshadows personal concerns … (p. 153).”
Cosmic Conscience. Notice the moral imperative to ensure that the evolutionary process evolves through you. Imagine a kind of cosmocentric care, “not related to your ego, well beyond your self of self and ego. “It comes from a deeper higher part of yourself that is free from all the lesser though very real dimensions of who you really are. When you start to emotionally respond to life from that part of yourself, something extraordinary has begun to happen (p. 165).”
Cohen reminds us that the goal of life is perpetual development, involving both a path and a goal, and that they are the same. The above tenets are practices and explorations and an end-state, one and the same.
They are also a reminder of earlier posts this series, and how cities have come about – through our work, and more specifically, as we pursue our creative passions in our work. (See Concluding city patterns.)
When we choose to fully pursue what the world, or cosmos, calls of us, an pursue our innate desire to respond to our creative impulse, we are serving the evolutionary process itself. When it comes to cities, we are building habitats that serve our very evolution.
It is a free choice to become an evolutionary agent. And being the best citizen you can be means being an evolutionary agent. It means putting the ego aside, remove its ability to sabotage your desire to respond to the cosmic call to let out your creative impulse.
What does the evolutionary agent in you long to do?
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This post is part of Chapter 9 – Be the Best Citizen You Can Be. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities, the book I am sharing here while I search for a publisher:
