Archives for June 2019

Anyone living in a bigger city is overwhelmed by events, talks, conferences and networking evenings. All in the name of sustainability, in one way or the other. 

At one point, as a visitor you stop attending. 

As an organiser, you question your marketing and networking skills: Why does nobody show up? Why don’t people come to this interesting event. 

It is. Interesting. Everything is interesting. 

And then what? 

We don’t need more events. We don’t need more talks. We don’t need to network. We don’t need conferences. 

We know what needs to be done. We know whom to contact. We know what will be said. We know who will be there. 

Any one time event has nearly zero impact. 

Yet, we all pretend it’s different. That our event will be different. 

Instead, of blaming any circumstances that these things don’t work, why not ask ourselves what is truly needed? Just as a start: Whomever I talk to needs a constant community. A group of people to learn from and grow with. Like college. Or school. Just without the exams. 

I don’t know who I am. 

I am not a noun. I am not an adjective.

I know I am not who I was yesterday. I am constantly transforming through my experiences. Through my interactions. Through my connections. Through my relationships. 

I seem to be a verb. 

I am a process, being processed.

We are all related. The human to the non-human. Your grandma to your dog. 

To act out of this relatedness is a key to make the next step in evolution. To make it work. To make us work. We are currently not measured for our fitness, but as Bruce Lipton calls it, we are measured for our “fittingness”. 

The great opportunity of humankind is that we are conscious co-creators of the next step in evolution. Congratulations. 

The realities we experience are based on our assumptions of the nature of the world. What we think what is real is formed by our culture, our environment, our experiences and dogmas we learned when growing up. How we understand reality shapes reality. 

When, for example, we assume the idea of the survival of the fittest, we will always justify competition. If – in contrast – we assumed survival is based on cooperation, we will act cooperatively. 

Our current reality is constructed by ideas that have long been proven false. If we want a sustainable future, we need to eliminate unsustainable realities.

Our opinions and views on the world are often based on stories that we tell. They don’t have much of a foundation. For example climate change, vaccination, investments. We don’t understand these things better than we understand how our TV works. Yet, we have opinions about them. Once we have one, our brain will automatically collect data that supports our point of view. The remaining arguments are made up by us on the spot. We improvise.

“Don’t listen to what they say about you. Find your own way. You are your own master. You can choose where you want to go.” No matter how hard we try to be independent by our surroundings, we always are. Pretending not to be is an illusion. You can pretend as much as you want. 

Ask yourself the simple question: if you grew up in Aberystwyth who would you be? Most likely not the same.

You are made up of all that you experienced. If you had different experiences, you’d be different. If there were nothingness, you wouldn’t experience yourself. You need relation to be. To others. To the planet. No one never needed nobody.