Welcome to my writings page!

I’ve always enjoyed writing.

When it ‘works’, writing it feels like a unique combination of thought, feeling, sensation and desire coming together to find form through the fingertips- maybe not unlike the pianist feeling her way along the keyboard into what wants to be ‘sung’. In my own forays into writing, I’m trying to find self-expression. I’m trying to find my voice and how it relates to other voices- words, after all, are social entities, designed primarily to connect people, to bring people together in common cause.

The pieces here represent my own ongoing reflections into “what does it really mean to be human?” and “how might we live more in concert with our surroundings?” I see these writings as ‘works in progress’ rather than definitive statements about any given topic. I hope you derive some benefit and pleasure from reading on…

“I want to make a difference in the world”

I spent an evening with some friends recently and the conversation turned to the ubiquitous ‘state of the world’- the polarisation, crassness and arrogance to be found within our crumbling body politic; the ongoing large-scale denial of our ecological crisis; and the cynical scapegoating of various marginalised and/or disenfranchised groups, among other topics. As the conversation developed, a sense of powerlessness and paralysis, even resignation, filled the air as we all tried to articulate an authentic response to what we are facing, both individually and collectively. Coupled with this general despondency was a kind of reactive and impatient urgency, out of which came the following impulse from one of my friends: “I want to make a difference in the world”.

It's this aspiration, “I want to make a difference in the world”, that I want to explore here in more detail, with a particular focus on the scale of how we engage with ‘wanting to make a difference’. This exploration is important, I believe, because it’s an expression of how people derive a sense of meaningful agency in their lives as opposed to feeling disempowered and thwarted.

One of the first things I see in the desire ‘to make a difference in the world’, is a tendency for us to want to respond to ‘big problems’ with ‘big solutions’, with grand gestures. My experience is that this often leads to a sense of paralysis or despair simply because many of the challenges we face, the things we want to ‘do something about’ are just too big and too complex. So, we give up. For me, this impulse to ‘go big’ in our response is a reflection of the expansionist ethic that lies at the very heart of western civilisation. The concomitant cultural narrative is ‘Big is Best’, which relegates ‘small’ to really not so good. As I see and experience it, the realm of ‘big’ is associated with quantity over quality, accumulation for its own sake, conquest, over-simplification and invariably, alienation. ‘Small’, on the other hand, is all about intimacy, connection, relationship and intrinsic fulfilment.

In spite of this dominant cultural narrative of ‘Big is Best’, there are strong counter narratives available to us, largely from the field of anthropology and what it really is to be human, which point to something much smaller scale. We know that as humans we have spent the vast majority of our time on the planet living in relatively small bands of 30-40 people. This is the social environment we have evolved to dovetail into, and we ignore this template at our peril. Similarly, work undertaken by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposes that the most people we can know and have meaningful, stable social relationships with is 150 (‘Dunbar’s Number’). This throws a somewhat different light on what it actually means to have Facebook ‘friends’ in the thousands. On this subject, Noam Chomsky once wryly, yet astutely, commented “I have thousands of friends, but I’ve never met any of them”… 

Many of the problems we face, I believe, are problems of scale. As the Austrian economist Leopold Kohr put it “Wherever something is wrong, something is too big”. With  big comes high levels of abstraction, a decrease in intimacy and trust, and increased distance between things that are related- we lose the connective bonds that hold us together, that make us human.

So, how does all this relate to “wanting to make a difference in the world”?

Well, I would argue that the small-scale realm is the primary realm we inhabit- it’s the place where we actually live our lives. When we speak of “wanting to make a difference in the world” it is this place where we actually live our lives that IS ‘the world’. It’s the place from which all change happens. It’s the place we occupy with our partners, our children, our parents, our friends, our work colleagues, our communities. It’s the place we occupy with our private selves. I’m not saying here ‘don’t have big dreams’; it’s not about scaling down your dreams, it's simply about recognizing that for these dreams to mean anything they have to find actual embodied expression in daily life. The Green mantra of ‘Think Global, Act Local’ offers a good analogy here I think- the global realm of your unfettered dreams and hopes, while the local level of the ‘immediate here’ is where you act and make a difference. Or, as Annie Dillard puts it, “How we spend our days [local] is, of course, how we spend our lives [global].” Your ‘days’ and your ‘life’ are not separate.

