Expansion
My theme over the past few weeks has been expansion. In my work I am always asking people to imagine the future they want to see. As an sustainability professor, naturalist, facilitator and coach, I have often found myself asking people to imagine their future:
What do you imagine for you ideal workplace?
What would you like the Great Lakes to look like in 20 years?
What are the headlines about your organization 5 years from now?
What is the change we want to create in this lake?
If you had your ideal career, what would you be doing?
I am regularly surprised at how hard it is for folks to imagine anything about their future. They cannot imagine much beyond what they already have. This perplexes me and concerns me.
I can see forests that have been around for a century and beyond and are home to apex predators and mycological wonders. I can see a workplace full of light, diverse work spaces (cubbies, private offices, gathering rooms, and collections of soft furniture) and quiet times for everyone. I can see us breaking ground on a new education building and hosting group gatherings 4 nights a week.
I know that if we can’t imagine a different future, we will get more of the same, and maybe worse. Yet when we can imagine a different future, and we hold it in our minds and hearts, our every choice can then be in service to the realization of that future.
It is very easy for me to imagine a world that is different. A world rich with nature, community, thoughtful design, and health.
So, I have been surprised to notice over the past few weeks how hard it is for me to imagine a different future for myself. I find myself unable to imagine a bigger life for myself. I have been choosing small spaces, small opportunities, small people even. I didn’t even know I was doing this. I though I was stretching! But I have been in conversation with several people over the past few weeks who have offered things - sometimes visions, sometimes actual offers - that were far beyond what I could have ever imagined asking for. I have been humbled. And I want to look at it.
I now understand what is going on for all of my clients, students, and participants when they go completely blank when asked to think about the future. At least I understand the experience. Why this happens, is less clear to me.
So my questions now is, how do I expand my vision of what is possible for myself, what I can imagine, what I can dream, what I can desire. I can definitely FEEL what all of that is like. I have always seen myself as big - doing big things, loving in a big way, surrounded by big activity - but I cannot SEE what I am doing or what it looks like. My imagination stops me from actually having it all; it is working so hard to keep me small and safe.
I wonder how this is at play for my clients? For businesses, individuals, collectives, and leaders. How many of them also cannot see a different future? Or if they can, this future is not that differnt from what they have? Or alternatively, if they can see it, it is so different from what they have that getting there, those intermediate steps, are complete mysteries. Or perhaps they have the vision, and the intermediate steps, but every time they start to walk in that direction they stop. They might not even know they are stopping.
I will be exploring my own inner world to see what is holding me back, and I will be trying some new things in the world, to show myself that it is possible to be different.
This will be my focus - expansion, both inner and outer - for the next 10 weeks. From now to Solstice. That feels appropriate. I will expand with the light.
