Quiet skills for a clamorous world

I'm trying to build a completely different toolkit

Nourish…

Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash

“The simple truth of the matter is that we are omnivores, with characteristics of both carnivore and herbivore, predator and prey. As a result, we all have Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde moments as we struggle to bring these opposites into balance. The problem is we’ve grown up in a culture of conquerors where predatory behaviour is reinforced in school and rewarded in business. Those who refuse to claw their way to the top often have trouble imagining an alternative because non predatory wisdom and approaches to power have been educated right out of them. some accept the role of victim simply because they can’t stomach becoming a tyrant.

Horses have much to teach us about the middle ground between submission and aggression.”

~ Linda Kohanov, Way of the Horse: Equine Archetypes for Self-Discovery

Dare…

…to allow yourself to lean into a non-predatory view of the world.

I really struggled with yesterday’s post. A lot. And it shows, as it is a clunky one to read, even for me. The thing is, I am spiralling in and in and slowly figuring out what my body already knows, what my heart wants me to know, and what my mind has so much trouble accepting…and putting this huge shift into words is the best way I’ve got to help my soul deal with all the information from the parts of me. As well as from my animals - always such patient teachers.

Even if you had trouble understanding my thought process, as I would, reading what I wrote again, I still benefited immensely from the wrestling. I am enjoying the result all day today, because the clarity of what I am actually doing is resolved, and that is unbelievably helpful.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

I am naturally and, by many forms of nurture, goal-driven. I can focus and hyper focus and persist in focus for much longer than most people would consider healthy. This has been how I’ve gone through life, and it works well in some environments, less well in others. Still, the majority of encouraging and informative productivity content out there supports being even more focused, more single-minded, more efficiently “driven,” if that’s possible.

I don’t need that messaging, right now.

And sadly, in giving up on being an “apex predator,” which is to say, really, really good at hitting my target, I didn’t know what else to be. Who else to be. And you may laugh, because I’ve read Linda Kohanov’s work, and many others with similar messaging (Mark Rashid, Lockie Phillips, Stacy Westfall) and I love the ideas they present. Where I struggle, is with the application. For some reason, as soon as I walk out the door, I go back into my defaults. Or I realize I’m going there, and I try to not go there, but I still don’t know where to go, as an alternative.

Predatory thinking is not all criminal. It’s very much how we humans wander around the world. It’s the kind of confidence that assumes I can walk where I please and no one will do anything to me, because I’m all that. In fact, when humans start spooking at sounds, and checking behind them restlessly, and scoping out new situations for exits, we know there is something wrong. We suspect trauma. We are understanding and sympathetic, but we do not consider this normal. A prey animal, a rabbit, or a deer, or a mouse, would very much consider this normal. It’s the wolves and bears and cougars that don’t need to shoulder check. They dominate with presence alone. And that’s us, when we feel healthy.

But as I was labouring to put into words last night, late into the night, sometimes I as a human do not have the privilege of acting the hunter. In this season, and in other seasons of my life, I have signed up to inhabit a different role, one with very little honour (to my way of thinking). This home building, animal tending, land stewarding, community holding role is just not suited for a creature with highly focused vision. It is much more natural to a prey animal. Such as my horses. They are right there, ready for me to watch, and learn from, and emulate. I just keep on forgetting to do that. I am so distracted by shiny, happy, goals.

I’ve framed this dichotomy of orientations as the difference between a ray of light - or an arrow - a pointed line traveling towards one direction and either going to hit the mark, or miss it (no other options) and the completely different experience of being a sphere inside a system of orbiting bodies - a sun. For some reason, this visualization works for me. I am settling some deep and confusing double-binds by accepting, as a fact, that I cannot simultaneously act like a missile sent on a quest to hit something far away, and the mothership itself. I must choose one lens to use in sorting out my activities. I must create plans based on a clear view of what success looks like for me, as the sun, the ship, the non-predatory member/leader (at times) of a peaceful herd.