In “making a difference in the world”, and thereby bringing about change, you will almost inevitably encounter such things as resistance, conflict, paradox, ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty. It is only on the ‘human to human’ scale of things that these particular aspects of being human can be worked through in such a way that meaningful change can be consolidated, integrated and enacted. These are things that simply can’t be dealt with intellectually, through the abstraction that our very cognizing enables- they have to be felt, and that felt experience only really becomes a knowing when it is witnessed, shared and reflected back.

So, please don’t discount the ‘small’- that which is pejoratively labelled as insignificant, that which ‘won’t really make a difference’, that to which we say ‘I haven’t really got time for that’. Don’t think that by attention to the small, you can’t create a meaningful life- or maybe more accurately, a meaningful moment to moment living. When faced with questions like “how can I make a difference in the world?” my consistent response is “I do what I can within my own sphere, and this is not insignificant”.

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This piece is about the death of my mum in September 2011. The events I speak of take place at Embercombe, where I lived and worked from March 2011 to September 2012. Fiona, Jo, Katie and Tina are all friends living and working at Embercombe at the same time. The morning circle and check in refers to the 8.30a.m. community meeting held every working day at Embercombe. The meeting begins with a check in where everyone is invited to say a bit about how they’re feeling. The ‘Dreamer’ refers to a specific role offered at each morning meeting. The Dreamer is invited to go out onto the land and simply ‘be’- whatever that might look like for her or him. The role and function is intended as a conscious inquiry into the balance between, and the nature of, ‘being’ and ‘doing’.

I remain unspeakably grateful for all the kindness and understanding I was met with by everyone at Embercombe around the death of my mum. I couldn’t have wished to be among a more loving, accepting and supportive group of people.

Goldcrests

It’s the weekend of the blacksmith’s course, and I’ve managed to find a way to allow my time to sprawl and meander.

I want to call my mum- throughout the day there’s been this soft pull from just below my sternum, calling for some contact with her. The pull tugs outwards, then rebounds back…no object locatable. Coming back with a blanketed, insistent pressing…a pressing that bulges up into my throat. It’s not that I have anything in particular to say to her- it’s just about contact.

 It's also about absence.

I wander off up the track and out the gate. I see coal tits, willow tits and goldcrests. The latter is all coy and busy- difficult to get a clear sighting of in order to confirm identification. And not for the first time in my life, I notice the acquisitiveness in trying to capture the experience of ‘bird’. Every time this happens, I fail to really see the bird…

…the perfect white of a herring gull’s neck …the black shine of a carrion crow’s beak …the weave and streak of a dunnock’s plumage

All go missing when I try to make the experience mine in this way.

My thoughts wander- tenderly, they’ve relinquished control of themselves. I want to talk with someone, but no-one will do. I think about my friend Barb, who herself lost her mum about eighteen months ago, and how safe and secure it is to talk with someone and not have to explain anything. Like upon my return to Embercombe after my mum died, Fiona meeting me in a way which maybe only a mother can- safe and warm and accepting. Not needing me to be any particular way. How lovely to look into someone’s eyes and just let the tears come with no sense of apology or awkwardness.

 Five weeks later and I’m in the morning circle again, and the pull from my sternum is strong. I rock back and forth, both inside and out. Self-comforting; like thumb-sucking. I choose to Dream…I make my way up the track…I get thirty yards and I crumple from my haunches…panicked with the absence of mother, the absence of something safe and dependable. Something wants to crack and split within me. I walk to Haldon Forest and sit down with a peppermint tea and a chocolate brownie. I watch the mums playing with their children and wonder whether all that is ‘mothering’ is our last hope for the species, our last link with care.

 Later now and it’s Christmas, and I’m home with dad.

 He’s all over the place- “I don’t know where I shall end up” “I don’t know what’s going to become of me” he says.
“Oh dear…, oh dear…” he keeps repeating, time after time- weeping, thin words that slide away and disappear- just like my silent words, they can’t locate the object of their needs.

His sorrow, his broken heartedness is suffused with a young self-pity. He’s shorn and hewn- scooped out of so much of himself now that mum has gone. At the same time, there’s something different about him- there’s a newfound sensitivity which he’s unable to resist, in spite of himself.

