Heroes Not Zombies

“Finding your niche”……..what does that really mean?

All living creatures are constantly changed by their encounters. Every interaction is a transformation. Both parties in the relationship are changed in the encounter. We humans alter the ecosystems and landscapes we live in through our actions, and, even, simply through our presence.

We tend to forget that in our mechanised, industrialised, dis-integrated civilisations and societies. The reduction of Nature to an object to be “mastered”, plundered and polluted ignores this basic truth – there is no separateness and we are changed by our encounters with the “other”.

So we co-create our life worlds, or our life spaces. Every one of us lives in our own niche. But niche is not an isolated space. Each niche is embedded in a complex, multi-layered, nested web of relationships and other niches.

There’s a sense in which “finding your niche” is about “fitting in”, or finding an activity in which you can excel. But that’s just a bit too reductionist for my liking.

For me, finding my niche involves becoming aware of influences – of how I am changed by those around me, by my daily experiences and encounters, and by the environments in which I live. That, and the ways in which what I do, say and think, sets off ripples and waves of change around the niches and webs in which I live.

Finding you niche turns out to start with awareness, with noticing, with becoming conscious…….not so much about separateness as about connection.