Heroes Not Zombies

We’re all trying to peer into the distance.

In the next few days…..what measures will my government introduce? When am I going to run out of food, and when do I need to brave the outside world to go and buy some more? What challenges am I going to face this week?

In the next few weeks……..How many people are going to catch COVID-19? How long will the pandemic last? How long will the lockdowns and shutdowns last? How are we going to get out of these current restrictions?

In the next few years…..what kind of world are my grandchildren going to grow up in? How will society change? How will the economic and political structures change? How will countries and people become more resilient?

We’ve always done that, we humans. We are blessed and cursed with the power of imagination. We can imagine all kinds of wonderful futures, invent, create, plan, innovate. And we can imagine all kinds of terrible futures, paralyse ourselves with fear and anxiety and the interminable….but what if? and what if?

I was thinking of all that as I looked at this old photo I took of Table Mountain (who knows when, or even if, I’ll get to stand at that point on the Earth again?).

I was admiring the beauty of the scene, of the waves breaking on the rocks in the foreground, the rich palette of colours of the water in the mid-ground and the glorious Table Mountain in the distance.

Funny how that got me thinking about the futures we imagine and which seem to inhabit our everyday more and more just now, because, actually, there is no future in this scene. It is all present, all at once. The rocks, the sea, the mountain. I’m not standing there imagining what any of them might look like one day. I’m standing there basking in the beauty of the present reality.

Well, that brought me back to right here, right now.

Nobody can reliably describe a future which doesn’t exist yet.

I know, I know, there are philosophers and physicists who will argue that time isn’t linear and that matter doesn’t really exist, and I understand all that, but even so, it seems to me that we live in an emergent world, one which unfolds moment by moment, inventing itself, constantly creating novelty.

I know we can discern patterns and we use those patterns to predict the future. I know our scientific method has developed along those lines….describe, measure, predict, control…..though I’m not sure that’s been the best way to go. I’ve still got a preference for émerveillement….for wonder, awe, curiosity and amazement over data and controls. But we are complex adaptive systems, we humans, we life forms, we Earth-creatures, and complex adaptive systems constantly develop, adapt and evolve, sometimes in small steps, and sometimes in giant leaps. We change. Everything changes. The future surprises us all the time because it is novel.

So, I find myself coming back to what I used to explore with patients. What if our human super-power of imagination is trained on fears and anxieties? In what way does that help us? What if our human super-power of imagination is trained on creativity and compassion? In what way does that help us?

Because, you know what? I don’t think it helps to be judgemental. Fears, anxieties, creativity and compassion all exist for a reason. We can make choices. We can decide what to focus on, which “hungry wolf to feed” (do you know that teaching?)

They are seeds inside us, aren’t they? They include fear, anxiety, creativity and compassion.

Which seeds will you nurture today?