The Swarm

Watching the National Geographic channel the other day, I came across a series with Will Smith called Welcome to Earth. One of the episodes was about how many animals survive by functioning as a unit. There is the wildebeest migration, birds creating amazing configurations as they fly in unison, a species of bees (40,000 of them) who huddle together and shift their position like dominoes to protect their hive. Some features of this phenomenon stick with me in particular. No matter how many there are, they stay close together. They also don’t stay too close that they are touching, almost like they intuitively claim and respect personal space. Most amazing is how these animals function as if they have one mind. As individuals they would never survive, but together they thrive.

This Welcome to Earth episode is called Mind of the Swarm. Staying close together seems to keep the group connected. Allowing for a little space maintains their individual integrity just enough so they can function as an important contributing member of the swarm. Of course, it is instinct and not thought that allows creatures to behave this way. But maybe we as humans also have instincts that we have hidden buried under our thinking and conscious minds. Maybe if we can somehow access these instincts, or intuitions, we can discover (or recover) our true natures and in that discovery find ourselves and each other in new and healthier ways. 

As American humans, we cherish our individuality as if it were our only identity, as if needing others is an admission of failure or weakness. At the same time we cling to our “tribe” to help shape our ideas and ideologies. We are committed to both but for all the wrong reasons. The individual, in many animal species, is essential for the group to function. In turn, the tribe keeps the individual animal alive. It is the dance of survival. We, however, seem to be in a dance of cultural and existential demise. What can we learn from these animals that might save us?

If we become a swarm what might that look like? What might that feel like? What might we gain? Maybe we would become more purposeful because our reason for existing would be clear. Maybe we would strive to be our best selves in order to do what is best for each other. Maybe we would feel like we belong. Maybe we would create tribes for the purpose of survival, thriving alongside other tribes doing the same. But we don’t create swarms. We create movements and systems that separate, demonize and protect ourselves from one another. Animals create swarms for protection as well but swarms do not attack other swarms. They co-exist and even share habitat. Yes, they may eat each other to survive by attacking individuals in the swarm, but by doing so they also maintain an ecological balance. Where is our ecological balance? I do not think we have one since we continue to take, destroy, consume and rage war against everyone and everything that is not us. When you watch that swarm of birds, there is a rightness and beauty about their behavior. They do not mindlessly follow one leader in the hope of a better life just for themselves. In a swarm there is no one leader, there is maybe the one that is first and then another one takes that place and then another and another. The same for the one who is last. They do what is necessary to keep the swarm functioning. They adapt, sense, connect and sometimes sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole.

As we continue to yearn to belong, to be seen as special and important, to fear others who have the same yearnings, maybe we are missing something that could fix this. Maybe we need to look at the animals we live with on the beautiful and tragic planet to show us a new way. Maybe being a swarm is the beginning of an answer. 

A Poem for This Time

There is no leaving now

only a sitting silence

that will fill this void

like a death of someone

Well loved

That anticipatory grief 

makes you believe it

Won’t happen

Can’t possibly happen

Still breathing means hope

Hope is with those of us who

still find rainbows and unicorns

under our pillows, and we are willing

to fight to bring them into the light

And cut the sarcasm

Cut the clueless moaning and groaning

threats of leaving cause it’s broken.

You are not broken. I am not broken.

We’ve turned our “I don’t knows” into

reasons for not trying to fix it

To understand and let the disagreements 

Bring us closer together rather than miles and oceans

continents, worlds apart

There is no leaving now

If you do, where will you belong

If you do, what will we do in your absence?

