Headed north

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.