The time it takes
by Charlie Jones & Brigid Russell
Everything is political in our organisations. Every deliberation about whether or not this person satisfies ‘access criteria’. Every decision made about a course of treatment. Every choice about how we spend our time. When we rush into the next transaction. Or, when we pause for a few moments longer to really listen, to have that much-needed conversation…
What’s going on?
How did we come to accept that our part of ‘the system’ necessarily runs to a fixed way of being, in tightly measured widgets of precious time and expendable human resources? We are ground down by the relentless activity, and yet it feels like just the way it is.
Do we even see this as a political choice? The inequitable and increasingly unworkable Western capitalist economy where a tiny proportion of wealthy people get disproportionately wealthier, while the rest of us work harder and harder, for less and less… and the planet spirals towards extinction. Where we have allowed things which are essential to life, like water and power and health, to become commodities traded for profit by the few. But of course all of this is political.
What’s radical?
To question such an imbalanced and unhealthy system is somehow seen as radical, out on the edge. And yet it’s really not.
To question what we have become, to share openly that we are all exhausted, that this way of working and living is making us ill. Physically, emotionally, existentially. To know deeply that we are relational beings, that we are inter-dependent. That we need to live in balance with our natural environment. Far from being radical, all of this feels elemental at a time when the world around us is burning.
We yearn for a simpler life; to de-clutter rather than pile on more stuff. To re-connect with each other as people. And for that we need to slow the fuck down. In so doing maybe we find that what feels tough alone becomes more possible collectively. It surprises us, and yet strangely feels so natural, like reconnecting to something ancestral, something homely.
What have we become?
Over the past two years of the pandemic we’ve heard so many experiences of feeling trapped and driven by prevailing expectations, around efficiency and having to rush from task to task. We’ve found ourselves increasingly believing that holding different points of view necessarily splits us into polarised opposites.
We feel caught in a machine which drives the pace, and pushes us to look through a deficit lens:
What can’t be done
How we’re failing
That we need control
How there just isn’t the time to grow our relationships
That it feels too risky to have genuine conversations with each other
What if we take a little time and space, and look at things through a different lens?
We need more space.
Space to be ourselves — to bring our strengths, and our fears. Space to feel able to share what we know, and what we don’t. Space to bear witness to what we’re all going through. Space to listen to each other for long enough to hear our commonalities as well as our differences.
We don’t have space though. Instead we have meetings. And tasks. Too much in our organisations that is overly formalised with the intention of ensuring ‘safety’ and minimising risk.
But we need to be open about the risks we face. We need spaces which feel safe enough, where we can each trust enough that we’ll be heard. Where we support each other to co-operate and collaborate. Where we feel able to be honest about our views, and our perceptions of role, identity, and power, especially when it feels uncomfortable. Because that’s how we’ll gradually grow understanding and find more balanced ways of being alongside each other…
What if we just start doing things a bit differently?
What we’ve experienced in over two years of Spaces for Listening[i] is solidarity. A sense of growing community.
How? With over 1200 people, we’ve dared to quietly gather, and held a lightly structured space in which each of us has felt listened to, and freely able to listen to each other. We have met as people, regardless of our roles and responsibilities. It has felt liberating, and connecting. It hasn’t felt like work at all. It’s felt like “islands of sanity”, as Margaret Wheatley would say.[ii]
It’s something a bit home-made, a bit rough around the edges. And it works… People need people, we need each other, we crave connection, and find solace in hearing common experiences. And we’re curious to understand difference, when we have the space to do so.
There’s been no ‘rolling-out’ of this approach. We have no website. There is no ownership, or commodity to sell. This is something organic, relational, real. It has a life of its own, it carries on and on, and ripples out wherever it goes.
This is intentionally different. It is a form of resistance. It is two-fingers up to the status quo.
… a growing community of connections?
We’re not talking about an initiative or intervention that comes and goes. Spaces for Listening feels more like the heart of a living community. A virtual campfire that gets regularly lit by the people who choose to be there.
When we gather together as fellow human beings with a little bit of structure, give ourselves space just to be with one another, with no strings attached… then magical stuff can happen. It’s not easy, and at times it feels uncomfortable to pause, to make a conscious choice to stop the relentless busy-ness.
What if we could create even more space? What might happen then?
Maybe, just maybe, there is huge potential in this space? A space for us to share how we see the big questions we all have hanging over us, and to find some rough and ready answers between us.
In the time it takes.
[i] See our previous blog Spaces for Listening (November 2020) for an outline of the approach. If you’d like to read more about people’s experiences of #SpacesForListening over the past two years, search that hashtag on Twitter.
[ii] Margaret Wheatley (2017) Who do we choose to be: facing reality, claiming leadership, restoring sanity. Berrett-Koehler
If you’re interested in joining the conversation or experiencing #SpacesForListening get in touch with us via Twitter where you’ll find us at @charlie_psych and @brigidrussell51
