wild resiliency blog!

It is 2 AM. I am in a Holiday Inn Express in Denver, CO. I have come here to sit-in on a program by The Omega Point International, in concert with Regis University’s Institute on the Common Good: Leadership for the Common Good- the Dance of Partnership.

I went to bed at about 10 PM, tired from the drive from Santa Fe, the rush hour traffic and a late arrival, the dinner in a ‘could be anywhere USA’ nondescript chain restaurant.

Woke at 11:30 PM the first time; thought it was 6:30 AM and prepared myself to get out of bed, then realized the time and fell back asleep. Woke again at 1:30 AM, thinking again it was daylight out.

But NO! It is 2 AM now and I had fallen asleep the first time without thinking to close the curtains and close out the night… er… the simulated day outside my window.

It is so bright out there, what with street lights and parking lot lights and a Taco Bell’s lights that… it is as bright as day out there. And I could fill a swimming pool with the flow of water from the shower head in my room. And the towels are washed anew daily whether I want to reuse them or not. Reminds me of the quote I often reference as a illustration of Domestic Resilience:

I had reverted completely back to type. Congratulations, Miss Wurtzel: you are the same as ever. Your resiliency, your ability to bounce back to your old habits, is admirable. You are to be commended for your stubborn desire to stay the same. Your uniqueness has made you a common idiot. – from the autobiography More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel, on her struggles with addiction

We drink our energy the way I once drank whiskey: knowing my thirst might kill me and guzzling it anyway. Not knowing how to stop; not sure I could or that I wanted to, numbing my personal pain with my reiterative and patterned thirsty resilience. All the while walking toward self-destruction.

In this age of climatic destabilization and of global warming and of peak-oil, of failed school systems and of kids failing school, dropping out and voting against the ‘culture of their raising’ at unprecedented rates… some adaptation will be a useful thing. Strategic adaptations might even get Hotels located in areas of drought to adopt low flow shower heads; but adaptation will not save us from ourselves, from the cities of our creation, nor from the forces of Fear and of war mongering and of corporatism that prey upon us. No.

Only a transformation of human consciousness can save us from ourselves.

I am accursed and haunted and blessed by this vision of human transformation through which I perceive the world: the inherent beauty of Life; our experienced separation from Self; and the potency of the dream—of a world worth dreaming into being. I dream of a world beyond sustainability—of a world where thrive-ability for all, for the common good, has a seat at the table, a voice in the chorus, standing in the law.

Perhaps if I just close the curtains, if I can just shut out the distractions and voices of fear and of powerlessness… I can dream it more clearly.