6.5 Playing with possibilities
In our hunter-gatherer days, you could have your own distinct personality, but you had to fit into the group. That always came first. The group always mattered more than the individual. For example…
If you had a naturally aggressive personality, people needed you to tone that down in the daily life of the tribe. But if another tribe attacked, then hallelujah, people would love your aggression and want you to turn it loose and led them in the defense of their home.
Of if you were naturally a shy introvert, you would have to ramp up your energy to be an active participant in the life of the group. It wouldn’t be okay for you to spend long periods in isolation. But when someone was hurting and needed to talk through feelings, you might well be who they’d turn to.
What this meant is that…
You couldn’t be your own person.
Instead…
You had to be the tribe’s person.
But that was then and this is now. Now we can do deep dives. And still be very much a part of a group while we do that. We can do both at once.
And this is something I believe is good for our activist movements.
An awful lot of activism is generic and formulaic. When we’re talking about mass movements, that’s the way it has to be. We need large numbers of people to be able to take action…
Together.
In a focused way. A coordinated and cooperative way. In a way that’s stable over time. As opposed to everyone running off on their own tangents.
But we also need people to dig deep and discover how their personal talents and strengths can contribute to the development and success of our movements.
And this is deep self-care in two ways…
First, it’s so satisfying to make a contribution that’s uniquely yours to make.
It’s not that you just do whatever you feel like doing. No, you’re making a match between talents you have and what the movement needs.
And then second…
Our movements need to keep developing, finding new ways to reach people, finding new ways to strengthen activists, finding new strategies for different kinds of campaigns.
It’s not that we’re chasing new for new’s sake. We’re still holding true the core principle of our work, what I call…
Mutual nurturance and mutual advocacy.
That stays steady. But there are many ways to incarnate that core and give it a more robust life.
And I admit I have a personal bias. I love having discovery conversations with people to help them think through how they can use their personal talents in service of activist work they care about.
What follows are four snippets of conversations which I’ve made up, because I wanted them to be focused and condensed. But they’re absolutely true to dozens of such conversations I’ve had with people over the years.
Penny
Tell me about what you do and what you love.
I’m a teacher at a middle school for at-risk girls. The pay is pitiful, but I have only 12 kids in my class so I get to go deep with them. And I love that.
And I write songs for them, and I love that.
Only one in five songs is a keeper, but we now have a collection of twelve songs that the kids like singing. They know all the words. They make requests. I’m so happy to be able to spend this kind of time with them.
What about your activist life?
Oh, I do door knocking and phone banking when an election is happening.
How much fun is that for you?
Not much. I do it out of a sense of duty. And I believe in doing it, so I’m not giving it up. But it’s nothing like as much fun as the days I spend at school.
When you think about our activist movements, what’s your opinion of their music?
Their music? There isn’t any. Well, back in the day, the Civil Rights Movement had “We Shall Overcome,” and wow, I watched a video of it last month and it brought me to tears.
How much does music matter?
It brings people together way more than earnest speeches and pep-talk rallies. People get inside the music together. If it’s good. If it’s really right for the group.
You know what it’s like to create music that’s right for a group. You’ve got a talent for that. And our movements need new songs.
You’re right about that. But, jeez, I just write songs for kids.
Tell me about those kids.
Middle grade kids are figuring out what it is to be a person. And how to balance being your own person while belonging to a group. And what makes a relationship work. And how to find love. Fundamentals.
What if we anointed you the Champion of Music for our movements, what’s your diagnosis? What do we need?
We need songs that large groups of people can sing together easily. And lyrics that are easy to memorize. We need music that will touch people’s hearts deeply. And that address the fundamental, primal issues activists are wrestling with. We need new songs.
Are you the one to write them?
Yes. I am. But not alone. I know other songwriters, there’s a loose community of us here. Caroline is one who I very much like personally, and I very much like the songs she writes. I want to rope her into this. And maybe the girls in my class could help. They’d get a kick out of that. And if we were able to write even one song that caught on, then we could call on other song writers to step up and get involved.
Wow, you’ve made a decision.
I have. It’s like this was just waiting in me for the right moment to come together. Thanks!
Terry
If you were going to make a contribution to the world of activism, what would it be? A contribution that’s special to you.
I’m a therapist and I’ve been asked to do pro bono work with activists. And I guess I could do that but it doesn’t really call to me.
So let’s rule that out. What’s your favorite part of being a therapist?
Group work. When I first started out I swore I would never do groups, only individual therapy. But then two years ago, Jonathan asked me to co-lead a group with him and he’s one of my mentors, so I jumped at the chance. Then a year ago he got a job at a college two states away, so I inherited the group. I was panicked at first, but starting about seven months ago, I came into my own. It seems I have a special knack for getting people to surprise themselves and each other. Good surprises, Really good surprises.
What does that give you?
Deep satisfaction. There’s nothing like it. To see people who are hurting claim their power and start taking care of themselves like they’ve never done before.
Standing in that perspective, would you be willing to look at the state of activism and give me a diagnosis? What do you see that activists need?
