Two Suitcases, three Backpacks, a Cat and Panda-Bear
Lessons from four years of nomadic volunteering
Shifting from a very settled and secure life to the nomadic way. From an excessive amount of stuff to being on the train with two suitcases, three backpacks, a cat and a panda. And no direction home.
Four months after moving into a community with a truck-load of our possessions, we got kicked out.
We found nearby storage and heard about an organisation called Helpx that brings helpers and projects together. That would become our form for the next four years. Volunteering in return for food and lodging. The three of us travelling Europe (without a car), sometimes staying a few weeks, mostly several months or longer. I learned more about people than in the whole of my life before.
God, humans are weird. Us included. What a bundle of contradictory forces we are. All believing we’re normal. Most of us convinced we are special, able to see more clearly than others. And each host had their own quirky habits and opinions. Their own miniature set of Troubles.
Overall, we found the rich mix of landscapes, cuisines, houses, pets, kids, other volunteers, and the very diverse jobs more than enjoyable. From working on a transparent roof high up in the Pyrenees, a December snuggled up in a snow-covered trailer on the coast of Normandy to the spring and summer of having the magical coast of Devon all to ourselves because of the British lockdown. My son sitting on the pavement wide-eyed, two a clock at night, just arrived in Paris. The ruins we explored, the food foraged, the waterfalls, a river swelling to ten times its size, early spring. The many bonfires with great people and the dangerously big burn on New Year’s eve, piled up by the matching ego owning the Buddhist temple. The last-minute finds of new places to stay. The crazy flowing in of whatever we needed at the right time.
It wasn’t all roses and cinnamon. The host volunteer relationship is a difficult one. Especially the longer stays. Keeping up appearances becomes futile when you are up close like that.
But there’s one thing that really stood out and increasingly saddened us.
Literally none of the people we encountered truly appreciated what they did have. This played out in many ways. They were either hopeful about how it could be, or frustrated it had never arrived. No matter the income level, it was always too little. And I don’t mean just money. The wider incoming was taken for granted or ignored. Everyone was trying to get somewhere else, and cultivated a certain level of blindness for the pile of opportunities right under their noses.
Meanwhile we were arriving at being there, learning to accept ourselves and whatever we found on our plates.
If I have to name one thing learned from the intentional community experience, it has to be that you cannot fake the creative process. You cannot pretend to be open to the new.
A fact we encountered in seventeen variations on the following European tour. Damn hard to describe because it is so deeply buried. A secret so well guarded, you are in for a beating if you try to touch that sensitive wound.
A wound it is. An old childhood scar for all of us. One I had already run into with my experimental workshops. And a lesson not yet fully learned. Definitely not back then.
The drive all these places had in common was disapproval. They wanted something new, different, better, greener, cleaner, lighter to get away from the ‘known’. So new and incoming was warmly welcomed until it turned into known and clearly insufficient to help them get away from what they thought they knew and was judged as not enough, bad, old, unclean, too small, too dark, too light, too bright, too dumb. Rightness was always off in their view. The way all these people dealt with that differed greatly. The results sadly similar.
If I ask you to find the moment where your childhood openness to the new got shut down, many will know the exact moment it happened, the person responsible, the situation that caused it.
It so often has to do with some form of expression. Imaginative play, singing, making drawings, dancing. Spontaneous action.
One of the workshops I had tried to develop was called ‘primal painting’ in which I asked participants to paint without thinking ahead. I provided fifty or so premixed colours, just one awkward brush. I took away all decisions to be made and challenged them to start without any idea of where to go. Just pick a random pot of paint and move. See what happens (inside and outside) and respond to that. Stick with that. Stay close. Just be with the next move and not skip ahead. It was a dance session. But this dance was with shapes and colours.
Participants were transported back to the actual level of their abilities. Often to that moment of the breach. Without the learned tricks and the imitation of other people’s imagery, most of us are at a pre-teen age level of drawing, of imagining. Access to the inner landscape is so often blocked or reduced to a trickle. Modern people have a lot of imagery in their heads but no connection to their imaginative power. We never grew up with approaching the unknown. With exploring the unfamiliar. With hosting the strange. We never really learned again to trust our inner lead to take us to that place of wonder. To follow the stars and find the newborn child in that strange and humble place. The place of being born again, the fountain of life. The source that makes all things new. The Creative. I think that movement is nothing less than approaching the throne of the unnameable. The one with the many names that arrives naked and vulnerable.