Photo by Jordan Wozniak on Unsplash

Some of you reading may be in the privileged position of being able to choose, without betraying your core values, to ignore 359° of options and only move towards that one degree. In that case, this Substack is likely not going to be much help to you, and there are literally hundreds of others you could more profitably spend your time reading.

I am pretty sure now that my writing here is meant to encourage the others of you who can’t afford to stop checking all around (and up, and down, and diagonally, too) because you, like me, are responsible for others, who are not under your control, but are under your care. This is a different set of problems. These are my problems. How to keep my gaze soft, my mind still and calm, and yet my whole being alert and responsive and ready for, well…pretty much anything.

Instead of being really good at ignoring and filtering out options, I need to keep as many open as possible. Instead of having as much control over the actions of my day as I can, I need to be loose, flexible, adaptable, and patient. Instead of getting my dopamine hit of success from reaching my goal, hitting my target, doing what I set out to do, I need to be really, really happy with peace, calm, nothing bad happening because I did the things that reduced the potential for extra drama.

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

This is a major shift that has been in effect for a very long time, but which I’ve been unknowingly fighting, or at least resisting in terms of my ability to compliment myself. It’s hard to get to the end of a day and think, not of all the bad things that didn’t happen because of my hard work, but longingly of all the things I didn’t get done. Never mind that there was no possibility of them happening in any reality. I still somehow carry a faint delusion that I can, or should be able to, do great things on my own, while still caring for an entire menagerie of animals, and a family and homestead as well.

I feel we’ve framed success and self-actualization into a box that most of us can’t get into, by emphasizing so deeply the independent achievements of objective benchmarks. And yes, I am very aware of the danger of setting myself up for martyrdom in caregiving, and that’s not my intention ever, not here, not now, because self-denial for its own sake is just another form of self absorption. What I’m trying to put language around is the possibility of creating meaning and purpose out of the work I have in front of me: to create a strong and stable base of support, a safe haven, and a soft conversation with the creatures and people who need me in their lives.

These are skills that are worth having, and which are worth a lot to society, to boot. They are quiet skills. They don’t announce themselves with events. They play out as an absence of events. And for prey animals, herd animals, vulnerable people - less is way, way more. Success is a peaceful day where nothing much happens except the grass grows and our brains wire a bit more effectively towards a calm, alert baseline. It’s quiet. It’s success, in a very different metric.

I’ve lived long enough, and cared for complex enough beings, that trips to the hospital, or major shifts in plans, or horrifying self-harm, or escalations into fight or flight by multiple family/herd members have happened. Those are not good days. Those days require significant recovery time for everyone. They are expensive, and exhausting, and dangerous. And I can’t control when or if those sorts of days will happen, but boy oh boy I can definitely reduce the odds. And reducing the odds, by any means necessary, is my primary objective, with the stakes as high as they currently are.

I’m so happy today, just giving myself this permission to value my labour. I work hard, very hard, and it is the sort of work that no one really sees, and if it goes well, becomes completely invisible. But little conversations, little moments of presence, little moments where I actually notice another’s need and quietly meet it, cementing their security, while giving them the ability to use a softer signal? Those are a good day’s work.

Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash

My horse herd sometimes runs around, bucking and romping and kicking for sheer joy. But 23 1/2 out of 24 hours, if they could totally have their way, they’d be dozing, swishing tails, and leisurely picking at grass. Doing “nothing” but living their best life. Linda Kohanov did a great job of reframing this into a state worth emulating for those of us who might be getting a little tired of constant impersonations of archery. Being together is an activity. Belonging in a herd is an active form of rest. Becoming wiser through listening, slowing, softening, and most of all, stabilizing myself in multiple environments is a respectable skill set.

Some of you reading may be in this role and like me, feeling vaguely like a failure at reaching individualized goals. You are. Failing at that. I am, as well. I’m beginning to think that’s possibly (for us) success. A sun needs to stay central, stable, balanced, and secure for the solar system around. A herd animal is happiest and healthiest when the connections are peaceful and non-linear, non-pressured, diffuse. We (some of us, privileged as we are) are in the position of inhabiting our herd animal side, able to run if needed, able to wheel and kick and defend, but doing so together, and enjoying any periods of not needing to evade threats, as the best of all worlds.

