Intentional Society: Steering into tension
Intentional Society is on its seasonal rest week - regular activity will begin again on January 1st.
I wish to point to and share a deep, structural learning that keeps grooving itself deeper into my pattern recognition. The specific form I've used for years is, "If something useful hurts, do it more often until it stops hurting." For example, in software development it's difficult to "ship high quality software" and if one is having difficulty reaching shippable quality, their natural urge will be to ship less often. However, the much better move is instead to ship much more often, a philosophy called "continuous delivery," and in doing so the quality-degrading problems must be found and fixed. Increasing that frequency of that friction leads to the dissolution of the sources of friction, with a new and much happier equilibrium on the other side.
There's a different framing called ugh fields of what I think is the same structure. This shows up in most procrastination - the compounding effect where we spend weeks avoiding an aversive thing that ends up taking only a few minutes when we finally face it. The strategy of avoiding and running away from the hurt only magnifies it, until we turn and see that the way out is through. Sometimes we're very conscious of this... and then watching out for the "ugh field" can help us spot when we're hiding our own flinch response from ourselves.
Looking at the new year approaching Intentional Society this last week, I (in community) noticed something similar applied. The useful-but-hard thing I desire is "sharing one's desires for the future" --- and the flinch I could detect was away from doing so myself. My rationalization was equity! To make more space for other voices, I should turn mine down, right? But... then my example encourages a behavioral norm of holding back! And/or a lack of trust that people could hear my desire while still holding on to their desires. Oh my, what a tension to be hiding out underneath that flinch.
The "do more often" thing here requires removing the friction of fear or self-denial that might stop me or anyone else from noticing, naming, and accepting their desire. We can accept any desire, even conflicting desires, as real and as expressions of valid parts of us (hint: they're all valid). Maybe I can generalize the deep pattern here as "steer into tension" --- to practice sensing tension, turning towards it instead of away from it, accepting the gifts that it (which is ultimately our embodied cognition) has to offer.
A valuable cultural equilibrium awaits us on the other side of leaning through that awkwardness. On Sunday I un-did my hold-back, and shared more of my vision for 2022's Intentional Society. Opening up the space to all desires, I heard comments from others I'll paraphrase as
- "I'm excited by this, but I also want this thing we already have"
- "I don't want to hold back from sharing when I'm not feelin' it"
- "I care so much about these things, and they're also so hard"
- "I have a lot of energy in that direction"
where... I'll just say I can feel the openness and lightness and freedom that's possible in welcoming and holding all of our desires simultaneously in the collective field, versus holding back and trying to put only the palatable parts forward. I'm genuinely excited to explore our wants and our fears about the things we might try in our community journey! Gosh --- acceptance, acceptance, acceptance, I keep coming back to it, it just lets everything else flow.
With that, happy holidays and clear sight to you in any retrospecting and envisioning you are sitting with at the turn of the calendar.
Cheers,
James