Weavers and Web

On interconnectedness and transforming false narratives

Wind is seen by the leaves it dances, felt as tingle on skin. Light seen by gleam shed and shadow cast. Music lives when heard, when vibrations reach eardrum and breastbone and heartstring. Every art contains and is made through relativity, the variance of values, interval, contrast, and perception creating dimension and form.

Despite pervasive myths of rugged individualism, we are inextricably woven in a prismatic web that defines and locates us. We are wired to determine our level of safety through interpreting others’ facial and tonal expressions. We only know the full weight of our words and actions when we witness their impact. Nothing we know about anyone or anything exists in isolation.

Halls of mirrors

Relationships are forged through language. Communication is how we share our inner worlds with others and how we gain glimpses into theirs. Language weaves contextual understanding of our shared reality. We see ourselves in reflection, in the eyes and words of our relations. This is part of what makes false imposed identifiers so toxic, and why true friendship is one of the most healing forces in life. How we mirror others and are mirrored in return deeply affects self-perception.

This distributed sense of self is one of our most beautiful attributes as living threads in life’s tapestry. This quality can be contorted, however, to create in-groups and outcasts, chosen people and exiles. Our need to belong, our fear of exclusion and scarcity, and our sensitivity to approval and criticism enable illusions of hierarchy and division along lines of class or ethnicity. If we are not centered within ourselves and comfortable with our identities then we may try to control people’s behaviors and disrespect their autonomy to find some self-location in relation to a fixed identity we place on them.

At this moment in the US, a cacophony of consequences is coming to crescendo, displaying how money and power flow in oligarchies regardless of how most people want to see the future unfold. Using false narratives to sow confusion and fear that strips bodily self-determination and grows xenophobic dehumanization is a potent tactic to justify further oppression, exploitation, and genocide. But we can reclaim our attention and make different choices.

Enemies are constructed in the minds. While individuals have conflicts and cause harm to each other, the idea that people of an entire race, religion, gender expression, or ethnicity are so different and dangerous that they must be dominated or destroyed is propaganda, a tool used to foster obedience. People enthralled in fear or hatred towards an “enemy” group are much less likely to question the authorities that are taxing and controlling them.

Turning broken glass into prisms

Part of our work is learning how to build bridges to people we do not know or understand. Learning how to meet across distance and difference. We need to move beyond control, and even tolerance, to celebrating dissimilarity and diversity. We get to learn what it means to embody connection. We need to examine the desire to have an enemy, and how we can relate without using villainization as a bonding tactic.

If there are no “good guys” and “bad guys,” then we are simply relating to complex human beings with a gamut of needs and contrasts. We also need to look at the ways we make internal enemies, dividing off parts of ourselves and judging or pedestaling them. We get to spell ourselves into internal wholeness, or towards that at least, and then let that ripple out into our lives. No battles, no heroes, no martyrs, no spoils: just listening. Listening and interweaving, responding and interbeing.

One antidote to the gravity of patterns of domination and subjugation is to practice abiding in our own power while connecting with others as dynamic equals. The spaces that generate the most authentic belonging are ones where people do not need to perform, manipulate, or appease. The quality of the relationships is more important than the status or power that can be derived from them, and people practice a supple balance of core stability and relational invitation.

Can we release the desire to control others? Can we release the desire to feel superior? Can we release the fear of scarcity enough that our sense of wellness is not dependent on others’ illness, our richness not requiring someone else’s poverty, our sense of security not dependent on other’s conformity?

Can we find embodied remembrance of our inescapable interconnectedness?

We get to be curious about the ways we become the oppressor with our partners, children, siblings, parents, co-workers, clients, and community members. We get to examine how we associate intelligence, authority, and value with certain dialects or cultural practices and ignorance or lack of value with others. We get to look at the ways other people talk down to us, fawn towards us, create false division, or strengthen false belonging in the words, phrases, and tones they use.

And question what spells and curses we cast on others through the descriptors and narratives we perpetuate. We get to learn how to communicate in ways that invite connection rather than using words that spread fear or cast control.

Practicing connection

The appearance of authentic communication may vary in different environments, but there are ways to disarm our language in most situations.

• In the workplace, this invitation to full-self relating may include finding words other than “boss,” “manager,” and “subordinate” to describe people, and implementing team-based decision making.

  • When it is necessary for a single person to make decisions that affect a group, speak to the role in that moment - decision-maker, team leader - rather than the stratifying owner/property model current corporate culture uses.

  • If people in positions of power refuse to make these changes it is still possible to practice this kind of relating amongst co-workers.

  • Be mindful of how you describe people, what qualities you assign them based on what you perceive of their work (i.e. “lazy” or “industrious” when “exhausted” and “advantaged” might be more appropriate).

  • Notice how inclusion or popularity is subtly created or revoked based on power games and who can fawn the most or conform the best.

• In communities and families, this invitation includes noticing conditional or exclusionary belonging - “we belong together because we obey,” or “we belong together because we are not this ___ (race, religion, class, nationality, political party, sexual orientation, etc).” When we deeply weave our lives with people, the tensions of difference in personality and perception require patience and a commitment to keep turning towards each other because we choose to, not because we share enemies.

• In broader contexts we get to look at the ways we speak about people who are unfamiliar to us, reducing them to simplistic value-polarities like good or bad or letting our fear of the unknown paint them as lesser.

  • How often do we relate to a fixed, often status-based idea of people? Can we choose instead to be curious about the emergent processes of their evolving beings?

  • We also need to examine the ways hierarchical patterns that center European, male-perceived, able-bodied, neurotypical folks or folks with more resources might be affecting our perception and narration.

As we breathe into new ways to relate with each other, we get to investigate how we project our insecurity outward. We need to learn how to not seek safety by controlling, belittling, and harming other people. We get to tease apart behaviors that are actually harmful to us or the ecosystem from behaviors that we just do not agree with or practices we do not understand.

As with all of our relational work there is a blend of cultivating our inner stability and creating spaces of full-person welcoming. Can we open to a place where we can let people be?

We can betray the false identities imposed on us and that we have enacted on others. We can restory the broken mirrors. Courageous authenticity and intentional kinship in how we communicate will support us in creating clear eyes and authentic relationships. We will refuse to hide or betray ourselves through distorting the truth, asserting domination, or passively going along with unilateral violence.

We will listen for and sing a song of belonging that lets us all see ourselves and each other as radiant rainbow strands in a vast reweaving web.

Photo by michael podger

This piece is part of the Wild Rebirth of Living Language series.