The true breakthrough we need in collapse? Our souls' unique genius
How we already have the creative seeds of genuine social renewal
The hidden gift in crisis is that it stops us in our tracks. Whether it’s a pandemic, divorce, job loss, or health scare, crisis is trying to say to us: “You. Need. To. Stop. Things aren’t working.”
And in this year when the whole world’s been stopped in its tracks, I can’t help but feel like Earth has been saying to us in bold flashing lights:
“You. Need. To. Stop. This isn’t sustainable.”
We live in a culture that worships the twin gods of machine-like Productivity and Efficiency. And as a product of this culture, I’ve gone through many boom-bust cycles of working like a madwoman, and then collapsing from burnout. But after years of abusing my body, during a particularly stressful bout in my early 30s, I broke out in painful hives across my whole body.
Crisis was trying to grab my attention. And my doctor gave me an ultimatum: find another way, or else live on anti-inflammatory drugs for the rest of my life.
The drugs were a no-go for me; so I got serious about yoga.
Through practice, I discovered to my great dismay that I was mostly a disassociated head walking on a stick. After years of compulsively grinding out tasks on my to-do list, I’d gone numb to what most human in me — my longing to do work that was genuinely energizing, to be time rich, and to live a life of meaning that only I could live.
My body’s rebellion told me things needed to be different. Running on fumes wasn’t sustainable.
Ironically, it was this period that helped me understand a question that’s long animated me: “Why is capitalism so f’ed up?”
In college, I explored the intellectual roots of this question. In the business world, I worked inside the system to try to understand it. But it was when I lived it in my body that I finally got it: capitalism enables rapid and scalable growth, but those results are unsustainable when they’re disconnected from life’s deeper currents.
You see, my core gifts have always been seeing the big picture in human systems and catalyzing change. I’m energized by connecting the dots in unexpected ways and shaking up the status quo. It’s what puts me in flow.
But in my 20s, I didn’t see a way to make a living from these gifts. And socialized to believe that “hard” (e.g., numbers, technical rigor) was more valuable than “soft”, I stopped following what naturally nourished me. So, for example, rather than study sociology in college, I majored in economics to be more valuable in “reptile culture” (which I wrote about last week).
Compromises like this one helped me achieve a fair amount of conventional success at a relatively young age. But external “success” came at the expense of inner violence to the uniqueness of my gifts. And in this system, I devalued my most life-giving capacities because they couldn’t obviously be monetized.
Disconnected from the source of my own creative renewal, I motivated myself primarily through self-discipline. But this wore thin. So I doubled down by pushing myself harder. Like a hungry ghost or addict that can never be satisfied, I chased dopamine hits through achievement. Those hits though were always short-lived.
In the world I inhabited, my inner landscape had become barren. My ecosystem became prone to burnout. Rather than being fueled by the naturally regenerative energy of my soul, I was burning the fossil fuels of fear — “should”, “ought”, and social expectation.
My choices were aligned with the monoculture our modern world. Monocultures, though efficient, are prone to collapse because of their homogeneity. By contrast, nature’s ecosystems are resilient when diverse, and therefore more adaptable to new conditions.
I know these times of breakdown seem bleak. But it gives me great hope that the seeds of our renewal and resilience already lie within us — the genius at the center of each of our souls.
Just as biodiversity is critical to the health of our planet, fostering the uniqueness of our souls’ expressions is essential for the flourishing of our social ecosystems. The more that we each reclaim the parts of ourselves that we’ve marginalized, the more we’ll unlock new adaptive ways of navigating uncharted challenges.
Our purpose, more than at any other time in history, may be to learn to live from the endless source of what is most creative in us. It’s in rehabilitating the inner intelligence of what sustainably nourishes us that will help us break out of an old paradigm that has run out of fuel.
Part of that old paradigm is the tired trope of the hero that’ll swoop in to save us. (e.g., Trump, Biden, or your favorite savior figure). But in our age of wicked problems, no hero can single-handedly solve our overlapping crises of extreme climate, the need for racial reckoning, and the breakdown in our political institutions. Anyone who claims to be the hero we’ve been waiting for isn’t acknowledging the genius that lies in each of us.
So in this year unlike any other, perhaps the greatest contribution we can each make to the soil for collective change is to make the choice to live ever more from the depths of our own soul. It may not be easy to make these shifts if we’ve been thoroughly disconnected from ourselves (like I was), but it’s the only way I see to sustainably renew our world.
I’d love to hear from you:
What’s your soul’s sustainable fuel?
What have you marginalized in yourself or others that might support our collective renewal?
What latent gifts do you need to start acknowledging in yourself or those around you?
What would you do differently if you knew that owning your gifts was essential to our collective thriving?
Let me know in the comments or by sending me an email!
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