Oh, well, I’m really good at spotting despair in people, no matter how much they try to cover it up, and when I look at activists I see a whole lot of despair. In fact, for a lot of people I suspect their activism is a defense against despair. A way of dealing with what’s out there in the world instead of dealing with what’s there inside themselves.
Oh, boy, I know what that’s like. So is there anything you might want to do about that?
I had an idea and then rejected it. I’ve thought about doing workshops on dialoguing with despair to disarm it. Confronting it and taking it down so you don’t have to build a defense against it.
That sounds intense and great. Why did you reject it?
Because the workshops I’ve seen take people into their despair in order to bring them back out to hope. And I don’t believe in hope. I’m sorry, I just don’t. But I hate despair. And I’ve found a way to keep trucking without hope. I just don’t know if anyone would want to encounter despair without the promise of hope. Hope is so popular.
You’re right, it is popular. But I wonder if some of the people who take those workshops, maybe don’t really feel at home with hope, but they don’t know there’s another alternative. After all we’re told that it’s binary, you can have either hope or despair, one or the other, and that’s it. But you seem to have found a third way. What if you ran a Third Way workshop to see what might happen? No pressure to get any particular result given that this is unknown territory.
I could do that. I can feel that idea purring. I like that title. I could put up a one-page website explaining my view and what would happen in the workshop and get the word out and see who shows up.
What if only three people showed up?
That would be fine. Then I could go deep with them and discover more dimensions of this Third Way and how to talk about it. And I’m sure I’d invent some exercises in working with them. I don’t feel confident about getting people to sign up, but I do feel confident that I could seriously help anyone who did. I’ll bet I could get the surprises popping.
Jay
What are your days like?
I’m an old guy and it’s hard for me to get around so I read a lot which a lot of people don’t have time to do. I’ve always been a research maniac and information collector.
Friends who are busy doing their activist work call me and ask what book to read next. Or they’ll ask if a book they’ve heard about is worth their time.
If you wanted to make a contribution that was just yours to make what would it be?
Well, bam, it’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it? I’m going to start a site like Blinkist, but where I review books pertinent to activism.
Except I’m not going to do typical reviews. I’m not going to do dry summaries. I’m going to bring the heart of the book present so people can feel it. I’m going to post the key questions that might be the most motivating for activists.
You know, there are some great books, but they’re so long. Some of them are filled with good stuff that activist leaders need, but there’s just too much. And they’re so heavy it’s a workout just lugging them around. I remember back in my activist days, I had so little time for reading, that I felt starved for input and ideas. In fact, during one legislative campaign, I carried a short book of Wendell Berry poems in my briefcase for a year and never made it through to the end.
Hey, I’m going to get a crew of activist leaders to look at my posts before I put them up. They’ll give me feedback about how useful the posts are or aren’t. I want each one to be punchy and deliver serious value in every sentence. No filler, not a wasted minute.
What do you think? Could this fly?
Sign me up, I’ll be your first subscriber.
Deirdre
My friends call me a Chatty Cathy. I love talking with people. Elizabeth Gilbert says that you could parachute her out of an airplane anywhere on earth and she’d be okay because she’d immediately start talking with everybody about everything and make instant friends.
I’m like that. Except my specialty is activists. I love their good hearts. So I love getting to know them. They fill my days with a special kind of warmth.
Okay, Cathy, so you’re having fun, what would be even bigger fun?
What comes to mind first, is that I’ve gotten to know a dozen young leaders. They’re remarkable, but they’re unknown. I call them hidden treasures. It makes me frustrated that they don’t get more attention. Oh, wait, I can do something about that.
I’ve got the time. I inherited enough money that if I live cheap I don’t have to work a day job. I can do my chatting full time. And so here’s what’s next for me. I’m going to put up a website, featuring these twelve for starters.
And why? First, I want other great young people to see them and maybe get inspired and stop waiting around and step up now and claim leadership and claim their place in the world. Our movements have a leadership crisis, and it would feel great to do something about that.
And second, I want to interview the twelve in detail about what they did to become leaders. Like personal development and professional development. I want to see what’s special to each one and what they have in common.
And third, as I keep adding people to the site, podcasters and progressive journalists will click in and find these dynamite young people to interview and get them the air time they deserve.
How’s this sound?
Off the charts great. But there’s one concern I can imagine people having. How are you going to vet these folks to make sure they’re really doing the genuine work of leading not just cooking up a reputation?
Oh, that’s easy. The way I talk with people, I get them to reveal themselves. I get the momentum going and they tell me things they’ve never told anyone else. And I push on them, in an okay way, but I push to see what they’re made of. This is something I do naturally. No special effort required.
And remember, I’m a chatty creature, so I talk to other people in their organizations and lives. It’s very, very rare that anyone pulls the wool over my eyes. You can trust that these leaders are vetted.
As you listen to yourself lay out this plan, how does it sound to you?
I’d love the doing of it. It would be great if I helped boost the level of leadership in some of our movements, but most of all I’d love the doing of it. The heartfelt conversations. The reaching deep. I just want to trust that if I let myself care about these young people, good things will come of it.
