We begin today with this hopeful song about how one day the world will become all that it could be.
I wonder: What is your "One Day..." And what is stopping one day becoming today?
Jenny mentions that today's content follows on from our recent get-together, where Chris and Joel introduced thoughts on "Benevolent Individuals or Exhausted Seekers?". You can find the blog for that week here: https://www.qyork.co.uk/post/benevolent-individuals-or-exhausted-seekers
In this film clip from the movie Babe, a pig tries to outwork a potential new role on the farm. Perhaps he may be able to avoid his family’s fate if he can remain treasured by the farmer and become something unique: A Sheep-Pig!
Jenny uses the parable of this film to consider the pre-determined roles we play in a collective setting, and how we can tend to play them at times.
For example:
· what is our ‘but for…’ that we blame for the way things are?
· Are we sometimes too busy working out who to keep happy?
· Is our perceived status in a group something that stops us standing close enough to bring our part?
Over time we've become a species of individuals who have learnt how to be people-pleasers, knowing that our inclusion, and even survival, can be dependant on others around us. Chris spoke, in the previously mentioned week, about the analogy that each of us are like waves in the ocean: Unique expressions of a greater whole. If we're unwilling to risk following Babe's example and break from the norm, then our uniqueness may be lost, which in turn could be detrimental for everyone.
It's not about stopping caring about other people, it's about caring differently...
If we can take responsibility for our own unique wave then we'll take our own spectacular place in the ocean, like this guy...
Just like this wave we are a big part of something small but also a tiny part of something even greater...
To continue the analogy of waves in the ocean, our unique tidal-flows are inevitably going to crash into each other and we can often avoid this, wishing for calmer seas. However, as Alan Watts brilliantly points out, harmony and conflict might well be one and the same thing.
Joel recently shared how we can all be Benevolent Individuals and become the most powerful version of ourselves. Clare continues the conversation, exploring what might be stopping us doing this.
"The only person stopping you...is you!"
Clare explores what she has learnt about how our brains have 2 systems that influence us every day. They each help us in different ways, and an awareness may help us live more consciously.
In order to grow and evolve, we may need to update the long-term conclusions we've logged in our System 2 memory in particular. We perhaps need to question the familiar decisions we've made about who we are, what we're worth and how we live, because many of our core beliefs that run the system of our life may be due an update!
Chris explains this with a different term from the movie Inside Out, in which old memories that need to be outgrown are discarded in the memory dump.
"I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned."
There are waves crashing all over our world, but what is creating this motion in the oceans?
It's movement that creates the waves in the seas and likewise, we need to allow for movement in our lives to shape the unique "wave" of our life.
Another factor that contributes to the shape of our wave is the current. It's easy for us to be disconnected to the current and the present of our lives because we're stuck in an old role we used to play. Japanese soldiers returning from their duties after the Second World War were ceremonially invited to lay down their role as loyal soldiers and to engage as parents, friends and citizens in post-war Japan. Their current was changing and their responsibility now required them to lay down their former role. Are there roles that you are playing that were relevant and important previously but aren't the current role you need to play? What needs to change?
Our focus today has been on how we shape our own unique wave in the wider ocean. This doesn't ignore or devalue the importance of the whole, but on the contrary, as we continue to grow as individuals, challenging the status quo about our lives, our wave will grow in power and be a beautiful, one-of-a-kind expression of life that will benefit everyone! So, what do you plan to do with your one, wild, precious life?
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