Let us redefine our meaning as humanity once again.
It was a cold evening at the banks of Una, we were sitting at a campfire, sharing stories, I was feeling the heat on my face... and just kept gazing into it: “Fire is just so magnetic...", Nora replied in her gentle wisdom: “ Oh yeah forget about looking away, this is thousands of years old."
Countless stories have been shared around the energy of fire, they connected and created our cultural DNA, our knowledge of who we are and our way of dealing with change in the past. Those stories and wisdom (re)defined our meaning as humanity for several times.
In one way, fire resembles the slowness of our evolution. It took us a very very very long time (tens and thousand of years) to get to the phase of development we are in today. And yet it took only 60 years for us to change trajectory of mega-trends on our home planet, and move the pace of change on mega speed.
We can understand by now, there are many fires burning on our Planet Earth today - climate change, high levels of meaningless work and depression, resource and bio-diversity depletion, collapsing economic models, democracy and law as we know it not working, fast and uncontrollable development on AI,.. And if you think about all of them at once it can cause a personal or organisational burnout.
We act like, we know it all. We act like we don't need fire anymore. It feels we very much do. The complexity and speed of change on a systems level are challenging each one of us on individual or organisational level of any kind, to sit back and connect over fire stories, again and with a different purpose. We need to listen and act with more awareness of interdependence and of our own inner fire. The one that is stored in your heart, the central organ of our body.
And it is no different when it comes to organisations, as Nora Bateson put it: "The ‘organ’ in organization is a contributor to the vitality of the system. In the body the organs are constantly in response, in relationship, in complex processes of interdependence with the other bodily systems; joining emotion, intellect, culture, sleep, microbiome, identity, mental and physical health, and intergenerational continuance on our fair blue planet. It is into all of these processes, as they reach well beyond your offices that we are here to address. Is it your responsibility? Of course it is."
Fire created so much life and good in the past. And transformation into something new always demands burning and letting go of something old. We need to let go of many things. But let us not burnout ourselves, our species, and our Planet in the process of that.
Let us redefine our meaning as humanity once again.
With fire in my heart,
Ina
WOS - Leadership Learning Lab, join us on March 25th - 27th in Slovenia, for a unique 2-day leadership conference – a vibrant blend of inspiring speakers and real-time leadership practices. No spectators, everybody in.
This years theme is RESPONSE - ability: take a step back and observe yourself in order to see others. Slow down and listen to your (gut) feelings. Instead of reacting, choose to response. Be vulnerable and caring. Take the trip from ego to self. Befriend uncertainty. Embrace wholeness. Never stop trying.