I had no intention of writing a second post the day after my first. But, yesterday was our election and this morning the world feels different, and so do I. It is not that a Trump win was completely unexpected. What is new for me is how I am experiencing this moment. I already had that moment of dissonance, years ago, when I woke up to embrace the reality of the first woman president, only to find that the unthinkable had happened. I inoculated myself against this feeling for this election, so when I bolted upright at 2:30 am and checked the news only to find the prediction that Trump had won Pennsylvania, I was not confused or shocked. I sat quietly for a long time, letting the reality wash over me. I’ve become better at this. For most of my life, I lived in a state I can only call Pollyannaish Dissociation, easily slipping into my own fantasy world of believing that what could be and what made sense to me was actually the truth. This state of being both protected me and imprisoned me from being my “true self.” When my life took a plunging turn, over four years ago, into what I can only characterize as an abyss, I began my soul-searching journey of waking up to reality and to the role I play in creating that reality. I tend to think that maybe this whole country, or at least half of it, is also in this state of Pollyannaish Dissociation, believing that fantasy is reality, although this sounds too benign to characterize what feels more like evil than just fantasy.

Fast forward to now, sitting on my bed in the wee hours of election night. I did not think, “How can this be?” or “This is the end,” or “We will now live in a dictatorship,” or any other cryptic thought that I could be thinking. Instead, I felt a sure and creeping feeling that…I have work to do, that in some way I will matter. It is a feeling of resolve. It is a knowing that still half of our country did not vote for him, that I am not alone in the depths of my own despair, but deeply connected to millions of people who want the world to be a better place and understand that the way to make that so is not to blame or hide under a rock but to connect with our core beliefs and with hope, to connect with like and unlike-minded others to bring our common humanity to the fore in order to heal and thrive. I am keenly aware that the inner work I have already done was, and still is, the essential ingredient for allowing me to be in this open-hearted space where I can (here we go again) bring my “true self” into the service of creating bridges, alliances, friendships and, yes, love for our world. When Obama was elected I had a palpable and embodied sense that our/my work was done and he would bring us forward. What an oversight that was. It will never be done, we will never be done. We will forever be a work in progress, as individuals, communities and as a country. 

To me, Trump’s win is a message, actually many messages. People are in pain, afraid and feel neglected and marginalized. People are desperate to be taken care of. Most of us feel unseen, unheard and unwitnessed. Misogyny, racism and bigotry of all kinds are fueling our decisions and our relationships because we are stuck in fear and negativity spirals. What is the antidote? How do we rise well from these times? We need to connect with our deepest soul truths. We need to create spaces where we can be seen, heard and witnessed and do the same for others. We need to listen, really listen, to the realities and truths people are experiencing that have brought them to this moment when they feel the only way out is to make a person like Trump our leader. We need to learn to sit quietly and also listen to our hearts. And, we need to share it all, our lights, our shadows. We need to be curious and willing to change our minds. 

I am learning that at the root of all of this is love. Marianne Williamson says, “we are all in recovery from something.” Recovery is about coming back to love. It is about finding our way home together. If you join me in this striving I think there can be hope.

Welcome to RiseWell and thank you for visiting. Creating a business and a website and all the thought, tech-savvy and frustration that goes into making decisions and watching them take root, or fall flat, is like the fine art of baking. Those Christmas cookies never look quite like the picture, and my cakes, although delicious, look more like a kindergarten project than the Ina Garten picture that inspired me to make them. But, I  persevere, and I’ve become known as the “baker” in the family regardless of the optics.

There is also a feeling of “coming out” into the world that creating RiseWell has ignited in me. All over this website, you can read about how important I think it is to show up authentically and as your full self, and here I am, trying to do just that and feeling exposed, a bit of an imposter and looking at my cozy bed and wondering how long I have before I can get under the covers and hide. But what I know is that all of this is entirely o.k. These feelings are part of being that full self. And…it is also o.k. to get under those covers for a while just as long as, at some point, I come out.

So here I am, out from under the covers, my full self, a little wobbly, but here. My main purpose for writing this Musing page is to share with you my own process of coming out, fully and authentically. I hope that by these admissions of my human strengths and frailties, I can be of service to your process of being and becoming more human. I am not yet sure what will arise here; probably rants, poems, some pictures… Consider this my first rant. And…welcome again to RiseWell. I hope you will find some of what you are looking for, here.