My Journey

BLOG My Journey

dave's journey

In my previous post I provided a framework for making the world a better place. Today I’m going to ‘score’ myself using that framework, and admit that despite all the work and energy I’ve put into learning how the world really works and imagining how it might be made better,, I’m still not far along this journey. My ‘scorecard’ is shown above. Red squares represent areas of my journey where I’m stuck or barely underway; yellow squares represent areas where I’m making some progress but still have a long way to go; and green squares represent areas where I’m well advanced. Here’s what this scorecard says:

  1. Appreciating: I’m trying hard, but not succeeding. Despite my belief that as our civilization unwinds later in this century, life is going to be pretty awful, I’m basically happy, centred, determined, and ready to live every minute of my life with joy and purpose. My problem is that I have difficulty appreciating (most) other people. I am an incorrigible misanthrope. I need to explore what to do about this. 
  2. Presence: I’m still stuck. I understand being present, living in the Now, the same way I understand meditation and playing music — my head gets the concept, but my body won’t play. I need to keep practicing. 
  3. Opening My Heart: I’m making progress. I’ve come to acknowledge my grief for Gaia, for all the suffering in the world. I’m beginning to show the world my broken heart. You’ve seen the change, I think, in my recent writing. I’m still learning to let go, however, and I still have a lot to let go.
  4. Understanding the World: It’s taken the reading of 500 books and the writing of 2500 pages of blog articles, and my own book, but I think I’ve got this covered. I know what’s going on, and why, and why what all the politicians and business leaders and economists and social scientists and educators and activists and gurus and social networkers are doing isn’t making much of a difference, and won’t. 
  5. Knowing Myself: I’m getting a lot better at this, but I am still procrastinating at the intersection of knowing and doing. What’s holding me back? For all the self-knowledge I’ve acquired, especially over the last year (my Self-Portrait in Words, in the centre of the graphic above, is, I think, a more complete and honest self-portrait than most people would be able to produce), I still have more self-questions than answers. But despite my rather miserable scores in these 5 reconnecting steps, I’m ready for the action steps (6-8).
  6. Building Capacity & Competency: I have acquired some important new skills in the past year, and already had a few, but I still have at least the 7 shown in the lower left of the diagram above to acquire (here’s an explanation of SSUQIOC, the method for approaching challenges that I’m continuing to practice).
  7. Dismantling Civilization: Barely begun. The blog has been important, and will continue to be part of my contribution to taking down this civilization as gently as possible to reduce the amount of further damage it will do. But it’s not enough. For a Canadian, the Alberta tar sands are an obvious target. What my role will be I’m still sorting out.
  8. Creating Natural Working Models: Also barely begun. Lots of ideas on Intentional Community, on unschooling, a good (but not very popular) book Finding the Sweet Spot published to show what Natural Enterprise can do. But it’s time to move beyond writing about these models and start actually building them, and living them.
  9. Being a Model: I think I’m a long way down this path. I am spending more and more of my time living my principles and practicing what I preach, and my message is getting more coherent and more compelling. And I really am getting rid of all of the gunk that had made me too much everybody-else, and am now much closer to being nobody-but-myself. I still need to find my ‘places’, the warm forests and beaches that call to me, and I need to keep making time and space to do the things I love doing, the things that manifest this nobody-but-myself, and keep me joyful, but I’m well on my way.

Not a great scorecard — 2 A’s, 3 C’s and 4 D’s — but I’m making progress, and I know what needs to be done.

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2 Responses to My Journey

  1. Mike says:

    Are you grading on a curve? Because then I think you’d give yourself a better grade.

  2. Karen says:

    I find it deliciously perfect that you score yourself low on appreciating things in a scorecard. I sometimes find for myself that appreciating things comes from a place that is entirely opposite to evaluation. That doesn’t mean you have to throw striving for better out the window. It’s more like, appreciation can only happen properly, really, truly, actually for me, in worlds without yardsticks, paths determined to be better, more effective, more deserving of respect or praise. Like a world without a y-axis, by which to elevate things higher; only an x-axis of things existing uniquely and awesome for where and what they are.

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