It is the morning after thesis hand-in. Yesterday we sent off our
brainchild, emptying our hands and jumping in the sea for a cleansing. But still
I barely feel the breeze, and my vision has become shockingly fixated on screen
distance. I sit in uni writing this now because I can’t go cold turkey on my
laptop yet. I still feel a bit wobbly after our passage through the birth
canal, the high pressure moment of hand-in after 5 months of toil, where with
increasing intensity our lives came to revolve around thesis, all other things
pressed to the margins of perception by the centrifugal force, where they
blurred from view. So much we’ve learnt, about research, about our topic, about
teamwork.
Our brains at work
The scientific method has captivated me. So quick and insidious our
minds are, and it was only through constant questioning with every mental step
of the way, that I could catch my brain in the act of making assumptions, jumps
in logic to make an argument. So trippy the intricacy of our own mental labyrinths,
let alone finding our way in those of two other thesis mates! A few weeks ago we experienced ‘data
paralysis’. This whole year we’d been
learning about the importance of shared mental models (maps for navigating
collective mental labyrinths), and still
we found we had neglected ours and that the compounding subtle inflection
points left us stranded with three mutant models. So bogged down in the
research we were, that we could only still see the complicatedness. Luckily we
had felt good about every step of the research, so we could trust that our
subconscious had been making very clever, strategic decisions, and now it was
for our consciousness to catch up. We made the best choice we could have made, a
week before the final draft deadline, and gave ourselves a whole weekend off to
give space to the simplicity to resurface in slow time, while we relished the first
days of Swedish summer. It worked like a charm.
After sorting our brains out, it was time to apply them. My thesis
pal described it as travel sickness: for two weeks we had (attempted to) stayed
at the high level overview, and now we were freefalling into the detail of
re-writing and editing. Two of us entered the Thesis Cave and pitched camp
there, not leaving its and each other’s side for 6 straight days and nights of
work. We could only still see and hear everything through the structure of our
research, were writing and re-writing in documents and in minds 24 hours of the
day. At night, my brain tried to fit the entire world into conceptual
frameworks, so active in its processing and puzzling that its whirring woke me
up at 6:30 for mornings in a row with new revelations. It was delicious. There
hasn’t been a moment where I wasn’t fascinated by our work, such a passion
project this has been.
The heart of our thesis
Our thesis is on youth empowerment, nature connection, and on
sending young people on camp to build a care for nature and others deep enough
that it will translate into action when either are in trouble – on raising
empowered sustainability advocates. We have interviewed and met such inspiring
practitioners from the field, their hearts high with the power of the work
they’re doing. We have seen their hunger to share knowledge and experience with
each other, and in extension their eager interest for our work. And we have
felt how this research has become a doorway, a flexible platform, for our
personal futures that want to build on this. All the avenues and initiatives to
be explored. Last week we were on our second visit to the thesis cave, five days
this time of pizza and all-nighters, deconstructing our whole thesis again and building it back up for the
final submission. In the middle of this, we went camping for a night with a
group of us on the island of Aspö. It is early summer here now, and the birch
forests are bright green, and the great crested grebes are mating, and sky is
filled with geese migrating. And the great tits and blackbirds are singing. And
the magpies, the wood pigeons, the woodpeckers, the nuthatchers, the
oystercatchers are talking. And since a few days even the swifts are back. And the
wind was at our backs around the campfire on the rocks by the open sea, blowing
fiercely around our stories. I have been camping all my life, yet this time it
was different. I have so much more knowledge now about the value this brings to
young people who’ve never experienced this, about rituals and practices that
foster connection, compassion, confidence. We are becoming experts of theory on
something that has been with me my whole life, and wants to come back in my
future. It is beautiful.
The bodies of our team
To be sharing this passion and deep process is such a gift. It is
one of the Great Learnings from this transformative year. That you can choose to work with friends. That
you can not only get lucky with coworkers you like, but that you can actively
choose to share something that takes up so much of your life, passion, purpose,
with people you love! Speaking of empowerment… I want that! And yet, part of
the thesis process has been accepting the fact that I shared this with one, not
two, of my thesis mates. This brings me to another of the Great Learnings from
this year. That while we may differ greatly in our translations and satisfying
strategies, we as human beings all share the exact same needs and emotions, and
can therefore be understood, and then accepted. And on this basis, we can be
honest and transparent about our needs and emotions, knowing they ultimately all
make sense. How much suffering can be resolved and avoided by being honest, and
acting from that understanding! In this way, I have been learning so much from
all those very different from me, as well as those so much like me. Housemates,
thesis mates, friends… They are the first mirror, the most revealing. They show
me to all the demons, all the rocks, all the blind spots that need healing. That’s
why I don’t live alone, I’d be stealing so much waxing consciousness from myself!
Consciousness training
That’s it. It is this consciousness that MSLS trains and elevates in
us. In this consciousness my future work lies. It is this consciousness that I
came home to at the Art of Hosting training and YIP Initiative Forum, where it is
so present in the room; that led us to start a tradition of gratitude beads in
our thesis team, a practice gleaned from one of our partner organisations; that
moved us to set up a thing like the Future Council, a tribe within a tribe that
meet weekly to move together through the big questions of what’s next, and will
maintain its role as council when our bodies part ways. It’s the same
consciousness that is the portal into the deeper layers of the people world, as
well as spirit world. And for those of us who are onto its trail, we are
sorcerer’s apprentices, learning to work with forces we don’t yet understand.
It caught our attention, a fleeting movement in our lateral vision. We can’t
grasp it yet, can’t name it yet, but we have ventured in. I am seeking it with
my hands, this sense. I am testing the air, resting my empty hands in there,
waiting for that feeling to become tangible and land in them, so I can grasp it
like reins and my body becomes the tool. I know it’s coming.
Back to the wider present –
the antics of time
Now that we are on the other side of the thesis deadline, we can
shift our attention back to the wider present: we are moving into our last
month here. Time has been behaving as strangely as ever, writhing and curving,
circling and stretching, slack and taut, fast and slow. With the coming of
summer, we are coming full circle to a season we have experienced here before.
It brought back remembered feelings, thoughts, body sensations so strongly, so instantaneously
that it was like time looped back onto itself. The depth and speed that we’ve been moving at with thesis has left
us with no capacity to engage with the realisation that the days of this
beautiful Karlskrona life are almost up. Slowly now, the thesis dust will
settle, opening up space to arrive in that wider present again. And then we
will find it will be such a sudden drop into lazy, luscious summer that it will
feel like vertigo. Vertigo all the more because that drop will also be the
abrupt end of this Karlskrona life, and we will find ourselves balancing on the
edge of the abyss, the void of a life disintegrating. The transient nature of time will roar back into
life, we will hear the wheels churning. It will force us into that bittersweet
gift of retrospection, reflection, selection of what to take with you, what to
leave behind. I will try to walk slowly these last weeks, soaking up and
savouring this everything. And after that, close my eyes and take that leap. Hi
Future! Catch me please.
