Rewilding Adulthood
I’ve spent some time lately burning through a book called “Gypsy Law“, edited by Walter Weyrauch. I’ve had revelation after revelation, and so many things have crystallized regarding my ongoing quest to “piece the invisible technologies back together”, without cultural appropriation, or the pick-and-choose consumerist paradigm.
Perhaps (concerning what I’ll write in a moment, here) I knew this already, but I didn’t KNOW it, if you get my drift. It sounds really simple, but I challenge you: do you really hear what it means, deeply? Apparently, I didn’t. To wit:
An intact rewilding culture, one based on the primacy of family and land relationships, maintains itself owing to a pool of constantly maturing adults who have the capacity to understand, make, and back up commitments to each other.
A maturing adult, according to this view, can make commitments not because they “just do it”, but because they understand their own surpluses and limitations. They do not agree to things that they cannot back up.
To understand one’s own ability to “back up” commitments, means exactly to understand the needs and feelings that drive human people, most of all, your own person.
This means that domesticated folks, beginning rewilding, will likely spend most of their time saying “No” to proposed commitments, as a default. They would do this, I suggest, because they do not understand what it means to honestly commit to something out of a natural capacity to back it up.
The status quo for modern domesticated folks has people saying “Yes, yes, yes” to requests, constantly breaking them and flaking out, blaming others for asking in the first place, overcommitting and out of balance. Or, worst of all, burning the candle at both ends in the “martyr syndrome”: never turning down or breaking a commitment, and slowly depleting one’s own health and vitality until…personal crisis or death.
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Once a rewilding adult really understands this point of view, and puts it into action, I feel strongly that they make a quantum leap in trustworthiness and reliability. An intact rewilding culture means a group of people you can rely on, correct?
Current popular perceptions of rewilding may overly focus on the initial state of one-who-rewilds, that of reclaiming childhood passions, freedoms, and self-care, in order to come back into balance as a fully rewilding person. However, this initial state merely creates the foundation for one’s future reliability as a maturing adult, borne out of the self-knowledge that fruits from one’s reinvestment in self.
If I ask you to make a commitment to me, and you do any of the following things:
1) Say “yes”, even though you don’t want to, but you say it because of what you think I want to hear, meaning you eventually “flake out” on the commitment.
2) Say “yes”, because you want to make the commitment, but in honest reflection you know you don’t have the health and energy to back it up, and following through will further undermine your health reserves. You then eventually either “flake out” on the commitment to save yourself, or you follow through and have even less capacity to support your community.
If you respond these ways, how can I trust you? I need to know that you will only agree to things that affirm life, yours, mine, and everyone in our micro-culture.
This means that a maturing adult in a rewilding culture can not collaborate or rely on (though certainly they could support, befriend, play and eat together) any person who does not sufficiently understand their own needs and feelings.
No matter how much that other person wants to enter the world of “maturing adults”, no matter how much they will sacrifice to do it, an honest rewilding adult cannot support it, if they don’t share a common insight into the needs and feelings of human animals. As the saying goes, “we pave the road to hell with good intentions”. It refers exactly to this kind of situation, a lack of understanding of oneself and others.
Of course, you will see no clear line between someone who understands their needs, and someone who doesn’t - it runs in an unbroken continuum, from one end to the other. So all of this looks more like, “collaborating with those of a common level of understanding their needs and feelings”. Flock together with birds of a feather.
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Now we get to the good part. Once you have a certain ability to make realistic commitments and back them up, and you associate with a group of adults with similar capacity, you have what the Mohawk call “Kashastensera”, translatable as both Power, and Unity.
You see, this points to one of those pieces of the Invisible Treasury that we lost. The ability to reach “one mind”, to act in accord with a group of rock-solid reliable adults, and change the world as a single organismal body when needed.
Once I understand myself, and don’t fear my needs or feelings, you can finally trust me. Once we trust each other in a real way, we can do anything together. One person, in accord with another person, have more than the power of the sum of two people. They have ten times the power. Ten people fully in accord with each other, have a thousand times the power of ten people not in accord.
Unity means we have the ability to conflict and disagree with each other, safely, because we no longer fear, or feel inconvenienced by, our needs and feelings, but rely on them to keep us true to course. This can look like arguments, mellow chatting, raucous laughter, whatever. It doesn’t mean we act like a bunch of monks at a buddhist monastery (or, our false image of even such a place).
It means we act like fully empowered adults. And we rock our world together.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I like this a lot Willem. This reminds me of some of the ways that my elders operate. If you don’t mind this is a short piece that I wrote for a class about one of my friends and elders. He has had a big influence on me and the path that I am on. I’ve edited out some parts that referred to class material.
