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Last year was hard. In the final days of December we were checking on family and friends evacuated from their homes, fleeing wildfires that destroyed neighborhoods in Colorado at a time when there should have been snow on the ground. It wasn’t the first time we had been glued to our phones to try to find out if our loved ones are safe, and if they would have a home to return to, as the climate crisis fuels extreme weather around the world. And we’re heading into the third year of the COVID pandemic with infection numbers higher than ever. Each day requires us to make decisions about how to keep our family healthy — particularly our children who are too young to be vaccinated. And those are just the things that were top of mind for us in the past few days, as we prepared to welcome a new year.
Over the past year, an old story kept coming to mind…
A person is taking a walk by a river and hears someone calling for help. They run over to the river to look, and sure enough there is someone flailing in the water — being pulled downstream, disappearing under the water, then bobbing up again. The person walking on the bank runs down to the river’s edge to try to help. They call out to others on the path to come help too. Then they spot another person in the river, and another, and another.
More people come over from the path to try to help the people in the river, but it is a difficult task. For as many people as come to help it seems that even more are struggling in the water. Then someone from the path looks over at the river, and instead of coming down to the water’s edge they keep on walking. “Where are you going?” ask the people who are working so hard to pull people out.
“I’m going upstream to see who is throwing them in.”
Scanning the headlines provides one example after another of dangerous systems that sweep people along so strongly that it seems nearly impossible to escape the current. Systemic racism. An economic system that turbo-charges inequality. A political system where the only point of agreement seems to be that the system is broken. These converge to accelerate the climate crisis. And the ongoing pandemic has provided yet another stark example of the damage that all these systems can do — deeply dividing us when we need cooperation and compassion more than ever. And this is only a partial list of the powerful and damaging systems shaping our world today.
Systems Flow From Stories
So what is upstream? Who is throwing us in? In many ways those answers are as complicated as history and the systems themselves. But fundamentally the answer is simple: stories.
Stories are how we understand the world, drawing on our past experience as well as our vision for the future. They convey our values and priorities. Systems are our stories in action.
It can be hard to step away from the river bank — where there is so much need and such pressing work to do — and head upstream. But both are important. Heading upstream we can examine the stories that shape our systems. This is an opportunity to ask essential questions: What should this system do? Who should it serve? What would success look like? Who should help decide the answers to these questions? The answers are shaped by the stories we tell; our beliefs about who we are and who we want to become.
Walking upstream we find streams and creeks that feed into the bigger river. This complex network of tributaries creates the river system. Each contributes its own story, and together they create a strong current. Even though systems can feel overwhelmingly powerful, each contributing story matters. Your story matters.
A Gift for the New Year: Imagination
Where do we go from here? As we sit at this moment of reflection and anticipation, I want to share with you what I find encouraging. Here are three pieces — beautiful and practical — that describe how imagining a new world is the first step in making a new reality.
I’ve come back to this piece by Mary Annaïse Heglar many times in the past few months. She calls for all of us to participate in “world building”, to create not just a “livable” future, but a beautiful one.
I really appreciate this practical list from Rebecca Solnit. All great advice, but the one that sticks with me daily is “Imagination is a superpower.”
This year end poem from Amanda Gorman is such a gift. Do yourself a favor and take two and a half minutes right now to hear her recite it. I’ll be using this line to guide me into 2022. “Let us not return to what was normal, but reach toward what is next.”
In the coming year I’ll be exploring upstream, trying to “reach toward what is next” and imagine how we can transform our stories and systems, making our world both livable and beautiful. I hope you’ll join me.