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My Dark Companion: Grief

Sometimes we are supposed to be falling rather than standing upright. I am thinking of the life cycle of a leaf. A portion of a leaf’s life span consists of being firmly rooted on the branch of a tree, while at some point in time, the season comes where the leaf falls from the tree to the earth. If I could put myself in the experience of the leaf for a moment, I imagine the liminal moment between the leaf being firmly attached to the branch and the leaf finding itself unfastened by this uncontrollable gravitational pull to the earth, a moment of grief and fear. I understand our human lives to be similar to that of a leaf.

Climate, Mind and Behavior, Get Inspired, Pathways to Planetary Health, Read, Systems Thinking

Integrating Inner & Outer Systems Change

We cannot solve complex sustainability issues using the approaches we’ve employed in the past. We need different approaches – and different mindsets – than those we’ve drawn on thus far.

These approaches and mindsets emerge from looking inward at the same time as we make outer change – from reflecting deeply on what’s here now as we grapple with complex and persistent predicaments like climate change and nature loss, social justice, trauma, and exploitative economic systems.

Pathways to Planetary Health, Read, Systems Thinking

Islands of Coherence

““When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.” Quote by Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize-winning chemist. From March 15 to 17, 2023, a group of about 80 leaders gathered at the Garrison Institute for a Pathways to Planetary Health Symposium focused on the commons. Systems change was a recurrent theme at this meeting. One participant mentioned Ilya Prigogine’s quote above about “islands of coherence” as a way to think about shifting social systems.