Wayfinding in existing responsibly

Experiments in living and working to shift systemic inequities

In a world obsessed with greatness, I grew up to despise mediocrity. I had ambition, skill, a strong work ethic and a hunger for social justice. I was full of potential: I felt that if I put my mind to it, I could do it. If I worked harder, I could get there. I was the captain of my ship; I was the heroine of my life. 

I was single-minded about living with purpose and a career in development was but of course the most natural choice. I went to a respected university, worked at reputed places, attended the right conferences, earned the best certifications and best of all - my work had a real impact. With each move, I was getting closer to a more meaningful life. 

As a person with several passions, I moved through my working life with risk and gusto. I worked in a grassroots organization, several NGOs and social enterprises, foundations, and sustainability consulting. For me the direction mattered, not the destination. I put myself in testing situations and had to quickly learn the lay of the land before I could contribute substantially. I was not only learning to navigate uncertainty but also learning the refined skill of wayfinding – the ability to stay, explore and thrive in the deep waters. 

While I always saw the world as unjust, watching COVID-19 ravage people moved me very deeply. As someone who had worked in development for over thirteen years, I found myself at the edge of disillusionment. While movements like mutual aid inspired, the overall breakdown of public institutions – from health to education crushed me. I was never some rosy-eyed utopia-chasing young person. But never has the contrast between haves and have-nots been so stark for me. It was as if nothing prepared me for the trifecta of disappointment – the failed promise of the adage that work hard, be good and things will  get better; anxiety of the pandemic; and pressure for a pay off by making all the ‘right’ personal life decisions of home, job, relationships etc.

It was in 2020, I started reaching out to folks working in development about what I was feeling. Was I just deluded or engaged in some fanciful inquiry of my midlife crises? Was I reading too much into what was passing and attaching too much value to an effervescent experience? I was not alone. We were toiling for long hours but frustrated that the pace and depth of development was not quick or deep enough. We were delaying life decisions or felt like we were compromising personal lives because we were driven by our commitment to development. We felt constantly run over or lived under the looming forces of capitalism, colonialism, and geo-political forces.

Dismantling the crisis of meaning

These conversations weren’t just pity parties or safe spaces for venting. We could foresee a mass despair, a deep-set malaise and cynicism. Not to be too drastic, but it felt like a generation of people were hurting at a fundamental level. I was hearing a lot of tensions – pressure to make money, raise money, launch projects, salary cuts, letting people go, saying no, saying yes. It was almost as if the template to live life as we previously knew it had disappeared and we were operating at an instinctual level with a sliver of hope that that all would turn out well. Many of us were making numerous decisions in a day with very little understanding of long-term consequences. There was a crisis of meaning or as one of my friends said a ‘theft of purpose.’ We used to be unreasonable and passionate in our doings but now we are practical and productive.

The general inkling was that these were not dualities or binaries. We needed to be both. We had just lost our compass of knowing what to be when. And that had dulled our senses, our mission, and our hunger for change. We needed to hold multiple truths together at the same time.

Here are some of the seemingly dichotomous experiences that emerged in our exploration. And because they hold in them multiple truths, I have listed them as simultaneous and equal occurrences. I have also taken the liberty to cluster them based on what I saw as a larger challenge at play. 

Challenge #1 Living fast, multipotential, networked full lives

1. How is it that we are focused and we are distracted simultaneously?

2. How is it that we are constantly tired and we are excited simultaneously?

3. How is it that we are being brave and we are scared simultaneously?

4. How is it that we are tethered and we are lost simultaneously?

5. How is it that we are consuming entertainment and we are deeply bored simultaneously?

6. How is it that we are private, and we constantly share our lives on social media?

7. How is it that we are present for ourselves, and our families and we are constantly responding to the needs of the communities we serve?

8. How is it that we are relaxing, and we are never feeling at ease simultaneously?

Challenge #2 Living ethical, value-aligned, respectful lives

1. How is it that we are totally confident that we can bring about change and we are constantly disappointed in humanity simultaneously?

2. How is it that we are sustaining ourselves & holding space for our struggles and we are holding space for others simultaneously?

3. How is it that we are ambitious for change, and we lack purpose simultaneously?

4. How is it that we are enjoying benefits of dominant narratives and we are decolonizing our lives simultaneously?

5. How is it that we are authentic and we are socialized to behave in certain ways simultaneously?

6. How is it that problems are becoming more severe, and we are living our lives as business-as-usual?

7. How is it that we are growing our freedoms and need for tolerance and we are being intolerant towards what we find dangerous or threatening simultaneously?

8. How is it that we make ethical decisions about production and consumption for some things and overlook that for others simultaneously?

Challenge #3 Living comfortable, financially secure lives

1. How is it that we are naturally collective and we are deeply individualist simultaneously?

2. How is it that we are anti-capitalist and we are in need of cash simultaneously?

3. How is it that we are solving problems and we are part of the problem simultaneously?

4. How is it that we are leaders in our own right and we are blindly following others simultaneously?

5. How is it that we are required to be generalists and act as specialists simultaneously?

6. How is it that we are working towards shifting paradigms and contributing to existing paradigms simultaneously?

7. How is it that we are chasing to scale our work and we are disgruntled about the lack of deep impact simultaneously?

8. How is it that we extract the best for ourselves and deeply abhor extractive systems simultaneously?

These multiple truths aim to capture the burden of the daily grunt of decision making and a larger disconcertment with society and its systems as a whole. It points to a lack of agency, a lack of margin space, an inability to maneuver. But it also alludes to the need for a space, a community and a toolbox which can guide us through this rocky terrain. The idea is not to go hunting for an answer or solution. The idea is to expand the margin space for experimentation.  

