Wake me up when it's all over

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy

I was prompted to write today’s post for a multitude of reasons, including:

1. My chat with Chusana yesterday from the soulful systems.

2. This incredible podcast with Alain de Botton about all manner of things practical philosophy, psychotherapy and the ‘truths’ of our psychosocial development (especially the relation between our experience of childhood, the way we, at various ‘levels’, respond to this, and then the ways we carry those adaptations / maladaptations forward)

3. My ongoing process of trying to find ways to make money by doing what I believe is most ‘good’ and ‘right’

4. Recently finishing (finally) the latest Avicci documentary about the life and music of Tim Bergling (hence the Avicci / Aloe Blacc reference in the title. The video below is an INCREDIBLE live performance of the song)

Okay, with some context set, let’s get into it.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo Tolstoy

This was one of the quotes that the interviewer in the de Botton podcast called upon, and was perhaps the primary trigger for my writing today.

Why?

Because it resonates sooooooooo dddeeeeepppplllllyyyyyyy.

I’m not going to get into my personal experience of finally looking properly in the mirror, along with all of the work that followed (and continues). I’ve done that plenty of times before in different contexts. But, and I’m happy to stand by this claim, I think there are various ways in which it’s much easier, more attractive and more explicitly incentivised to change stuff ‘out there’ rather than truly sit with, reflect on, properly attend to, metabolise and then actively evolve what’s ‘in here’.

*Please note I’m not suggesting we reify Descartes’ error. I use ‘out there’ and ‘in here’ in a more everyday sense in this context. I know you get it.

There are lots of reasons for this… Seperation of mind from body (Decartes of course, but this goes back much further). An emphasis on the easily observable. An emphasis on the explicit. An emphasis on the instrumental. The story of seperation. The ideology of capitalism and the way the early ideas have poorly evolved to become very much life eroding en masse. Misinterpretations of the ‘drivers of evolutionary adaptation’ (a lot of folks fundamentally misunderstand competition too. They think it means to win at some zero sum game, where it really means to ‘strive together’. More on that another time). Woeful ideas about meritocracy. A crisis in meaning. Lack of community. Lack of genuine leadership. Limited developmental opportunities (in a deeper sense). A failure to recognise the bio-psycho-social-ecolological context within which we develop. A failure, as Whitehead put it, to recognise just how important our thinking is (“The sort of ideas we attend to, and the sort of ideas which we push into the negligible background, govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live. This is why the assemblage of philosophic ideas is more than a special­ist study. It moulds our type of civilization.”).

I feel like I could go on for days here.

But, rather than trying to defend my claim till the cows come home, just sit with it.

*Do you agree? When you really confront yourself, does this feel like its true? Is it easier to try and ‘change the world’ (on any scale) than it is to really learn about and deliberately evolve the deeper process that is you?

I’m pretty damn confident here. Honestly. I don’t say that often. But I really am.

*Comment away, please. I’d really love to get into this.

This was something that Chusana and I got into yesterday. We shared frames of our experience learning about, waking up to, and trying to embrace the realities of what we all face (along with the very direct difficulties leaning into this process produces in our personal lives). We shared our perspectives about where the interventions are really needed, along with which type of interventions are most likely to really help us go in, through and beyond the metacrisis.

Why are we losing trust? The soulful systems.

We both recognised that, although there is so much to do in the world to raise social foundations and eventually bring life back within planetary boundaries (whatever they eventually become…), inner development is where real transformation occurs. It’s where lasting change can actually happen (note that I am not suggesting one pathway or process of inner development for everyone. I am suggesting this as something like a meta-category that will play out in hyper contextual ways).

Which brings me to Avicci and Aloe Blacc. You probably know the song. You may well know the lyrics too:

Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can't tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start
They tell me I'm too young to understand
They say I'm caught up in a dream
Well life will pass me by if I don't open up my eyes
Well that's fine by me

So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself, and I
Didn't know I was lost

So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself, and I
Didn't know I was lost

I tried carrying the weight of the world
But I only have two hands
Hope I get the chance to travel the world
But I don't have any plans
Wish that I could stay forever this young
Not afraid to close my eyes
Life's a game made for everyone
And love is a prize

So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself, and I
Didn't know I was lost

So wake me up when it's all over
When I'm wiser and I'm older
All this time I was finding myself, and I
I didn't know I was lost

I didn't know I was lost
I didn't know I was lost
I didn't know I was lost
I didn't know

We are all feeling our way through the darkness. We are trying to connect, make sense, and live lives rich in meaning. But we are largely disconnected. We are struggling to make sense. And so many of us have lost our relation to what truly meaningful.

We cannot go to sleep and just ‘wake up’ when it’s all over. If we fail to ‘do the work’, it will be over. But we won’t be waking up (I think you’re picking up what I’m putting down here).

Wisdom isn’t something we stumble upon, it’s a process we live in relation to. And it’s one we must live in relation to together.

So, I don’t intend to try and sleep my way through this (although, my circadian biology does dictate the necessity of sleep in a very literal sense!), regardless of how tempting that can be. I will do my best, whatever that means in each moment, to move through this process—of connecting, of sense-making, and living an overall life rich in meaning—as actively and intentionally as possible.

The more the merrier.

With love as always.

P.S. More music and dancing please.