Emptying to a different drum

I am changing.

I was chatting recently with my friend, Jo (in the picture), who I met on retreat back in June. In that conversation, Jo asked me, “Do you think you’re depressed?” I said, “I honestly have no idea how to answer that question.” Later, in the same conversation, Jo said, “I see you as holding your arms open to the world, welcoming whatever comes.” I feel Jo really nailed my current state with that question and observation.

Another friend, Bhav, said to me, “You know those books that you read in your twenties that you probably didn’t understand at the time, like ‘The Different Drum’ for me.” I’d never heard of that particular book, but that description was enough to intrigue me. I bought a copy and started reading. A few pages were enough to get me hooked. It felt like every single page was speaking directly to where I am at the moment. (Don’t you love it when that happens?)

The Different Drum is about the making of true community. The author, psychiatrist Scott Peck, contends that most groups never become true communities. He describes a true community as a place where individual differences are celebrated and says that the experience of entering into true community with others is a magical, almost mystical experience. This rang so true for me.

According to Peck, there are four stages groups have to go through to develop true community. The first is ‘pseudocommunity’, where everyone minimises their individual differences for the sake of superficial coherence. The second is ‘chaos’, where all hell breaks loose and the arguments start because those pesky individual differences just won’t stay quiet. The third stage is ‘emptiness’, where the members of the group work to let go of all the assumptions, biases, and judgements keeping them apart. And the fourth stage is ‘community.’ Many groups never make it out of ‘pseudocommunity.’ Many that enter ‘chaos’ fracture and even disband. The work of emptying is so daunting that many just cannot face doing it. Here’s a quote from the book:

“The stage of emptiness in community development is a time of sacrifice. And sacrifice hurts. “Do I have to give up everything?” a community member once wailed during this stage. “No,” I replied. “Just everything that stands in your way.”

Reflecting on what I’ve been going through for the past year and a half or thereabouts, I have come to recognise that I’ve been going through a process myself of emptying. The last two letters I’ve sent out have said “I don’t think I can do this anymore” and ‘here’s a series of stories about me crying a lot’. I feel I’ve been ‘letting myself fall apart,’ taking a long look at the beliefs and behaviours that have built up in me over the years, and working to let go of the parts that are no longer serving me. Peck writes about ‘doing the work of depression’, sitting with what is difficult without turning away.

Through this, I’ve been prioritising rest, and not just like a gentle weekend, but as something to tend to my ‘soul weariness’, as a friend described it. I took an extended period off work. I was so pleased to see that I didn’t spend much of it at all lying on the couch. (I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that Netflix is not the antidote to soul weariness.) The other day, my wife, Georgi, said, “You expect too much of yourself.” I’m sure she’s right, but at this moment in time, I don’t know how to expect less of myself or what not to expect. That is all part of the learning ahead of me.

As well as going through this intense, deeply personal process of emptying (or ‘composting’?), I’ve also made a commitment to share this journey with others. I am consciously experimenting with showing up differently in the spaces I’m in – being more open, more vulnerable, talking more about my feelings, my struggles, and my emotional reactions, less about the clever ideas in my head. And that has been hard and confronting and occasionally misunderstood. I cannot tell you where this is leading – I do not know – but it feels so incredibly important to me.

Another friend of mine shared a story of her own, a story of when she was working as a facilitator and was finding the group really hard going. She found herself crying in the middle of a session and, as she cried, she reflected to the group, “These are my tears, but I wonder who else’s tears I’m crying.”

These struggles I’m going through I feel are mine, but they’re not just mine. That is part of why I have committed to sharing these experiences publicly. Because we are all connected. Because we are all affected by the same shitty systems that make us believe that we have to be strong, to be perfect, to have the solutions. I feel I have rarely if ever felt as lost as I do at the moment – and yet I somehow feel weirdly, paradoxically happy in that lostness. I am putting down the belief that I can be in control all the time. I am leaning into uncertainty in ways that haven’t been open to me before. I am experimenting with letting things flow, rather than always carrying the responsibility to make things happen and to fix. I am finding it liberating and nourishing - and my head is often spinning.

This journey of breaking myself down and letting go is deeply personal and very much my own. But it is not just mine. I didn’t know why I was doing this at the start but along the way I have learned that I am sharing my shedding as a way of making community. In learning to cry openly, I and others are also learning to cry together. I have been having so many beautiful, connective conversations with people. Through sharing my struggles openly, I seem to have stumbled into both deeper levels of connection and support. People are both seeing unexpected sides of me and are seeing parts of themselves reflected in my stories. Here are some things people have said to me:

·       “What you've shared is so touching, your openness and willingness to be true to your Self. Leaving feeling lighter.”

·       “Thank you for showing up with your ‘open, broken heart’ and in so doing, inviting us all to do so.”

·       “I hear you, I feel you, I am one of the ones walking with you, in my own way. It is incredibly courageous for you to put this out via your newsletter. And yet, what else should you do?”

This is where reading The Different Drum has given me a much richer, deeper understanding of the path I’m on:

“As soon as it is safe to speak one’s heart…vulnerability in community snowballs. The walls come tumbling down. And as they tumble, as the love and acceptance escalate, true healing begins.”

[A group comes into community] “once its members began looking at each other and themselves through “soft eyes,” seeing through lenses of respect. It may seem strange in our culture of rugged individualism that this transformation begins to occur precisely when we begin to “break down.” But as the masks drop and we see the suffering and courage and brokenness and deeper dignity underneath, we truly start to respect each other as fellow human beings.”

I have learnt that people have to break down in order to enter into true community with one another. The act of sharing our suffering is the very catalyst that allows us to connect and commune with one another in much deeper ways than were previously open to us. So I have been slowly developing this practice of sharing my suffering. Along the way, a new passion and sense of purpose have emerged – helping people to enter into true community together and being in this with them. This is the only thing that makes any sense to me at the moment. This is where I aim to put my energy next year – I have a few ideas brewing. But before then, I need to focus on caring for a new baby (Iris), who is due to enter the world towards the end of this month. I cannot wait. And I’m terrified.