Approaching the unknown is very daunting. Among the most scary we can do. And the thing we put in the most energy to avoid.
We divide the world with two opposing forces. Holding on to what we have, or destroying and replacing. To conserve or to progress. To settle or to move. To stay the same or to change. To repeat or to invent. Going round and round in familiar circles or spiralling towards the strange.
It seems we choose one or the other. Either busy conserving what we wish to keep. Or very busy with replacing the old. Yes, we can switch. But in tear down mode, conserving is far from our mind. And when in the protective stance, anything new is considered a threat. We are polarised.
I think ‘the universe’ rides the perfect wave of renewal by embracing continuity. Nature mixes up the two within the same process in very clever ways. It doesn’t just do away with the old. It never ever closes the door at the open end.
How can we better align with that? How do we set up a way of living together that honours the good we have, the traditions, the evolved habits but doesn’t get fixed, settled, petrified? Keeping the wonder in check with reason. Keeping the reason in check with the allowance of what seems unreasonable and ridiculous. Allowing for paint-strokes that do not know what they are heading for. To take the unknown as the most holy part of what we have learned. To not confuse learning with teaching.
The one thing wrong with the community was not so much the white man with the plan. The one thing that made it so ugly, that sickened the heart, was the fear of the unknown filling in how things are supposed to be. It led to disapproval, to rejection of things and people as they are. This lack of acceptance, in ourselves, and in the very structures we have created is at the root of our troubles. A never-ending source of conflict. Not accepting things as they are closes the door of the probable. It doesn’t work with, with the possible and the potential. It starts with the result and works backwards. Furthermore, it plans the result. Controls the outcome. Dictates what is needed to get there. Can you see how disruptive that is from the vantage point of the creative?
Here our talent to make distinctions is at odds with the holistic nature. Our ability to include or exclude is a very practical tool but it goes against the energetic reality. In or out are relative judgements. Not truths.
Handled as truths it closes the gates. What is out can no longer get in. What is in must be conformed or be expelled.
Hospitality asks to let the outer in and treat it well. As a guest. To be respected. To invite to become familiar. We do not learn this inviting in, to be hospitable while not losing integrity. If anything schools teach us the absolute inclusion or exclusion. On a social level and on the level of knowledge. Of things simply being in or out, yes or no. Known or unknown. We do not get into the scary realm of the unknown. It is forbidden. The big apple of good and bad keeps us out of the garden of possibilities.
The total suppression of the creative force that comes from every single part present. The creative bit is not done by a single artist. Not done by a talented little group of cultural leaders. Not through examples followed. The creative force is kept alive by allowance, respect, and trust. In trusting the soil, the kids, the trees, the rocks, the history, the time, the seasons, the wind and the rain, trusting the words spoken, the foolishness, the mistakes. In truly feeling the colour on the tip of your brush and working with it despite your fear and dislike and worries. To not disrupt the flow once it starts happening with judgements and pretending to know where it leads. To take it all so seriously that you can laugh your ass off, and go again. To stick with, and love it as it is, while the possible seduces you with the fragrance of an upcoming season. A season known and unmet. Seeing that other for what they are. An unknown version of you. The world is a mirror.
The starting point of renewal is accepting things as they are. It begins with not rejecting what is. With knowing yourself and your outer limits. And cultivating awareness on the unknown out there.
Wisdom is assuming the unknown is bigger than you.
Now suddenly the creative is not about destroying the old to get to the new. Now the creative resembles love. It holds dear, deeply loves what is and allows for growth and change. It does not push away and does not hold on to. Because what is was already an expression of potential. It always reflects the open-ended nature.
That’s why we live on the surface of a planet with a view so ridiculously generous. When the sun sets it is not the day ending, it is the sky opening up to the infinite.
We are panoramics.
Thank you for re MINDing me of that space before thought, that opening and knowing closing will occur in it's own way, and that wisdom, ah yes, this moment so filled with beauty unfathomable.