My Life Through A Lens on unsplash.com
I experience an increasing tension about the impact of my convenient lifestyle. Over 25 years I became accustomed to the fast pace of growth driven business at the heart of the disposable consumerism of big city London.
Over the past decade I have come to question the primary drivers of business that gobble up our time, our joy, our spirit and our planet. I let go of living in London and of sacrificing my wellbeing and talents to a vision that didn’t belong to me.
I have found living directly connected to the elements of nature e.g. by the sea or in the mountains grounds me in a different rhythm, I think about light switches, own a bag for life and a reusable coffee cup, I choose zero air miles vegetables over world traveller imposters, cringe at plastic packaging, have nightmares about water bottles and the decimation of our oceans, I have divested myself of a car, walk more, spend less and sleep better.
I choose to live in the creative orientation, beyond the normal constraints of survival e.g. 9-5 job, regular income, a fixed abode. It is a wild ride at the extremes of existence that few people purposefully choose to do. I actually and metaphorically choose to voyage in unknown domains.
I want to tread lightly on this earth; the call to be a hermit is seductive. I am passionate to leverage the genius of our collective creativity but I can’t be bothered with kudos, conferences or the whitewash of feel-good collectives. I embrace the achievements of science, technology and innovation but don’t know where to begin to use them to transmute and transfigure life on earth.
I believe that we are better together, contributing the best of who we are to receive the fullness of who we can be. I believe that every human being has the potential to be part of the global synergy. From the bottom of my heart I believe true collaboration is simple and it is the biggest challenge we are being invited to face at this time.
There is maverick community of early adopters out there, those with their toes in the water. I am called to join them and thanks to technology I can find and connect to them on line. Online communities are especially attractive to the recluse in me and are justifiable when flying and many forms travel have such a polluting impact on our environment. So much can be created online, so much more then was possible when I started my career in the 1980s, but there is a substance and potential to collaboration that goes beyond the virtual world.
In my experience collaboration in it’s richest and most rewarding sense is about love and love calls for intimacy and vulnerability, for physical as well as ideological closeness, for kinship, sharing, eye to eye connection and the ability to be with and hang out in the messy entanglement of humanness.
I am flying to the USA in April to hang out in a room with a mentor who I have wanted to work with for awhile, I am going to Berlin in May to dive into the mechanics of Social Presencing Theatre, an amazing mechanism for transforming inter personal dynamics in business, communities and countries and in June I will travel to Corfu to facilitate Evolve The Journey, a week of growth, evolution and transformation that comes wrapped in a Greek holiday.
So although I consider what is possible to do virtually I do not always forgo travel. That leaves me with a dilemma - between the pull of treading as lightly as possible on this earth and the draw to love, collaboration and the possibilities of the exponential creativity, beauty and innovation of real, physical togetherness.
Fortunately I have a friend who has a mate who has founded a company, Clevel, that helps those of us who caught in the carbon/climate predicament. Check out their carbon calculator.
#carbonoffsetting #savetheplanet #amorebeautifulworld #consciousliving #consciousleadership #consciousbusiness