A person I have been fortunate to have in my life is one of my elders and mentors. I will call him Bob. He has always demonstrated very clear communication since the first time I met him. His own communication is very direct. He does no “beating around the bush”. He is a spiritual person and makes use of some traditional “devices” to keep his communication clear, particularly when it is of a spiritual nature. If a person approaches him for help, he might listen to what they have to say, then, if he thinks he can help them and they haven’t already given him tobacco, he might ask them to bring him some tobacco.
With the tobacco he will ask the person questions to clarify exactly what they are asking him to do. Only when the person can articulate exactly what is expected of him will he say one way or another if he can help them. If he can’t, then he may just say that, or he may suggest someone else to go to. Either way he will give the tobacco back. Once he is clear on what he is being asked to do and has chosen to help, he accepts the tobacco and is committed to doing exactly what he has agreed to do for the person. If at some time it becomes apparent that the person who has asked for help does not like the arrangement and is no longer willing to work with the kind of help that Bob has to offer, he will give the tobacco back and all obligations will be considered taken care of.
In a way it serves as a kind of contract. Both parties involved clearly state what their part is, what they expect of the other and what they will do.
This traditional way of asking for help ties in very well to the subject of precision and vagueness that was discussed in class. By asking the person seeking help to clearly articulate exactly what they need help with and what they are asking Bob to do in order to help, he is already helping them to sort out their own priorities and commitments. He is requiring them to accept responsibility for their part in things. He is also looking after his own interest as well. This way of doing things insures that he does not get sucked into a vague, open ended situation, with new expectations coming up as the situation evolves. In my experience with Bob he has no problem letting people know they have reached the limits of what was agreed to with the tobacco.
My relationship with Bob has progressed to the point of the two of us being good buddies now. Even so, I still bring him tobacco when I am asking for help that requires a commitment from either or both of us. He has given me tobacco in a few situations too. It is refreshing to have interactions with someone where everything is clearly laid out and there are no surprises or hidden agendas. I am not quite as good at making sure everything is spelled out as Bob is. Mostly I have been in the position of accepting tobacco from Bob and he was pretty clear about why he was giving it to me so I didn’t have to question him much about it. He has been a good example for me.
Even in situations that don’t involve the offering of tobacco the practice of clarifying needs and expectations is extremely helpful. It brings things out of the realm of abstraction and into a place where help can be given.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Thanks a million for this piece of writing, Billy. I love how much Bob really clarifies the “clarity” piece. I can really see how the tobacco, as a tangible symbol of the accord (setting aside for a moment all the deep meaning and tradition behind it), makes it easier to wrap one’s head around the request under discussion, and its status (agreed, no longer valid or appropriate, or otherwise).
May 9th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I’ve read this piece of yours quite a few times now Willem. You are really getting to some important things here. In my own life I am realizing how important commitments have been for me.
The focus of my life in recent years has been about depth. The willingness and ability to make commitments has been the vehicle to take me deeper into the places I want/need to go.
Like you say when you are with a group of people who can commit with integrity, it totally rocks.
Another thought. This is what parenting is about. Some can make the commitment and back it up in every way. Some struggle with that. Some just are not able.
Not talking about finances or that kind of stuff. More about remembering what the priorities of a parent must be.
Thanks for posting this Willem.
PS. I wish I had high speed internet so I could hear your podcasts. This last one sounds like something I would enjoy. Maybe I can load it onto a flash drive at the library or something.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I really appreciate that you see the value in this piece that I do. Depth, integrity, commitment, of a real and sustainable kind, the sign of a skilled adult. This has set of little explosions inside me that continue to reverberate.
It feels like the most important thing in Rewilding to me right now. I wish I could hear more folks chime in on the conversation about it.
If you hadn’t commented I’d probably start wandering the streets, grabbing strangers by the collar, and yelling at them, “don’t you SEE!? real ADULTHOOD means COMMITMENT! Real COMMITMENT means self-knowledge and CLARITY!”. Haha. Fortunately…
Thanks for giving me much needed feedback, Billy.
p.s. As far as the podcasts, some of the last few did really touch on how I view major parts of this issue, definitely. Good luck with the flash-drive strategy. I wish I could help.
May 10th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I was talking to my friend Bob and something he reminded me of is that often times people like him don’t have crowds of people hanging around, because he expects them to do their part. Many people are looking for enablers, not someone is clear about what is their responsibility and what is not.