Meanwhile, I’m embroiled in a fifteen-page form from the Department of Work & Pensions to provide yet more documentary evidence that my mum is, in actual fact, dead and therefore no longer entitled to pension credits.

A mail order catalogue addressed to mum drops through the letter box. The company wants a copy of mum’s death certificate before they close the account. I ignore this request, and just send a cheque for the outstanding balance. They close the account. I hate all of this cold, impersonal beaurocracy. It speaks, fundamentally, to a lack of trust- my spoken words over the phone are insufficient proof of the course of events. What’s required is an official piece of paper.

How on earth have we come to this?

Later still, and it’s my mum’s birthday, February the 1st.

“Do the deceased still have birthdays?” I wonder- I’ve never had to think about this before. I pay scant attention to the significance of the day; I’m pretty workady-ish about it. Then, that night, I can’t sleep. I cautiously loosen my resistance to the seeping, viscous sadness washing through me.

An ocean of years.

My world is very small in this place. Some tears squeeze their way out of me, and something kind and understanding takes hold- a desire for company and sharing. At 3.59 a.m. I text my friend Anna, then five minutes later I’m on the phone to her. Understandings come through our dialogue. I’m crying, but I acknowledge that I haven’t really wailed and lost control yet.

Thoughts come:

“Something closer to me than my mum has died.” “She’s more of me than maybe I thought.” The idea of us being two distinct, separate people becomes more blurred, less tenable. “You’re being the best man you can” says Anna. Something woman, something female in me has died.

The next day I’m a bit wiped out…seepy, pervious, fragile. Feel exposed. Tina offers me a hug, silently noticing my needs. I feel a blank sorrow. The next day again, and I’m at the morning check-in. I say “I have nothing to say this morning.”

This is a lie. 

What I’m actually thinking is “people are probably bored with listening to me go on about my mum.” I feel alone, lonely, tired, weak, weary. I interject when a space becomes available: “Would anyone like to be the Dreamer this morning?” “You would”, replies Jo instantly. Katie nods in agreement.

My head droops and my body sags- grateful for his noticing. And for me- a humble self-reproach for thinking I could fool myself in denying my needs…also that I could fool others.

I Dream. I walk to Haldon. I speak with Anna. I become aware that I need space, breadth, vista.

I recall a parable of the Buddha about a woman, Kisagotami, who comes to him, distraught, having just lost her child: “Can you help me?” Kisagotami asks the Buddha. “Yes”, I can help you, he replied. “But before I can help you, you must bring me a mustard seed.” Kisagotami thinks “well,…that won’t be difficult, to get a mustard seed.” But the Buddha adds “…the mustard seed must come from a house in which no-one has died.”

Kisagotami visits all the houses in her village and meets with repeated stories of someone having died in every house she calls on. She returns to the Buddha with no mustard seed. The Buddha helps her to see, to acknowledge, the universal nature of death. “This is death, the human boundary.” He provides her with a space as big as the world of living things in which she can grieve.

I look out from just across the road from the café over towards Exeter.

I become aware of my own smallness. I am granted space and expanse. I am in perspective, in expanse. Without perspective comes myopia, with myopia comes separation, an isolated sense of self. I relax into this and talk to the space. I am grateful for the sanity it brings. So pleased to feel becalmed, to have found a place for myself.

I sit down on a small mound amidst tufted scrub of heather, stone and gravel. Delightfully, I see two stonechats, female and male in characteristically close proximity to each other. Completely beautiful birds. Ordinary and wonderful creatures just ‘doing their thing’…the first ones I’ve seen here. 

“How big does the world look to a stonechat?”, I wonder.

And thoughts continue to come…

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This is a short poem I wrote a number of years ago about bird watching at Severn Beach. ‘The Beach’ is a peculiar landscape, probably best known for the adjacent industrial complex at Avonmouth and the two road bridges that span the River Severn, connecting Wales and England. At the same time, it’s a rich habitat for birds, with extensive wetland and scrub vegetation. The very ‘unattractiveness’ of Severn Beach, with its backdrop of the chemical chimneys of Avonmouth and the constant rumble of traffic means that very few people visit the town- so the birds are left largely undisturbed.