---

Seeding new imaginations about humanity and life

In addition to limited agency and control over our own futures, our collective inability to act and bring forth positive futures was deeply intertwined with our inability to imagine desired futures. Most of us could imagine a dystopian future quite naturally but when urged to think utopian futures, we struggled. We could come up with something lofty but none of it felt possibly close to reality. In the current socio-economic climate globally, as technology and corporations reigned supreme, many of us were experiencing the Cyberpunk of the 1970s as lived reality. To imagine something real, tangible, hopeful became all the more challenging.  It is as if imagination is a muscle and refused to work due to disuse.

The rise of solarpunk, ecopunk, and speculative futures provided some language and framing of possibilities. And despite several countries, neighborhoods and societies engaging in participatory visioning exercises about the future, at an individual or small group level, we continue to  grapple with a lack of personal agency. 

Not all of us felt like we were in charge of our lives anywhere. While the signals were always there, the pandemic accelerated new ways of possible working with quiet quitting, great resignation and remote working allowing people to imagine new ways of living. In our conversations, three broad trends could be observed: 

Resigning from city life

Many moved out of cities. In countries in South Asia, where tier 2 cities do not offer the services of megalopolises, people began to consider operating out of a more rural or smaller town setting. The slow pace, lack of traffic, limited choices, greater access to better air quality, fresh food, deeper connection with nature and community became the cornerstones of a new model of life.

Of course, this was a negotiation. It came with recurrent electricity cuts, limited access to good schools and hospitals and a sparse public transport network among other things. But it set in motion a new imagination for people’s lives and the next generation to come. 

Those who made this shift began to reconnect with themselves and the slow pace allowed them to engage in their work intentionally, step back and create more space for reflection and learning. The hunger for systemic change remained the same. Only the fiery, maniacal bias for action began to simmer down into something of a sustainable fire. 

Investing in community living

Many others moved to farms or the countryside. Acre housing became common where friends, peers, family come together to purchase an acre of land to build joint yet independent housing while sharing maintenance responsibilities. Several invested in community farming projects outside urban areas to try their hand at farming and accessing local, healthy, fresh vegetables. 

Again, the transition was speckled with unexpected challenges from dealing with pests and snakes to getting comfortable with a renewed sense of solitude. This also brought people closer to nature deepening relationships with animals, plants and the earth. 

An accompanying adventure was choosing one’s community. These were not people that life had thrown at someone by default - your neighbors or coworkers. Many were choosing a completely new social circle - people they would spend most of their time around and with whom collective decisions would need to be made with a shared egalitarian mindset.

Rebooting professional lives and outcomes

This shift and deeper connection with oneself, community and nature allowed for rebooting of people’s lives. The yardstick of success and excellence began to move. It allowed experimentation with new careers. The goal was still to work on systemic change but the methods changed. 

One no longer needed to work in development (per se) to do good. There were other ways to create impact (e.g. food-based, crafts-based, research-focused organizations). Several second careers were launched with a new disposition and acquisition of youtube-earned skills. The horizon that looked further and further away suddenly appeared quite close and something easily surmountable. 

This reset began to dismantle the idea of meaning and self worth which was attached to work. Personal and community mental health began to come to the fore. Many started seeking help to unravel what they were experiencing. This was compounded by the personal and collective grief prompted by the pandemic. 

While people pushed their margins, many of these trends are still nascent. Though the numbers may be few, they are acting as a beacon of inspiration. They are pushing the possibilities and through that generating new ways of living and working responsibly. 

---

Building a wayfinding manifesto

What began to emerge is that in order to do deep systemic work, we need to focus on rejuvenation, caregiving, and  re-energizing. We need to turn the focus of implementing system change methodologies from development work outside us to development work inside us. In Audre Lorde’s words, we needed ‘self-care as an act of political resistance.’ Or what Rebecca Solnit calls ‘rest as resistance.

Like multiple truths, different people arrived at what works for them differently but each path pointed to self-care, hope and rebellion. I began to chart up these experiences, coping mechanisms, hacks, into some kind of tenets – a set of actions which could assist in framing my thinking when I get lost. A set of provocations or directions or behaviors which when repeated could guide us to the best versions of who we are. A safety net which allowed me to rejuvenate and thrive. For me, these are a navigational device to which I return to from time to time when things get hazy or challenging. It is a reminder on what to embody, what to mirror, what to model and how to make more space for what I value in the world.  

Below, I am sharing seven of them in no particular order:

Refusal is possible
Say no. Your attention is valuable. Trust your gut. Take that leap of faith. Your options are not as few as you think.

Resist the seduction of action
You cannot work your way out of everything. Rest. Take breathers. Be present wherever you are. Don’t let productivity solely guide you. You are not missing out.

Intention matters
If not for intention, there is no difference between your work and any other work. Feed your intention. The act of driving change is as important as the change itself.

Learn the rules but just don’t play the game
Hack the system but don’t forget the bigger picture. Feed your belly. Buy pretty things. Make yourself happy. But don’t forget the bigger picture. Take risks wherever possible. Rebel whenever you can.

Don’t forget to be human/e
Check-in with people, check-in with yourself. Take a moment to see how you are feeling in your body. Ensure you are heard, seen and respected. Return the favour. Have fun. It’s not always all that serious.

Stoke the fire of hope
Create space for hope in your life. Reach out to those who inspire. Travel. Volunteer at a local nonprofit / community centre. Create and join empathy circles.

Design your island of sanity
Find your people. Build your safe, small space. Create your community. Change will create itself.

Like every idea, this one continues to evolve. I offer it here as an overarching architecture and invite you to make it your own. 

PS: These thoughts and ideas are in no way just mine. They have been inspired by members of the Luminary cohort, friends, peers, books, podcasts, and the like. A big thank you to all who shared their thoughts and ideas with me.