Yesterday. Last Friday. Friday before last I was driving down to see my sibling in Birmingham where I used to live and whilst I was driving, I was thinking about you.
(Yes, I wrote most of this two weeks ago but it’s been quite the two weeks!)
The easiest way of making a long drive bearable is for me to listen to an audiobook or podcast - something funny or plotty.
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On journeys, I’ve done thrillers, I’ve done cosy fantasy, I’ve done fun podcasts.
The night before, I decided I wanted some true crime. Nothing too gory - I loved this one about North Korean hackers and this one about a leadership coaching cult.
I found one about the UK Post Office scandal which I hadn’t heard of before, somehow.
Basically, the Post Office installed a new IT system, it quickly started showing deficits in postmasters’ accounts, and the PO demanded that they pay it back or they would prosecute them for theft/fraud, denying that it had anything to do with the computers.
Innocent people who were just running the small business of their local post office literally went to prison for it, but the Post Office always said they were the only one this had happened to.
I’m only 10 episodes in and there are 15, but it’s telling the story of how people organised and took the Post Office to court and (kind of) won.
As I was listening, I thought about that complexity question I mentioned yesterday:
What is this an example of?
Here’s some of what I came up with:
Big corporates/organisations wielding enormous power
Behemoth organisations making individuals feel powerless
The invisibility of pain of people we may see regularly
The power of people banding together
Racism in British life (lots of the people in the cases were from South Asian backgrounds and often received lower compensation)
How movements are often driven by one person’s tenacity/stubbornness
How bloody long change takes
That impossible things are possible
IT being trusted implicitly
Outsourcing can be dangerous
People hiding behind their jobs
The relief of having company in our oppression
Corporate structures persisting (the ‘Security’ team is hundreds of years old and came from trying to stop thefts when money was being transferred on horseback?!)
What seems big to you, is a tiny distraction or unknown to most other humans on the planet
How an escape fantasy (eg running a cute little post office) isn’t always the idyll you imagine
Sometimes the legal system is the only way of keeping big organisations accountable
How rarely people murder people who hurt others, when, you know, they COULD
Then there’s things like:
How first-person storytelling can be so involving
How hearing the actual voices of people involved makes things really engaging
SO much more information is available in English than in some other languages
The amount of work a produced podcast involves
And also:
How organised sounds deliver meaning to human brains (language is a whole THING isn’t it?)
How information is delivered to a tiny computer in my car and then without wires to my EARS? (and how used to that access I am)
How I let myself forget the damage that driving does to the planet (and downloading/using the internet!)
How having audio in my ears helps me feel safer in service stations/in crowded situations
How I still have that love of being lost in a story that I had a child
The choices we make on how we spend our miraculous lives on this tiny blue rock in space
(There’s more but you get the point!)
I find there’s an awakening power to the question ‘What is this an example of?’ that takes me out of just being lost in the specifics of my current situation. It allows me to build connections to broader themes, stretch further into the past and see bigger significance.
Pattern-making is a way to move more wisely through complexity and mess - this is a pattern-making question.
I keep being drawn to the power of fractals - in a metaphorical sense, don’t @ me with maths (actually feel free to @ me with fractal math facts, I’d love it).
Most recently, it was the incandescent adrienne maree brown who brought this back to the surface for me.
That we can affect the whole by changing a part.
That even in our tiny actions we can embody the world we dream of.
And I have a hunch that by finding the connections of our present moment with other experiences, we can give more power to the fractal connections of our choices.
I was very drawn to Joanna Macy’s idea of the energy of Business As Usual as contrasted with the energy of The Great Turning, the tide of change that we can nurture. (I’ve got her new podcast in my queue - age 94!)
We can find literal and spiritual company with all of the people who are following the energy of better, more equitable, more just, more magical, more joyful, more survivable futures.
What’s a situation you’re facing right now? What’s it an example of?
What else is it an example of?
And what else?
There’s another pattern-making question I find really useful, and I reckon we’ll be exploring that next.