If that’s you, isn’t it great to let go of a double-bind that will never serve you? Your work is important, and valuable, and skilled, and a contribution in every sense of the word. What it isn’t is easy to see or quantify. That doesn’t make it less real.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Dare to allow yourself to lean into a non-predatory view of the world.

Savour…

…peace.

It’s fun to walk with horses and dogs, and notice the different ways they feel rewarded. Of course all species (myself included) enjoy treats. But treats are not the biggest reinforcer for most of us, if we’re honest. Certainly we’ve owned a fair number of dogs who couldn’t care less about offered kibble. There’s more at play in a pack walk, a herd walk, and a human group walk.

I find it easy to empathize with the dogs. They are happy off leash, tearing around the forest, following their noses, and ears, and checking in with me just to be sure I’m still walking the direction they think I am. I get that, resistant as I am to confines. I want to do what I want to do. My mind is like the puppies, curious, impulsive, exuberant, scattered.

Horses, by contrast, are mainly feeding off of my energy and a little wary of the world around. Curiosity in a horse is a function of security, not their natural state in new surroundings (at least not unless they are in a very stable herd). Mostly a horse is letting me know whether or not they trust me to keep them safe in the world. If they feel I’m not up to it, they are going to reserve the right to decide for themselves.

I appreciate when a horse walks peacefully beside me, head low and soft, and eyes fixed on nothing much, ears swivelling or flopping. I also have to respect when a horse stands still, raises their head, “looms” and tenses. They are telling me for sure, that in their mind, I am not their protection in this moment. For some reason, their inner sense of safety in our herd of two is not reaching the threshold of trust in my leadership.

That’s on me. That requires more awareness and presence and attention to my own ability to hold emotional regulation and physical stability in a chaotic world.

Humans, I find, are the most confusing mix of those two ways of being. We sometimes inhabit a predator’s perspective, arrogant, moving in straight lines, and ignoring our blind spots as if they truly don’t matter. But then sometimes we feel vulnerable, or maybe just register how dangerous our world really is, and we start to shrink, and check for movement in the underbrush, and move in circular paths that don’t give away our intentions. We can switch from one mode to the other within a conversation. It’s a lot to be us.

The thing is, all of us, predators, prey, and the confusing mix of the two that is our species, appreciate peace. We just tend to find it in different places and via different routes.

Whatever your current definition of a safe, secure, soft and stable base of support, giving you a restful pause in your activities, savour that. There’s no right or wrong way to be at peace. It’s a hard won sensation, no matter what.

And even if you have no idea how you got there, but you can honestly say you’re somewhat at peace right now, notice it. Allow yourself to stay as long as possible. Register the slower heart rate, the lack of movement, the ability to enjoy nothing happening.

Photo by Patrick Carr on Unsplash

Savour your personal experience of peace.

Rest…

Sensory strategy for leaning into a non predatory perspective

Try going for a walk without ever traveling in a straight line. Prey animals tend to walk in curves, unless they are running full out away from a predator, that is. Circle around something of interest so as to see it from multiple perspectives before angling closer, one eye on it, one eye on the rest of your surroundings.

Walk slowly, without focusing on any particular destination, but see if you can broaden awareness to as wide a lens as possible. You will sacrifice detail, but you may notice movement, patterns, texture (in general), and maybe something “out of place” will strike you as not fitting in, without needing to examine it closely. Stop, if that happens, and focus briefly, but also swivel around to maintain a circular picture of the world, rather than the single track, goal-oriented use of our eyes we often use, even on a leisurely stroll.

Give yourself permission to wander, noting how safe you feel. How does it feel to not need to get anywhere in particular? If you are with someone, can you walk this way without talking, communicating through your movement where you are heading next?

Enjoy a very different view of the world. We also eat vegetables. We can own this side of ourselves, too.