… we, these vegetable manifestations of both truth and life, dust on both the outside and the inside of the panes, grandchildren of Destiny and stepchildren of God, who married Eternal Night when she was widowed by the Chaos that fathered us.”
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Dear U,
It’s taken me a while to write this one, as I kept changing my mind. This is where I’m at right now.
They thought they were civilised. They were despicable. Damn them all.
Emma in The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag
On first glance
My unease about the world persists. Something is persistently not right, masked though it may be.
We are frauds and we know it. It hurts to say this, but human credibility is ever on the line.
We purport to care but, as long as the apocalypse is elsewhere, we go on - keeping events out there from interfering with a semblance of normality over here.
Living with the awareness of collective dark chapters is not for the faint of heart.
What to do, then?
Look away (a sign one feels safe)? Look closer? Look to who’s doing the talking?
The world is in flames; do not let yourself be consumed by it. Instead, be the fire that enlightens and warms, without destroying.
St. Teresa of Ávila
On guilt tripping
No point in scolding anyone - it doesn’t move the needle. It often only leads to more of the same unconscious patterns: infantilised adults who numb out and don’t want to be accountable.
No point in blaming ourselves either - for repressing internal guidance when it leads us to something we’re afraid of.
But we can at least question some of the narratives in our minds.
For instance:
If I’m good, I am rewarded. If I’m naughty, I am punished.
So I try to be good, which I only know I am if others tell me - if I obey.
Then I must repress. And I must escape.
But…
Disobedience is still in the air.
The artist's task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Chaos is the way we live now, and the artist has an obligation, a revolutionary obligation, to be an artist.
Rainer Maria Rilke
On disobeying
Disobedience must be staged, even if just for yourself. You need a context / pattern / tradition upon which to materialise something new into being. It could be your body / mind / world. To disobey is to break away from some kind of imposition or cannon and proceed to transform.
Having said that…
Disobedience without compassion ends up in vanity - especially if it just carries on indefinitely.
Self-involved at the beginning? Fine. But it’s got to be for others in the end.
After the I-don’t-want-this, comes the what-do-I-want? - which is the creation stage: not only an artistic pursuit but also an ethical one, affecting the collective sphere.
In other words:
The world leaves its mark on us, and we leave ours on the world.
No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Diving deeper…
What dulls our compassion:
Believing nothing can be done about something deemed too difficult / far away and hence not worth investing (perceived as wasting) our efforts.
Ironically, this is often seen as being adult—claiming we can’t sustain other people’s drama or be on alert all the time. But couldn't we use the favour of distance to at least think critically and imagine new possibilities?
Tending to our own lives is necessary. But going beyond them - a creative, risky business - comes from having a sense of where we are collectively and deciding to do our bit as consciously as possible. This is an intuitive calling and it calls for our questioning mind to follow the lead of the heart. Only then do we get a chance at the seemingly impossible.
In essence:
How can we turn things around? We need inner answers.
Some of mine:
Between “on” or “off”, I look for a mindful, sustainable middle ground.
A humanitarian stance gives meaning and joy to life.
Compassion will always lack lustre if not coupled with a gesture.
Regulating my nervous system helps me stand more by what I believe.
Engaging in hopeful initiatives brings actual hope into sight. Sometimes that means danger!
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
A humanitarian mindset
Our trust issues with each other have done enough damage and it’s time to repair what little we can - THAT little I know we can.
What do we have at least indirect power over?
No time to dismiss anything as too small to matter - too easy an excuse.
I ask myself:
Can I go somewhere I’ve never been? Am I willing to? Will I accept once and for all that it’s the little things that keep on sparking consequences in motion (even if we don’t see them)?
What I get as guidance:
Never mind macro geopolitics for now. Go micro. That’s where a bias to action is needed. Look for what / who inspires you. Keep your boat afloat. Create your own force field. Be creative about chaos. Rekindle connection. Welcome new ideas. Share what moves you. Let your crowd find you. Trust and offer what you can now. Fear not the vulnerability. Then iterate.
If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.
Lao Tzu
The global and the personal
A big, challenging realisation:
We are hardwired for sharing and not for hoarding. Were we to trust - and follow - this law, how different would our choices be and what impact would they have on the world?
We don’t realise there’s a parallel, even an overlap, between the global and the personal. Not that a collective is just a sum of individuals, sharing the traits of a single person. I don’t hold with that - I see it as a different entity altogether. But we’re all moved by the same energy, to which we respond differently and in our own scale - affecting the whole in ways we simply cannot appreciate.
I can’t prove this. I can sense it, but maybe it’s just a dream.
But I can dream, can’t I ……
To read is to dream, guided by someone else’s hand.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
The point is to dream
An absolute necessity.
Action without the impetus of a dream risks serving intentions that might not be the purest. Even a daydream is not a stopper of action but a precursor to it - an inspiration, a slowing down, a release.
For action to be inspired and essential - as many of us dreamers mostly move by necessity - we are not to do a lot but that which is absolutely needed: responding to a request of the spirit, which first and foremost requires the dream so that a possibility can form, so materialisation can be at all possible.
Nurturing a vision:
The story of my life, I would say, ever since I was a child. And pretty much what’s kept me going - at the cost of all those reveries I thought were true dreams but did not indeed respond to a real necessity (and, as such, not flowing).
Before I go for now:
I am with you on your projects, your vision, your love…
Thanks for reading and dreaming a little bit with me.
Nuno
My deepest thanks for being there. If you want to help the chaos stay creative and enjoy even more up close and personal content, here’s what’s in it for you.
In addition, you can follow me on Instagram here. And to dive deeper into your own personal processes and projects, consider working with me one-on-one.