Can you bear this Great Pause

If you can bear this Great Pause, a little longer than you can stand it, equality and sustainability might just have a chance.

In other words, if you can resist ‘trying to make sense of it all’ by giving the Great Pause a too-soon-simple story, collectively we may be able to shift course.

I’m biased towards anything that will help us care for each other and the planet. Shifting so reduced fossil fuels, zero waste living, equitable access to health care, Indigenous reclamation of nationhood, safety for trans and non-binary folks, governments who care and support minority peoples become our new normal.

So how does bearing this ‘Great Pause’- a time of reduced consumption, movement, gathering, productivity- have anything to do with shifting course?

As Otto Scharmer has encouraged, if we can suspend our attachments to old ways of doing things or predictions of a certain future, something new has the chance to emerge. Rarely can we get at something new when we hold tightly to our stories and familiar ways of approaching problems.

And bearing this Great Pause, what does this even mean? I ask the question in another way: how can we meet whatever is arising with as little resistance as possible?

For those of us working to change systems for the better, giving ourselves more time to make sense of what’s happening may create the kind of spaciousness that will lead to equitable and sustainable systems for good.

We cling to simple stories

In this ‘Great Pause from Normal- humans tend to cling to either/or stories. They fall into one or two camps: either fear/death or hope/new beginnings.

We do this in part because, as humans, we’re allergic to uncertainty. We like to pin it down, study, package and control it.

And simple either/or stories help us achieve this.

To make sense of my own uncertainty in the Covid-19 era, I cling to tidy stories to establish a solid foothold in a world with fewer ledges.

The fear/death story is one of them. I’ll give you a taste of it.

It begins with the grief of losing freedom and new daily constraints. I actually hear myself say things like “is this IT”? scoffing at my routine of staying home.

Then my mind jumps to logistical worries of how to easily bleach surfaces, just like in the 1980s Lysol commercials. I picture the chaos of our untidy tables, a map of our daily doings: bandaid wrappers, art supplies, business receipts. How do I even bleach around all that?

This inevitably moves onto the ultimate core fear: ‘We’re all going to die’.

Now, probably like you, I then bounce out of the fear/death story fairly quickly. Because on most days, I can’t bear mortality.

So I switch stories and head to higher ground. Covid-19 will usher in a new era of new beginnings. This alternative hope/ new beginning story soothes my nerves, promising that we’ll create a more caring, equal, and renewable world.

Then, the fear comes again.

The downside of simple stories

This weekend, I finally realized I was doing this flip/flopping. I could see it all over the news and social media- but it took a while to see this pattern within myself.

But how does an attachment to a simple bad/good story impact what’s possible beyond this year or next?

The bad (fear/death) story can seem so scary, that we end up contracting our hearts and minds. Enter in protectionism, social control, accelerated inequality, and human survival over nature.

The good (hope/new beginnings) story can appear so challenging to create, that we end up giving up and eating ice cream for breakfast.

Either way, there is a bedrock of ‘Normal’ in both scenarios. Living in fear or focusing on the silver-lining can accelerate a return to an over-consumptive lifestyle (image of congested highways in Wuhan as quarantine eases up) is the ultimate checking out. As writer Julio Vincent Gambuto worries, the soothing balm of consuming can help us forget what we saw and experienced during the Great Pause.

Stay in this and see what’s emerging

So if it’s normal that we cling to simple stories to make sense of uncertainty and the unknown, what’s the point of suspending?

My hunch is that our inner stability paradoxically comes through the experience of suspending.

Before the easy foothold of a fear or silver-lining story (or consuming stuff online)….create some space to notice that….

You might be learning to trust something bigger and wider than yourself.
You notice which voices are not at the table, online, or in the Facebook chats
You slow down to appreciate the earnestness of those you disagree with most
You discover subtle emotions you’re experiencing, and let them roll in and out like giant waves of truth
You let go of what isn’t nourishing you, and get really clear on what really matters
You cry, scream and let your grief out for everything you thought you wanted
You became tender and gentle, like the fading light, when you felt confused and trapped in your small apartment
You bore the tremendous vulnerability of tending to your neighbor, who you’ve never let see you.

And the act of suspending, requires that we bear and stay in the experience of the Great Pause, a little longer before giving it a story.

My hunch is that if we can bear the raw vulnerability, there’s a chance that we’ll begin to trust our own experience. And together, through our collective learning we’ll generate new cultures and systems to make the world anew.

Less a foothold, and more fertile ground.

Xo

Jennifer