In this episode, we explore how to avoid a common trap for anyone working on major change…
Okay, I admit it: I messed up again.
I’d been working on a story about big changes, about what we need to do about the perils of paediarchy and the deadly ‘covert crybaby’ and ‘consuming the world’ and so on and so on and so on - all those global-scale challenges we face right now. Accompanied by big drama and all that: “if we don’t fix this right now, we’re all going to die!”
All of which is, yes, unfortunately all too true - as the IPCC report on climate-change that was issued earlier this week would remind us yet again.All that stuff that sounds like hype and over-exaggeration, and sadly isn’t exaggeration at all.
Yet there’s a right way to tackle this, and a wrong way. And yeah, you can guess all too easily which one of those options I chose?
Not A Good Idea…
So yes, I’d driven myself right back into depression again, about the sheer awfulness in the world right now. Straight into the last of those three adrenaline-responses to over-stress: fight, flight, or, as in this case, freeze. Stalled. Stuck. Round and round and round on the same part of the story, unable to move forward.
Chaos.
It wasn’t until early this morning, already a day late, that I at last remembered the way out of that trap: that it isn’t chaos, it’s just the world being itself.
Or, to put it another way, what looks like chaos may not be chaos at all:
Yes, that’s a real road-sign, and yes, Chãos is a real place. To be more precise, it’s a small, quiet hamlet high up in the hills above the Alentejo in north-central Portugal, perhaps a couple of hundred kilometres or so somewhat sort-of-north-and-a-bit-east-ish from Lisbon. And this Chãos is not chaos: quite the opposite, really. That’s the bit that I needed to remember right now.
Why? Well, read the sign. Read it again, more carefully, in context. It’s in Portugal. The language is Portuguese. And in this language, ‘chãos’ doesn’t mean the same as the English word ‘chaos’. (That’d be the Portuguese word ‘caos’, in fact.) This word ‘chãos’ is pronounced more like ‘shions’ - close to the French word ‘champs’, as in ‘Champs Elysée’ - and, also close to that French word, it actually means ‘floor’, or ‘ground’.
And what we need most, when we’re in the midst of what seems to be chaos, is some solid ground on which to stand. Somewhere to slow down for a moment, stop, stay still for a short while, sort things out, and then start again.
Calm.
Quiet.
The still-point at the very centre of chaos that’s the exact opposite of chaos.
In my case, a moment to remember that whilst, yes, these are huge, huge changes that we face, yet there’s also a reason why this newsletter is called ‘Small Changes’. And that’s because big-changes only ever succeed by being built upward from a myriad of small, subtle, purposeful changes. Keep the big-picture always in mind, but yet also always work with the everyday, the detail, the small.
Yes, it’s chaos out there.
Yet it’s also not chaos.
That point is perhaps what we need most right now. What I needed most, anyway, to write this post for today.