Deep down inside, I know when I am near (or at) threshold, even if I can’t see it. Sometimes this materializes as a struggle with mental and/or physical manifestations. Other times, I do not notice the struggle, but if I take the time to spend time with myself, it is always there, ready to be noticed.
When a struggle is obvious, my choice is to notice pay heed to it. At times, the struggle is because I don’t want the inconvenience of changing even when I want the change. Other times, I really want the change but I just can see how to pull it off. When the time is right, the struggle ceases and off I go. In both of these struggle, there is great learning in exploring what is really going on within me – if I choose to explore what I have to teach myself, my in-tuition.
When a struggle is obvious, it is easy to notice and take the time to explore what the struggle is really about. When my struggle is NOT obvious, it’s a whole different matter – I have to go looking for it, choosing to find struggle with the express purpose of exploring myself and seek what lurks within me. By doing so, I notice and test the assumptions I make.
Explicitly looking for inner struggles when they are not apparent gives me an opportunity to teach myself how to live well with myself. I give myself a chance to notice if I make decisions without struggle when there should be. As I reflect on the struggle of jumping over the surge channel in choose the right leap, I can imagine that we made our choice to jump too fast and confidently. Did we actually know that the rocks were not slippery? I can imagine myself making decisions fast to avoid struggle. That signals other struggles…
In the end, the better I know the patterns in how I operate, the better equipped I am to make decisions that serve me well. And when my decisions improve, I serve everyone around me better: my family, my neighbourhood, the organizations with which I work, my city, my region, my planet.
What does it take to really look at the nature of our struggles?
What are we telling ourselves that we haven’t heard yet?
What thresholds do we know – yet haven’t noticed yet?
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This post forms part of Chapter 6 – Emerging Thresholds, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities. Click here for an overview of Chapters 4-7 (Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence). Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.
I must confess that I did not live up to the expectation I have of myself to release 4 blog posts into the world last week. I was really struggling with the last post, Choose the right leap. Ironic, as I was writing about struggle when faced with a big decision.
I had a hard time finding a clear message for this post as I was writing. I had a hard time finding a photo that displayed, adequately, the choice we had before as we stood at the edge of a surge channel on the West Coast Trail. Today, I sat down and could easily see the text to take out of the post and the picture appeared immediately in my search. It seems a few days away from a struggle can take the pressure off and help me see more clearly.
It is necessary – and appropriate – to take a step back from the edge from time to time.
It helps me see what I could not see.
My next post will continue exploring thresholds in choice-making.
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This post forms part of Chapter 6 – Emerging Thresholds, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities. Click here for an overview of Chapters 4-7 (Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence). Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.
I know I have reached a threshold at the edge of a chasm when I struggle. Feelings of angst, uncertainty, discomfort, frustration, fear, unease and even anger signal to me that something’s awry. These feelings are telling me that there is a choice before me, whether I recognize it as a choice or not. All I know is that there is some kind of chasm before me, around me – or within me.
As I contemplate the word ‘chasm’ I think of the surge channels my brother and I encountered on the West Coast Trail, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. Imagine an expansive flat shelf of sandstone along the edge of land at the ocean. This is where we walk, instead of the unruly wilds of forest on the upshoot of land beside us. The ocean, as it moves back and forth, erodes the sandstone and creates channels perpendicular to the path of human travel along the shore, and these channels range from narrow and shallow to wide and deep. They are also shallow and wide, and narrow and deep. What they all share is the surge of the ocean through them, back and forth.
Source: imgur.com/EHEzy.jpg
Some of our crossings were simple, a matter of simply stepping over: a deep chasm but not wide. Others were shallow enough to simply walk through. They started to get challenging when they were too wide and deep to cross and we had to find a route overland. The scariest crossing was just wide enough to jump over.
We chose to jump the channel, over the churning ocean below, because the leap was easier than finding an overland route way out of the way through the brush. We stood there with a choice: hard and harder. I am still curious about our choice to jump, for it may have been wiser to find an overland route because the consequences of a mis-jump were significant. A fall into the cold water, gushing back and forth about 5 metres below us, would mean a difficult rescue. The trek overland simply meant certain hardship and time, but no risk of personal safety.
We made our choice carefully for the channel was too wide, and the view down too spooky, to feel confident. My whole being halted before making the leap. I could feel a physical uncertainty washing over me, telling me that this was too much to ask. This is an unusual feeling for me as I have great confidence in testing myself in physical challenges. I jump into things. The truth is, we didn’t give ourselves too much time to think about the consequences or our options. We chose to believe we could do it – and we did.