The place holds an abiding magic for me. It seems to wear its memories on its sleeve. There are sonorous echoes of more prosperous times- the rusted funfair from the days when the Beach was a popular holiday destination, and the now closed visitors’ centre that celebrated the construction of the first Severn crossing. These derelict and abandoned structures speak to the passing fads and predilections of man…yet all the while there are the birds, wild and free…

 Chittening Wharf

A winter’s day. Warmed by soup and friendship. A wild place between two road bridges. The sun glistens the mud, uncolonized by man. Man’s signs are rusted dereliction- a bygone funfair and a visitors’ centre impregnated with demolition. How long the bridges and the motor car? How long the whimbrel, the wheatear, the short-eared owl and the skylark? I sip soup and chew bread. The mist, the spray, the light and the song are our vitality. I don’t word, and I don’t label. My lungs offer an unresisting contentment, always breathing out and giving back. The curlew rests a hundred yards from me, all cryptic browns and perfect curves. I rest too, with mu perfect curves of soul. And we don’t word, and we don’t label.

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  On Letting Go

When people first come to coaching, there’s often a recognition that there’s something they need to let go of, something about their personality or behaviour that is no longer serving them. For example, they might want to let go of people pleasing…they might want to let go of being so driven…or they might want to let go of taking the lead all the time. This letting go is not always easy. The very things we want to let go of are often the things that have made us who we are, the things that define us. Through a process of social reinforcement, these ways of being and behaving solidify into an identity- we become known as the person who always leads, or the person who goes the extra mile to help someone out. We then become even more wedded to our identities as they become inextricably linked with a sense of meaning and purpose, a sense of belonging even.

So, in letting go, there can be a lot to give up.

Not only is there the challenge of divesting yourself of a part of you you’ve become very attached to, there’s also the matter of how you will be perceived anew by those around you- the people who are still expecting you to be the people pleaser, or the person that helps everyone out.

Given these risks, you might well ask “Who would want to let go of something that apparently gives them so much?”

Well, it’s often the case that people have reached a tipping point where the costs of carrying on in the same way have begun to outweigh the benefits. A behaviour or way of being that was once ‘fit for purpose’ in the past, now no longer serves, and they have begun to sense this within themselves. For some people there will be a degree of clarity around what they want to relinquish (even though they might not know how to do it yet); for others, the desire to let go will be show up more as a vague stirring, a nagging feeling or an intuitive hunch, that something needs to be shed. This is where, in the coaching, it’s really important to trust these stirrings and hunches, following them to their natural conclusion to see what they want.

Over the last few months, I myself have become aware of some internal stirrings that point towards some things that need to be let go of. This has come about through my working with a grounding practice devised by Karla McLaren, from her book ‘The Language of Emotions’. Maybe the very fact that I’ve felt a need to ground myself more is indicative that some things within me wants to change? The practice is a very simple one comprising of an embodied visualization where the instruction is to energetically connect with the earth. Then at the end of the practice, there are two questions that you are invited to respond to:

What needs to be let go of?

 and

What needs to be rejuvenated?

In response to the first question, I notice the desire to let go of the following: striving, struggle, the future, expectation, wanting to be someone I’m not, believing that things outside of me will make me happy; being hard on myself, comparing myself with others.

With the second question, I discover that the following needs rejuvenating: rest, self-acceptance, a belief that I am enough, my imagination, being honest with myself, accepting my limitations.

I try to do this exercise on a daily basis and have found I’ve developed a kind of intrinsic bodily memory of what feels good for me and what doesn’t. The primary letting go for me that I’ve discovered is around striving and trying to be someone I’m not. When these tendencies are in play, I feel restless, agitated and distracted- consequently, these tendencies then become cues for me to go and ground myself. In doing so, I see my behaviour gradually change- I’ve become more sensitized to the cues signalling that I’m out of sync with myself which in effect creates a ‘choice point’ where I can turn away from behaviours that no longer serve me and move towards more authentic expressions of myself.

In working with this practice, as with much in the realm of self-development, I have learned the need for patience, a gentle but firm commitment and not to be too hard on myself when I don’t always see the changes that I wish for. In applying these attitudes, I am finding that real and lasting change is occurring in my life- on a day-to-day basis, I feel more easeful, I’m discovering greater self-acceptance and I believe in who I am.

This has all come from letting go of striving and trying to be someone I’m not. What is it that you might benefit from letting go of in your life…?

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