The Wildness of the Future
Change like that will shake you to the core, even if it is not harmful in the end.
This thought will not leave me.
Can I expand and make room in me for all of this change, all of these new things, and all of the feelings that come with it?
Sometimes I just don’t know.
It often feels like I am blind, feeling my way forward with senses that are weak from years of lack of use. The deep inner voice inside of me has gotten stronger over the past few years of practice, but it is still a little muffled, and sometimes, when it asks me to let go of people or things that have been beautiful and loving and comforting, I still hesitate. I am still working on trusting fully.
Letting go is always the hardest. And this journey of following my soul is full of partings. Moving away from people and places that no longer align with the truer version of myself I am allowing. Letting go of ideas, habits, fears, comforts, coping mechanisms, old wounds, belief systems, deeply entrenched behavioural patterns, and sometimes even entire identities I had crafted for myself. I know the future will be more of this. More letting go all of the time. There are always new things to take their place - new joys, new loves, new ideas, new beliefs, and a more deeply peaceful inner state - but I know there will be a lot of letting go in my lifetime.
We will all lose a lot in the next decades; a lot of the material comforts and the safety and security we have become accustomed to. I feel this in my bones. We will all be thrust into the unknown whether we like it or not. The way of the North American culture is not sustainable. Our systems will not work indefinitely, and the expiry dates on the ones we rely upon most are fast approaching. We will not be guaranteed anything or anyone.
We will be asked to trust in uncertainty again and again. It will not be easy. In fact, it will be the most challenging thing. I know I will often find myself at the edge of what I have courage make space for. Some will choose to fight to the death for the systems and the material comforts they grew up with because losing them will simply be too great a change to live through. I choose to practice cultivating the strength and the courage to let go. This is why I am on a journey of rewriting. We will be required to evolve or we will go down with the old way. None of us will escape what is coming.
This is why, though I enjoy it, and though I feel being a part of the legal profession is where I am meant to be right now, I at times find it challenging to be fully engaged in my legal work. This system too is falling apart. Truth and justice are becoming increasingly inaccessible. The backlogs, the high fees, the delays, the procedural strategizing, the voluminous mounds of documents. There is no simple affordable way forward. It is not possible to navigate the layers upon layers of laws and regulations and administration in a way that ensures everyone (or even most) get a fair trial.
As the systems fall apart, their enforcement will also become inconsistent and sporadic, and not equally applied to everyone. At first those with money will still be able to maintain the kinds of safety and comfort we have become accustomed to, but over time, no space controlled by force will remain safe or reliable.
It has to be this way because all of our systems are based in a flawed understanding of life. They are built from a world view based in fear and separation; from a perspective that says everything we are afraid of we can avoid by creating some new technology or system, or law, or infrastructure, or cure. It comes from a perspective that says humans are above the laws of nature; that humans can conquer the world.
This simply is not so. Anyone who is present and willing to be honest with themselves will know this truth: we have never been above nature, or any other life form, and we never will be. There are universal laws that apply equally to all of us. We cannot rewrite these rules. We will never win the game we have been playing.
The problem is we have been playing this game of conquering and controlling life for so long now that we have convinced ourselves of its possibility, and we have developed hundreds of ways to avoid hearing all messages of truth that would show us its fallacy. We live in cities, surrounded by concrete, so we cannot hear truth in the conversations among trees or birds. We avert our eyes, put our earbuds in and stare at our screens to avoid seeing the suffering or even the joy of others. We are disconnected from the life all around us.
We have even gone to the extreme of hurting ourselves to avoid feeling the truth in our own bodies. We drink, work, and drug ourselves, sometimes to death, all in the hopes we can forever avoid the pain inside us that knows: WE CANNOT WIN THIS GAME.
We cannot build or fix or invent our way out of the precarious situation we have gotten ourselves into. We will not overcome the challenges we are facing as a species by trying harder or going faster. We simply will not win this game.
I am not saying we should give up. But we must surrender. We must humble ourselves and learn to align the way we live with natural laws and universal truths. The principles we live by must be principles that support all life.
In order to do this we must jump into the unknown. We must relearn that our worthiness as a human being is inherent, and not dependent on material goods, achievements or external markers of success. We must begin to trust ourselves, and learn to listen to the voice of our truest self that lives deep inside of us, because this voice knows how to live in alignment with life. We must remember that who we are at the truest level is enough.
Only if we can come back to this honest place and learn to live without the excess stories and baggage of identities that we have become accustomed to, will we survive through the upcoming storm. Chaos is pending, not utopia. We can enter it willingly, surrendering in peace to the truth of the world, or exhaust ourselves to death fighting the storm.
These are the choices we face at this juncture in history. Today is just an ordinary day. I have arrived at work. I will begin reviewing some legal documents soon. The system still stands. But the ground is shaking. Some days, like today, the instability makes me nauseous; and every time I pause in my typing I can feel the wildness of the future in my bones.
xo,
Danielle