Encore! The Future 51%, August 2021

​We return this month not done imagining our future with an encore of The Future 51%.
​Our babies born in 2021 will celebrate their 21st birthday in the year 2042, the same year non-white peoples will be the majority population of the United States. Yet, we learned that 'inviting diversity' isn't enough: the future demands foundational change based on the experiences of those most affected by inequity. How are we preparing our mathematical majority to not perpetuate historical harm? The future is ours, we call upon our best imagination. 
​October 4, 2021 Learning by Julia
We begin as always - remembering that we too are connected to the land, sky, water, air, each other, past, present and future. Law of conservation says nothing disappears, it transfers. Pause long enough to remember connection, it is always there. 

We return this month to ask again, "When we are free, what would be different in your day-to-day life?"  And, again, we must first recognize a few things. Any comfort today exists in a bubble that is toooo easy to pop. That 'bubble' is: time with our children, our physical safety, our productivity with purpose and meaningful appreciation. Trauma continually pops that bubble without our permission: We wake up worried*. We attend community events worried. We parent worried. We work worried. Our very bodies suffer our worry. We worry so much that problems begin to appear insurmountable, beyond our singular capacity for change. Yet...We resist by saying, "I can both move forward and still make room for healing (trauma)." We say, "I was born free, it's the world that spends so much energy to tell me I'm not." We say, "I am not alone, I am connected."

We take a needed break ('Pause long enough to remember connection') and come back again to ask the same question, this time insisting on the word "Free". [How it mutated into "Safety", read July's Circle Learning] When free, we raise children under the open skies of the homeland, we visit the ocean's ancient shores for the first time, we turn up the car radio and fly, we wade in warm waters laughing with elders, we delight in the firefly and return of nature, we hug a little longer. Nature. Pause long enough to remember connection. Together, we discovered that wow: we are so capable of joy. It is because we understand the darkness, anger, frustration, that we are best equipped to appreciate the light. This night, we practiced the freedom to pause, freedom from having to know all the answers, freedom to feel, freedom to question, freedom to know best. We are not defined by our trauma or our commodity value: our creativity exists in its own right. As always. 

Join us for next month's Listening Circle as we continue with: "We Are Capable of Joy". Stay in tune.

* To be a only a future footnote: "Worried" is my, Julia's, word. In 2021, we used this and words like anxiety, pain, debilitating, trauma, ignorance, suffer internal oppression, go to court, un-school, question capitalism...