Toward a Life of Balance
RADIUS GUEST ARTICLE: Radius is pleased to present to you this guest submission by our partner, Üma Kleppinger. Üma is a writer, content strategist, and communications consultant. She brings a holistic, provocative lens to her work. Üma is a passionate and dedicated social justice and climate activist and change agent. Here, Üma shares a reflection on 2020 and offers an invitation to move thoughtfully into the new year.
Throughout 2020, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of being part of Team Radius. Together, we’ve provoked reflections on leadership and guidance through tremendous upheaval and individual and collective trauma. One overarching theme consistently emerged, both intentionally and coincidentally: how do we create a culture of psychological safety?
It showed up when we explored stepping into strong leadership during crisis, starting with self-awareness. It’s the result of creating a blueprint of trust in our workplace. It takes the form of building an ecology of talent and kindred spirits. It arrives when we practice radical self-care and learn to sit with uncomfortable questions without trying to solve them reflexively. It’s the careful cultivation of authentic connection.
As we approach the end of the year—usually a time of reflection and hope—I find myself overwhelmed, both with grief and gratitude. To put it mildly, it’s been a doozy. Because the fuckery 2020 unloaded on us is next-level, it’s tempting to skip the year-end review. But to skip it is to deny it, and our first principle at RADIUS is to acknowledge the truth of the situation. We’ve got to Name It To Tame It.
Life Out of Balance
There is a Hopi word—Koyaanisqatsi—which means life out of balance or “crazy life”. In truth, we have been living a life out of balance for a very long time, but 2020 knocked crazy completely out of the park. If 2020 was getting its temperature read, the mercury bulb would explode, cartoon style.
Every one of us knows despair or the aching longing for some kind of normalcy. We talk about the “before times” and many have expressed the desire to “go back to normal”.
But therein lies the rub; normal wasn’t working. Not for far too many of us. It was comfortable—and remains comfortable—for a great number of folks, but it’s an absolute tragedy for countless others.
In the RADIUS hometown of Portland, Oregon, we’ve seen an alarming increase in the number of homeless people in our city limits. What must the Hopi think of the crazy life reality where thousands of brand new high-rise apartments and condos sit empty while human beings starve and shiver under tarps on the streets? What of those who will join them in the coming weeks or months as eviction moratoriums end?
We also witnessed the spark of civil unrest blaze into a conflagration that consumed cities around the country, following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. With each viral video that exposed yet another extrajudicial killing of unarmed Black men and women, we are reminded: there are two justice systems in America. One for white, privileged citizens and another for everyone else. This imbalance is glaringly obvious when police stand with and high-five extreme right-wing pro-Trump followers but brutally assault Black Lives Matter activists with tear gas, rubber bullets and violent arrests.
Whether you support the protests against police brutality and qualified immunity or not, there is no denying that 2020 marked a sea change in civil rights activism. And although the calendar year draws to an end, inequities within our society will remain long after the stroke of midnight on January 1.
Summer sparked another inferno as much of the Western US was consumed by wildfire. Unrelenting and deadly, the fires destroyed whole communities, reducing family homes and cherished keepsakes to ash. They raged for weeks, turning our skies black and our air poisonous, forcing millions indoors for weeks at a time. All told, more than 14 million acres of forest were scorched—more than twice the 10 year average. The air quality may have cleared but the reason for these and other extreme weather events around the world remains rooted in what we used to consider “normal”. Even so, climate change denial remains pervasive in American culture and politics.
As I write these words, Congress has yet to pass another stimulus package for American citizens who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19, citizens who have no hope of returning to work anytime soon—if at all. 27 million Americans are without health insurance. And of the small business owners who were forced out of the initial stimulus package in early summer when large corporations ran away with the lion’s share of relief, many have been forced to shutter their doors indefinitely. Some may never return. And I haven’t even mentioned the tragic number of deaths due to the awful mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.
No matter which way we turn, no matter where we look, it is easy to see the evidence of life out of balance. This is the bad news.
This is also the heart of opportunity.
Getting radical
“Humans are social animals and in a herd, everyone has different roles. We are dependent on each other to survive. If you see a threat, it’s your responsibility to sound the alarm.”
—Greta Thunberg, climate activist
It is time for radical change—radical economic, environmental, and social transformation. We will not be able to use the old ways to reach new outcomes; we need wholesale outside-the-box interventions. In other words, we need a humanist and spiritual transformation.
In Leadership Is An Art, author Max Dupree presents the Native American water carrier as a metaphor for decentralized leadership. Water carriers bring the water from the river to the people, without which the community would not survive. Mni Wiconi—water is life—is the Lakota expression that was heard around the world during the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests. Without water there can be no life. The water carrier is more than mere courier, and they do their work regardless of status within the tribe.
As Greta Thunberg pointed out, it’s all of our responsibility to protect the herd, but it’s not enough to simply call attention to problems. We must be willing to step into action, to lead by example. We cannot wait for our so-called leaders to save us; we must each of us step into leadership through service.
Those protestors who marched against racial injustice immediately pivoted to take up the mantle of mutual aid, organizing and supporting relief efforts for the wildfire victims in late summer. More recently they’ve deftly shifted to providing relief—and protection from sweeps—for homeless people. They’ve protected Black and Indigenous homeowners from being forcefully evicted from their homes in the dead of winter, during a deadly pandemic.
Civil rights and protest organizers take their cues from Indigenous and Black culture and leadership. They know that a nonhierarchical approach to organizing community is far more effective than a top-down authoritarian mandate. From a 30-thousand foot view, the 2020 protests are the yin to an increasingly yang authoritarian or plutocratic government. They are the metaphoric water to the fire of social injustice. And they offer a clue to moving toward a new normal and a new consciousness.
Toward a New Normal
For all of the reasons given above—and countless others—we cannot create a new normal that brings the past forward, unchallenged and unchanged. Instead we must look within ourselves to reveal our deepest truths and then make every effort to live by them.
As the year comes to an end, many of us will look back to reflect on what went right or wrong and how to course correct for the future. But what sort of redirection can we conceive when the very ground we tread is like jelly underfoot? What sort of future casting can we do when chronic anxiety and uncertainty threaten to unmoor us at every turn?
We end 2020 and the second decade of the twenty-first century in a liminal state. An anthropological term, liminality describes a threshold. Technically, it refers to the middle stage of a rite of passage. Certainly, reaching the end of 2020 qualifies as a rite of passage.
We are on the border between what was and what will become, between the before times and the future. Our transition to the unknown is incomplete and rife with possibility. While we’re in this liminal space, we would do well to be reflective, tender, and in touch with any spiritual and social supports we have.
The pyre of 2020 won’t end when we flip the calendar on December 31st. The coronavirus, the economy, civic unrest, social inequities, and all the rest of it will still be there, waiting for us on the other side of midnight. Then what?
Humans create rituals to mark milestones and important events. As we approach 2021, how can we meet it with eyes wide open, a heart full of courage, and our hands outstretched to offer our best to everything and everyone that comes our way? What do we need to greet a new year, a new beginning that is rooted in safety and belonging not just for ourselves, but for others? How can we become the water carriers of a new way of being, nurturing a life of balance?
We have a lot of healing to do—collectively, nationally, culturally, and individually. Let’s not wait until January 2021 to begin. Let us start today, now, in this breath.
Feature image by Callum Hilton from Pexels