Living Inside The Long Emergency

This is part one of my series - Consciously Engaging with The News (And Our Lives) 

Living Inside the “Long Emergency “

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The Long Emergency is the title of a book by James Howard Kunstler that I read in graduate school. And now it feels like what we’re living: the long emergency.

BUT let’s take a look at that word: emergency.

Emergent.

What is e-merging? These words—emerging and emergency—share the same Latin root: emergere, meaning what is arising, becoming visible, or something that suddenly arises.

What is emerging, becoming, transforming?

What is wanting to be seen, shown, witnessed, noticed?

What parts of each of our lives feel like an emergency, and what part of an emergency is the cause for transformation?

The news cycle.

The weather cycle.

The political cycle.

Everything keeps emerging in waves that feel urgent, unsettled, unfinished.

So what is there left to do?

Shut down?

Show up?

Give up?

Shut up?

Speak up?

Or… something in between.

That “in-between” place is what I teach about—the space between urgent, desperate action on one side of the pendulum and, on the other, hopelessness, apathy, and despair. In the middle, what exists?

This spacious middle ground is the place where transformation becomes possible. When we learn to live here, we begin to act not out of despair or frantic reaction, but out of spaciousness. And when we act from this place, we act with presence—with love, with wisdom, with conscious intention—rather than from old patterning.

When I talk and write about patterning, I’m usually speaking about our own nervous systems and the way those nervous systems create beliefs, opinions, and bring actions into the world. The parts of us that learned how to react in order to stay safe.

Those parts matter. They have important roles in our lives. And anytime there is any feeling of an “emergency,” they are the parts that will react first.

The work is not to get rid of them.

The work is to get free of them.

We become aware they’re there, and from that awareness, we can act from clarity instead of confusion.

But patterning isn’t only personal.

We see patterned responses in communities, in governments, in city councils, in the ways groups of people co-regulate—or dysregulate—each other.

Recently, I attended a city-sponsored open house where community members were invited to give feedback on a ten-year plan for the city where I live. The usual dynamics were there. Some people wanted to preserve everything exactly as it is and asked no hard questions. Others arrived with suspicion and doubt, convinced nothing good could come of the process.

And there I was, somewhere in the middle.

Do I push harder?

Do I trust the process?

Do I challenge more?

Do I step back?

It’s not the action that matters, it’s where it comes from.

For me, that day, being in the middle—in spaciousness—meant staying present and calm, listening a lot, and taking information in so that I could make my own comments at a later time.)

As the long emergency continues—through news cycles, climate cycles, political cycles, and a thousand variations that feel eerily similar—what is the common denominator we can actually shift?

It’s our awareness. It’s how we show up. It’s where we put our attention. Doing our own good work internally and then bringing that clarity into the world. And that is what this four-part newsletter series will teach: four steps to consciously engage with the news without tuning out or shutting down.

Instead… staying engaged with life and ourselves in order to bring:

Wisdom.

Love.

Patience.

Peace.

And compassion.

To life. As life.

These aren’t lofty ideals. They are real possibilities inside each of us when we begin to get clear. And getting clear means knowing what is happening inside—you know, with those patterns—rather than projecting it outward.

It means taking responsibility for our own lives and our own integrity. It means listening to what is emerging without the emergency.

We may not stop what’s happening “out there.” But we can shift what’s happening “in here.” External events are going to continue to be external events. So what do we do with them? The first shift in this four-part process is simple. It’s choosing when you engage with information.

The first step to conscious engagement with the news is to choose when to engage with this information.

Become still and present.

Know where you are in space and time.

Notice your own breath and body.

Check in with yourself: Do I have the ability to receive information that may be disturbing? Only read or listen to a little—you don’t need to know everything, I promise.

As you are reading or listening, stay connected to your body so that you notice when you have reached the end of your capacity for “news.” This will be an entirely different experience of the news than passively receiving disturbing information while also driving, parenting, eating, having your Saturday morning coffee, etc.

Stay tuned for the next part of this four part series.

Feel It All, Let Nothing Stick.