Want Community But Can’t Stand Being With People?
One of my fave lines from one of my fave books for these times.
"If it's going to take all of us, give me sticky, sticky relation." ~ Lola Olufemi, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
We find ourselves, many of us, in a bind. My husband (a person who loves to be around people and would be out 7 nights a week if he could) used to say to me, "for someone who can't stand people, you really love people".
I love people. I love us so much.
I love our persistence in caring for each other in spite of everything that primes us to abandon one another. I love our rituals. I love our complexity. I love our stories. I love our entire emotional spectrum. I love our endurance and the potential contained within it. I love our imaginations. I love our art. I love our ingenuity. I love our attempts to reclaim ourselves and one another from the systems that fragment us. I love us.
Sometimes, I cannot stand being with people.
Sometimes, I cannot bear our willingness to surrender our wholeness for a piece of status, even though I understand it, even though I do it too.
Sometimes I cannot stand to experience the the colonised parts of us- our lack of regard for one another, our urges to dominate and dehumanise, even though I understand it, even though I do it too.
Sometimes I cannot process any more confirmation of how firmly the systems grip us. This is particularly true when I notice the very people I thought of as progressive reverting to individualist responses or denying how the realities of our shared context impact the most marginalised. Even though I understand it, even though I do it too.
Sometimes I resent people's abilities to behave as though the horrors of the polycrisis have nothing to do with them, as if they don't benefit from other people's suffering. Even though I understand it, even though I do it too.
My irritation with people contains the possibility of a just transition. My resentment of people contains a belief that we could all be leading more satisfying lives. My intolerance of people reveals a ferocious desire to drop the pretence that we can ignore one another's suffering and be unchanged in doing so.
My feelings emerge in relationship to a steadfast belief that this cannot be all there is. (That's a Lola Olufemi paraphrase too).
Today, I want to land at our responsibility to cultivate relational expressions of the liberated, liveable future in our daily lives. What does it look like to resist the culture of domination and dehumanisation in the minutiae of our days? How might we infuse dignity into our dynamics?
Much of my coaching work comes down to facilitating this across all the contexts of our lives. If you'd like my support for 6 months in a small group of people with shared values, have a look at Combining.
This offering includes
whatsapp coaching from me throughout,
monthly 1:1 Meet The Moment sessions
monthly Combining Assemblies (4-6 people, scheduled to suit the group)
I'm also including 6 months of Composting on The Portal Collective worth £180 (Friday mornings or Tuesday afternoons from February)