Choosing when to leap depends on the context. If we did not have the physical ability to leap, were tired at the end of the day, lacked confidence, or if the sandstone was wet and slippery, an overland route would have been more appropriate. It would have been a hard an arduous, unclear trip in and of itself. It would have been a leap of it’s own as we battled the wild bush.
The leap we chose made sense given our context. Our antennae were working well: we chose the right leap.
The next post will explore the role of struggle in our choices.
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This post forms part of Chapter 6 – Emerging Thresholds, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities. Click here for an overview of Chapters 4-7 (Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence). Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.
As I explored the role of destination as we organize our cities in previous posts, I reached the conclusion that where we are headed is both alive and adrift. We know – and we don’t know exactly – what we want to achieve at the same time. When we have a destination in mind, but it shifts and adjusts to changing life conditions, something new has emerged. When we notice that we are moving in a direction, even if not yet able to define that direction and it feels adrift, it is alive. Our purposes are planned and unplanned.
When we have a clear destination in mind, it is easy to lay out a course of action because it is clear, linear and rational. When we trust we are moving in a direction, we only know we are moving in a direction when we come upon thresholds – indicators that something is happening.
In our cities, Jane Jacobs notices that new activities must take place for cities to develop – or they stagnate. She wrote this passage in her book, The Economy of Cities, in 1969:
Once a serious practical problem has appeared in an economy, it can only be eliminated by adding new goods and services into economic life. From this solution to city problems comes true economic growth and abundance. No city by itself develops all the various goods and services required to overcome its complex practical problems, at least not in historic times and probably not in prehistoric times either. Cities copy each others’ solutions, often very swiftly. They also support each others’ solutions, by importing relevant goods to solve problems.Practical problems that persist and accumulate in cities are symptoms of arrested development. The point is seldom admitted. It has become conventional, for instance, to blame congested and excessive automobile traffic, air pollution and noise upon ‘rapid technological progress.’ But the automobiles, the fumes, the sewage and the noise are not new, and the persistently unsolved problems they afford only demonstrate lack of progress. Many evils conventionally blamed upon progress are, rather, evils of stagnation.
I was born 6 days into the year 1970, and the list of persistent practical problems that Jacobs articulates has not lessened in my lifetime. I agree that this indicates stagnation while simultaneously I would argue that we have made progress in other areas of city life. But regardless of the progress made, the persistent problems persist and this should capture our attention.
There are three significant points made in this passage:
New work is essential to address the challenges of today’s life conditions.
New work replicates itself – as appropriate, and as determined by us – across and city and from city to city.
Persistent problems are an indicator of arrested development, a lack of progress, stagnation of our individual and collective development.
Jacobs is highlighting the need to notice when it is time to learn – to know and understand the world differently. In an earlier post, I highlight the conditions for evolutionary expansion articulated by Beck and Cowan: openness to the potential for change, exploration of solutions, a sense of dissonance with way things are, a realistic understanding of barriers to change, insight into new patterns, and consolidation of understanding.
Jacobs is telling us, from 1969, that the well-being of our cities has everything to do with how we show up – our willingness to grow and learn as individuals and as whole cities. Persistent practical problems in our cities are an indicator of OUR stagnation, our lack of emergence.
The next series of posts will highlight forms of thresholds that tell us that the conditions are there, should we choose, to know and understand our world differently. To emerge.
This post forms part of Chapter 6 – Emerging Thresholds, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities. Click here for an overview of Chapters 4-7 (Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence). Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.
We are, at each an every moment, on the threshold of a new age. Each choice, each decision and in fact, each thought, shapes our present and our future. At each moment we stand at a threshold, choosing the age in wish we live.
Never again will we stand On the threshold of a new age. We that are here now are Touched in some mysterious way With the ability to change And make the future. Those who wake to the wonder of this magic moment Who wake up to the possibilities Of this charged conjunction, Are the chosen ones who have chosen To ace, to free the future, to open it up To consign prejudices to the past, To open up the magic casement Of the human spirit Onto a more shining world.Ben Okri
Our future unfolds as we create it. It emerges in relationship with us, and, as I will explore it over the next series of posts, the future that we desire to create relies on three things: noticing thresholds, courage and risk. This revolves around three questions:
What thresholds are before me?
What part of me desires (or does not desire) to cross the threshold?
What are the risks of crossing (and not crossing) the threshold?
The threshold of our new age involves a willingness to notice our choices, to examine our relationship with our choices, and being mindful of the consequences of our actions.
As John O’Donohue reminds us in his blessing, we drift through gray, increasing nowhere:
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.
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This post forms part of Chapter 6 – Emerging Thresholds, of Nest City: The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities. Click here for an overview of Chapters 4-7 (Part 2 – Organizing for Emergence). Click here for an overview of the three parts of Nest City.
