In Living Systems:

 

Change Happens

“Men do change, and the change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”

John Steinbeck

          Over and over, we find ourselves looking at situations in the world and all around us that we have seen before, but suddenly we see them with new eyes. Somewhere in the fog, a silhouette arises and slowly takes form. During that process, we imagine it to be many things that it is not, and finally when it stands before us, we see it in its fullness and recognize it for what it is. Change—real change, not just momentary, situational change—is like that. It is as though we must experience it many times before we grasp what we are looking at.

As technology has expanded and improved, we watch events in real time as they are happening across the world, and the impact of seeing with our own eyes is enormous. One of my first experiences of this was the 1980’s famine in Ethiopia—images of little children with bloated bellies and skeletal arms and legs. At the time, I had a little child of my own, who was robust and active. The comparison was stark. Then, in the early 1990’s, I read a book titled, Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine A. Dettwyler. It opened my western-white-person eyes once and for all to the precariousness of life in so many places. Dettwyler, an anthropologist from the University of Texas, wanted to find out why fully half of children born in Mali die before the age of five. I was amazed, because the reason she found was misinformed cultural beliefs and practices, not famine or lack of access to food.

In an interview last week, Lester Holt asked former Attorney General, Bill Barr whether he believes that there is systemic racism in America. Barr said an emphatic No. Either he has not left the ivory tower long enough to see what is right before his eyes, or he’s simply in deep denial. To admit to racism requires a long, painful look in the mirror. Change, especially systemic change, is hard. It’s hard to recognize, especially because we don’t want to see it, and even harder to address in a meaningful way. But change will come, no matter how long it takes, because we have created and inhabit a living system, and all living systems change.

The humanitarian disaster we are witnessing in Ukraine right now comes on the heels of what we watched recently in Afghanistan. Repeated experiences build and strengthen neural pathways. Soon denial will not work as a defense mechanism. We will be forced to see what is right before our faces and we will be changed by it. That’s not a bad thing.

As John Steinbeck described, change happens in subtle, curtain-ruffling ways. That may be the real reason sunflowers are so symbolic of this tragedy. Their stealthy perfume is floating on the breeze and whispering in our ears that real change is coming.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane