SE01E01: Learning how to just watch how the waves form

This is my first weeknote, after almost a year of thinking about it, I decided today to just do it (thanks Tomomi Sasaki for the inspiration/nudge to just go do the thing).

I did start weeknoting at work, but I just let it slide because no one else seemed to get why I’d want to do a weeknote, and to be honest, as the great Shakespeare said, the spirit was willing, but the flesh was damned weak (*or week, or something like that).

Anyway, unlike most weeknotes, this is definitely not about work. Or at least, it might occasionally be about the things I’m learning or thinking, but mostly, I’m just seeing this as an exercise in brain sorting. In the same way our brains do that sorting when we sleep, I find writing the best way to turn the glimpse of an idea into something that shines with the truth that otherwise is fleeting, like sunlight through a curtain. I write in metaphor a lot. Happy if you want to just stop here. Otherwise, welcome!

This week’s thoughts that need untangling comes courtesy of someone I’d call friend, despite having never met, Michael. He’s fearless and fearful in all the right measures and seems to have an abiding love of humanity. Exactly the kind of person you want doing the job he does, working in the Canadian gov. Recently, he’d had a tough week, and my advice was as follows:

After having been ill in a more-than-I’ve-ever-been-before-scared-the-pants-off-me kind of way this year, I’ve been needing to *try* doing more than my fair share of sitting out the back lately. This little brain sort is me trying to convince myself that I don’t need to ride every wave, and that in fact, I’ll become a better surfer if I don’t. Metaphorically speaking of course. My kids and husband will attest that I am the funniest person on the beach when I catch a wave, and indeed, the whole beach hears about it if I do actually get a wave. It’s such an intensely exhilarating (and terrifying to my terrible swimmer self) feeling.

And I guess that’s the point. Riding the crest of change that is pervading our lives at the moment is the biggest rush I could ever imagine, I will be that woman whooping all the way to the shore. If you work with me, you can attest I am not quiet about these things. We live in interesting times.

I’m aware of the negative connotations of that, and we do live in interesting times. There’s never been a more terrifying but full of potential and possibility moment than the one we’re in right now. We are at once on the brink of disaster and on the brink of becoming our future selves.

The older, wiser part of my brain tells me this has always been the case- we’re always on the way to being our future selves. And the choices we made 70 years, 50 years, 5 years ago all culminate into this moment and make us who we are, what we experience. And so, I’m brought to the technology that renders this future a different beast altogether. I want to ride every wave that comes before me, because this making of the future is so much faster, more important and more limitless than ever.

But if I do- then I’ll miss the way the wind blows, I’ll miss the smell of the land as the sea wind turns round, whips the waves anew and steadies the swell under me. I’ll miss the waves out to sea as they build, and I’ll miss the little fish as their tummies glint silver along the line of the swell.

I’ve studied government policy for oh gosh, nearly fifteen years now. My parents were intensely political, having been born just after the depression, and old enough to remember the war, all the wars after that, and knowing poverty deeply through their bones, they instilled in me my individual responsibility to contribute to society. So it’s possible to say I’ve been studying government for nearly 40 years. My parents never knew a world where they didn’t matter. Or at least, mattering or not was a choice, but choosing to think you didn’t matter was never an option in my household. It was my civic duty to believe in the power of what you did as an individual. I won’t go into politics, because it doesn’t matter, but this bit, this apolitical aspect of the personal as political, this defines how I move through the world. That and the suffering they made sure I knew about. It was close to home, that suffering. Something for another day perhaps. In any case, what I think about a lot, in regards to those times when our current economic and government systems were created, is that they must have been interesting and exciting times. The ripples from the creation of the concept of public good (1954), of the idea of social expenditure, of safety nets, of the responsibility of governments to protect and serve the people, this defines our reality today. Like the fish who doesn’t know what water is, we don’t see this as something that was constructed (and can therefore be rebuilt, reimagined). I’ll bet that at the time, it was hard not to ride each and every wave. I imagine that it was hard to step back and just watch how the waves were going. But I know that if I take a moment to just observe, see those waves for what they represent- for the swell and where it came from, what made it, then I’ll find myself able to both rest when I need to, and able to see the waves for what they are. They’re a manifestation of something greater. Maybe the storm out to sea (they’ll be around a while). Maybe the result of a wind, fickle and gone in a moment. Maybe the result of the very sands under the sea shifting, in which case, there until the sand shifts again, as it does between winter and summer here at my beach on my island, where my waves are. The older surfers don’t jump on every wave. They sit out the back and enjoy the feel of the water around them, chat to friends, feel the sun on their faces, eyes on the wind, eyes on the tide.

So, this first weeknote is a reminder: rest your head. Smell the land and the sea at that moment when they ride the wind together. Feel the sun as it pores through your eyelids. Remember that there are always new waves and that to catch them you need to be ready. Once on the wave, above all, just let go and holler and whoop for all you’ve got.