Imagine you are away on a multi-day hike in the wilderness and you become absolutely lost. It is easy to panic, for your thoughts to overcome you, but in that state, you can’t do anything.
RIght now there is a war in Ukraine, yet outside that country, many of us feel lost and even panicky at the threat of nuclear war if NATO chooses to step in. Humans are inherently unpredictable and Putin clearly has that within him. However, if we spend our days “doom googling” news then, most likely, that will only deepen our sense of being powerless, so that to do?
Yesterday I was on a monthly video call with an international network. called “We are Liminal“. On the website for the group is this phrase:
Liminal is a collective intelligence community designed to solve hard problems through connecting people, data and ideas.
Naturally whatever we talked about was overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, with a general sense of both powerlessness and uncertainty. Some even noted they felt somewhat paralysed in the moment by all of this.
It occurred to me that part of the general uneasy feeling was that this was a group of bright, accomplished, connected people who are used to being able to work out the answers, work out what to do next, how to solve problems etc. I also felt this, and at the same time have had some recent experiences in life of having to be ok with not having the answers to certain things, with not being able to solve, with simply having to sit with uncertainty and not knowing the answers.
I posed the group a question along the lines of “what if you could simply “be comfortable with not knowing” the solutions/answers/what to do? What would then be possible?”
If one feels anxious to the state of near-paralysis, then little is possible. If, on the other hand, we can maintain our equanimity, our sense of deep balance, then thought and action are then possible.
That’s the thought for today. When faced with something that could have massive negative outcomes and where you don’t know the answers or what to do, simply do what you can, but, sometimes more than that, maintain your balance. Seek to stay calm within the storm. Only then is cohesive thought and then action of any kind possible.