There is no doubt that most days it feels like the world is on fire. Sometimes it is hard to even see a way forward through all the fog of self-righteousness, willful ignorance, rigidity, and empty platitudes. While it can feel scary how easily many people seem to be drawn toward old fashioned polarizing propaganda, there is also hope in noticing how many people are able to hold nuance and tolerate ambiguity in the face of pressure to conform to a false binary narrative.
The people who can exist in the both/and, recognizing that rarely is any person simply one thing - they give me hope. And my wish for 2024 is that more of us will be able to meet in this place, the in between space, to share ourselves, our values, our needs. And to do so without vilifying the other, without falling into the old patterns of clinging to rules for the sake of rules.
Let us surrender to the ambiguity and uncertainty of life. The truth that none of us are in control, but that collectively we can bend the arc of history. We can hold ourselves and each other to higher standards, while also extending grace, being accountable, and practicing acknowledging and repairing the harms we will inevitably commit.
For we are all human. Fallible and animal. Operating primarily through our unconscious needs, desires, and biological systems. We can hold both truths - that we are only animals and also that with human consciousness comes greater responsibility. We can wake from the hypnosis of colonial imperialism and the belief that any of us has the right to control anybody else. We can live into the truth of interdependence and that each of us is accountable to and still autonomous from each other. We can learn reciprocity in relationships without resorting to transactional objectification.
Mediation practice is a tool that deepens and expands my capacity to exist in the in between. I know to expect and listen for multiple truths. I can maintain equilibrium in the middle space, between problem and solution. I can allow the unfolding, knowing that the most successful and satisfying resolutions come through patiently untangling the threads until everyone can clearly understand the problem. And I know that finding a resolution does not always mean solving the problem.
My wish for 2024 is that more and more of us can embrace the nuance, the ambiguity, the living in between that characterizes the human experience. I wish for more and more of us to refuse empty platitudes and false promises of perfect answers, which almost always require the annihilation of someone. I wish to deepen our roots of practice and expand the branches of community as we grow this culture of the in between. Let us continue into 2024, facing forward toward our vision of a brighter future, arms linked and feet planted firmly on the ground of the present moment.
