We count our days, fixating our sense of
time. In that metric, I will be out of this country in three days. A more
truthful account of my time, however, is that I’ve been living in and out of
the Netherlands for a while longer already. I began disentangling myself when I
found not a room, but a whole house, to be filled with five more fellow
students. By now, I’ve skyped and met with thirteen of them, all actors in this
future chapter in life. Since then, I shed the reluctance I felt for leaving,
and began to eagerly monitor the passing of time: then fast, then slow, then
almost up.
I’ll be moving to the peninsula of
Karlskrona, a fourteenth century naval town on the south coast of Sweden
(N=30.000), to start a master dapperly entitled – wait for it – ‘Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability’.
I still don’t know exactly what to expect, and the title gives me little to go
on. So oddly enough when I tell people what I will study, I begin by tearing
down the name. “‘Sustainability’ and ‘leadership’,” I’ll say, “both words that
mean so much they mean nothing.” In reality, this self-deprecation arises from
a discomfort with the leadership part, and me hedging for the criticism I hear
in my own head. For years I’ve thought all leadership programs were complicit
in the cult of the ego, all-pervading and stinking up our Western world. “But
the lack of leadership, of people in positions where they could be making a difference, but aren’t, is the
greatest challenge we face in our transition to a healthier world,” says the
MSLS program. Given that I also see the sustainability transition as our most
pressing collective task, I couldn’t agree more (except a sudden mass-awakening
on the planetary scale would help, but I suppose we would still need pioneers
to work up to a tipping point for that). I know that really I just need to face
some demons in order to climb to a fuller version of myself. Pride and autonomy
and vision are strengths of mine, but I scorn their excessive praise, and
praise modesty instead, to check myself. I suppose that this love hate
relationship to leadership will get plenty of attention in the coming year.
That’s good. But besides that, the role I
envision for myself within the sustainability transition, or any positive
transition, is not necessarily one of ‘the leader’. As much as we need true
leaders, we need people that support them. And it’s this role, the role of
facilitator, that I have engrossed myself in recently. The adventure began in
California, where I became intrigued with the interaction between physical and
social space. I noticed that the different layouts of my co-operative’s three
houses contributed to the rise of three ‘families’ of housemates, who related
very differently internally. I noticed how strongly I could influence the
atmosphere, the nature of relating amongst people, by how I set the stage for
the many parties I hosted. An inkling and a calling softly announced themselves
to me. I called my discovery ‘space making’, and bracketed it for later. Fast
forward a year, and I’m interning with JAM Visual Thinking, a company that
designs, facilitates, and visualizes change management processes. Their need
for curating their facilitation knowledge, and my natural gravitation towards
exactly that, met in stunning synchronicity. The collaboration that ensued
allowed me to immerse myself in their and my own know-how of group
facilitation. It formed the perfect prelude to the MSLS program, which will for
me be all about enriching my intuitive knack for ‘making spaces’ that invite
our better selves, with deeper theoretical, personal, and experiential
knowledge. How beautifully the Red Road unfolds.
All this is very good. It pulls strongly. In
fact everything I read and heard about this program resonated so deeply, and
everything from writing the application, to getting admitted, to finding
housing has gone so smoothly it’s clear to me now that this program is the
perfect fit I’ve been waiting for. You know it when it’s true. Just as with my
watershed year in California, I feel the familiar old feeling of the swelling wave
approaching. I can hear it now, thundering closer, heralding a very powerful,
rich year ahead. Am I READY for that head-on living!
And all this in elf country, where the
gnomes and wood spirits are still real… I look forward to moving to a country
where the people still know the magic of their land, same as in California (oh
yes, the golden state’s residue is still all over in my body and soul). A
country where picking berries and mushrooms is a common family pastime, where
all major holidays revolve around the seasons, and where the children look for
the tomte in the barns. I look forward to making new acquaintances in the trees
and animals there. Same as in California where the eucalyptuses and cork oaks
and blue jays were the first to welcome me; and same as in the Netherlands
where I only fully landed again, not
through the people, but through the dunes and jackdaws and the magpies and the
heather… I need nature first, to beckon me in and introduce themselves, and
only then the people. And nature, in Sweden, is abundant so I’ve heard. I’ve
been comforting myself for months now, every day when I traverse the chaos and the
fumes of Amsterdam’s city center, gorgeous though it may be, that soon, very
soon, I’ll be breathing clear, sea-scented air for a year. In Sweden, where the
hushed woods stretch all the 1.500 km up to Abisko’s ‘last wilderness of
Europe’, and bear and wolf and lynx and elk still roam. What else should we
know hides out in these ancient forests? I’m not really joking when I say elf country. Imagination, that mysterious
force, once banned Avalon and our pre-Christian times into the mists when we
lost it, but may yet have kept some things alive in remote wildernesses where
our fancy runs rampant. We, confused and silly humans, are creators of truth
whether we use our imaginative or rational faculties. Tomte, sylven,
fossegrimen, who’s to say whatever survived our dwindling imaginative powers in
these barren, stripped down times…? I’ll let you know when I see one.
