I am recovering from COVID…slowly. My first time. This has given me lots of time with my thoughts, as my body just can’t do what my mind wills it to do yet.
One thing that I’ve been questioning in all my pondering is this: How much has really changed in the international social good sector since the pandemic began? Organizations may speak more readily about well-being and burnout than previously, and we certainly have given more time and lip service to decolonization, but late-stage capitalism’s hustle continues to grind right into nonprofits. Instead of responding to the times, our organizational cultures are being unconsciously shaped by them. From what I can see, some people are able to choose resistance to overwork on an individual bases, but the fundamental changes needed to create more humane working conditions for everyone are not yet on the table. We have lived four years in a disabling, global pandemic and yet the “technology” we rely on constantly asks us to override our bodies’ needs. Sit and stare at a screen. Submit yourself to constant notifications/requests. Remain disconnected, but produce more always.
If we define technology as “the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals”, I want our sector to develop our own practices that make sure workplaces can fundamentally support humans to be humans: We have to get way better (!) at making agreements with each other about how we assign work and offer our time, attention, and energy to each other. Otherwise, we keep relying on assumptions and allowing Slack/email/Google doc comments/WhatsApp messages (all tools developed for and controlled by extractive corporations) to dictate where we spend our time, rather than perceiving options and shaping alternatives to the status quo.
With all this in mind, yesterday I returned to the very first thing I wrote when the pandemic started in March 2020. I’m sharing it here again, because some questions require us to keep returning to them. At the time I was leading The Uncomfortable Club. As my colleague Amanda and I prepare to offer new courses/cohort learning spaces, it felt important to cycle back to see how much – or how little – we have learned.
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The both/and of our days
At the end of the day, if COVID-19 reveals nothing to us, it will be that systems are made of people and the decisions we make.
This is going to be hard, and probably for a long time. I want to call on every one of us in international aid and philanthropy, operating as individuals within complex systems, to mentally prepare. That is why I created this centering exercise for us do-gooders:
This is going to be hard, and probably for a long time. I want to call on every one of us in international aid and philanthropy, operating as individuals within complex systems, to mentally prepare. That is why I created this centering exercise for us do-gooders:
I believe that this pandemic is a rebalancing. A massive, massive shift is possible.
And it will be painful. And it will be fine.
I saw many organizations rush to keep going with their work last week, but it’s not going to be possible in the same way anymore. Integrating this understanding into our bodies and minds and souls is now our work.
I have real moments of dread, and then I try to remember that we were made for these times, that we are not here by accident. For many people around the world, the end has come and gone many times already. Those who rely on mutual aid already may be better off than all of us dependent on “formalized”, hierarchical systems rooted in extraction and exploitation. This is what many people and generations have been fighting for for so long – a deep, societal rebalancing of what we value in our decision-making and a recognition of care work. Because caring is the only thing that will get us through right now.
Our deepest intentions will be tested. Amidst new rhythms and routines in this new reality, we have an opportunity to concretize – in practice – our notions of interdependence, of care and consent, and of trust. The glimmer of optimism that I cling to right now for our sector is this: we can no longer go on pretending that we’re not interdependent nor that we’re not in this whole thing together.
We are facing destabilization of many kinds. The variability of the global impacts of coronavirus cannot yet be known. It’s time get really good at being uncomfortable. Let’s heed this time as an ancestral call to heal, to let Mother Earth breathe. We are all reeling from the impact of capitalism’s grind on ourselves, our bodies, families, organizations, and ecosystems.
Our job now is to pause, and listen to ourselves – our intuitions, our ancestors, our dreams, our rage, our longing – and not rush to erase the uncertainty of now by reacting without a greater awareness of what is at stake.
Our job is to get right about what it means to protect the sacred.
Our job is to trust that we can reimagine everything and demand systemic changes, but only if we move together.
COVID-19 is a reminder that, despite our best efforts, we cannot control change. So can we call forth the creativity that can emerge from chaos, to take huge leaps in terms of strategies that tend to the larger collective, not just organizational goals?
This time will require immense generosity of body and of mind, materially and emotionally, and the assurance of our spiritual practices that goes beyond intellectual understanding.
We must do the work that our souls most need.
At this time, when everything is up in the air, it is absolutely incumbent upon us to learn more about the ‘real work’ of building and strengthening the fabric of community – our own first – and then take this learning into how we do our work going forward.
What is possible right now that wasn’t possible before?
What are we being called into at this time?
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