I’m feeling the near-but-not-yet tangibility of a new paradigm. I can taste it. I experience it more and more and then step out of it. When I am in it, it feels so normal. There is an “of course” to it, as though this is the natural way to be. I am in love; we are all in love; we are operating naturally out of love. No surprise, nothing to remark on. Just ahhh.
When I am suddenly jolted into the current reality by harshness or judgement (my own or others), it is in stark contrast to what I know to be possible. I want to say, “Let’s not take where we are too seriously: it is only temporary!” Perhaps the more we live the new paradigm, the more it is real.
Many years ago, I was in Algeria with a colleague I’ll call Alex attempting to help abate the massive locust plagues that were devastating food crops throughout north Africa. Camped in Ghardaia, an oasis town in the North Sahara, one day we decided to walk into the desert. A few miles into the desolate landscape with nothing but towering sand dunes to our right and flat nothingness to our left, we saw some distant movement, like a mirage. As we approached, it approached. Alerted to possible unfamiliar danger but intently curious, we grew closer to one another. The danger turned out to be a young girl wearing a light cloak and a head scarf.
She greeted us with enthusiasm, having come a long way to meet us. Although my French and Alex’s Arabic didn’t register with her, we got the clear message that we were being invited to tea. So, the three of us trekked over the desert to what we could now see was a single, wind-battered Bedouin tent with a donkey outside surrounded by thorn bushes out in the middle of the vacant landscape. The girl’s excitement grew stronger when we arrived and she presented her catch to an older woman who smiled a welcome at us with her dark eyes. Before long, five or six females probably between two and 60 years of age swathed in cotton cloths showed up.
They invited us inside the empty canvass dirt floor tent. Several more girls and women joined us, to include what was clearly the eldest matriarch, deeply furrowed by the unrelenting sun. The younger ones quickly fussed about bringing into the tent big pillows made of camel hair, a well-loved kettle, a few tin cups, and the heating accouterments with coals. Among the assembly now encircling us, was a young mother with a tiny, weeks-old, severely jaundiced baby.
Within no time, tea was boiled and served and we all sat in this now-crowded group on the floor around the tea pot attempting to communicate: Alex in Arabic, they in Berber, and all of us in smiles and gestures. At one point, one of the girls pointed to my ring and then ran out of the tent. In a moment she was back with another ring and we exchanged to the huge delight of everyone.
Alex tried to explain that his family lineage was from Syria, a familiar name in the Arab world. Then he explained that we were from the United States, from America. Finally, he said we had walked from Ghardaia, the nearby oasis. The eldest woman shook her head to each place he mention and then explained with gestures and words in unmistakable clarity, “Look, all we know is the sun,” pointing up, “the sand,” pointing to the distant sand dunes, “and this,” pointing to the tent and its inhabitants.
I felt then, as I’m describing it now, that I had entered an entirely different paradigm. It was an abrupt juxtaposition to which earlier language no longer applied: that utter and complete understanding that this reality is completely different from the other. This is what I am beginning to taste now.
The image is of a watercolor painting. Picture on the very bottom of the large paper portraits of a handful of people. Some are more foregrounded and clearer; a few others are backgrounded and less distinct. These are far-reaching, expansive “thinkers” (or, more appropriately, “sensors”) who are currently contributing to our ability to see beyond our old way of being. They are colorful, near each other, relating, but acting mostly independently.
A spot light shines out from them into the space nearby and a little beyond as they speak to and touch what is here right now and the adjacent possible. They are exploring, naming, and seeping in the human experience. They create from and articulate both it and where we could be going. The images evolve and move somewhat and the colors shift a bit.
On the top of the watercolor paper is a horizon sculpted with a bit of hilly terrain. It is also colorful. It is humanity writ large, peopled with people. It smells of potential and of rightness with a hint of love, though it is barely within our awareness and requires long-reach sensing. Out there is a different way of being. It isn’t tangible yet but you can see that it is humanity at its farthest (right now) reaches. It is the brilliance on the horizon. It is possibility. While not tangible yet, it is powerful even at this distance.
In between the bottom and the top of the page is a desert. It is not entirely devoid of life like the Sahara, but it is brown and mostly barren. The separation between the lower image and the upper image is impressively stark. We are playing on the bottom edge but influenced and beckoned by the top edge. Even guided. At the bottom, it takes the most sensitive sensing to see, to know that the human horizon is out there. We must really quiet down and listen and, ultimately, look up. As we do, we can feel the quiet, barren desert, the gap, and sense the slight color, the buzz from the far distant vista.
Then we fold the paper in half.
The two touch: right now meets potential. We are merged; we are living in the new paradigm. No need to step agonizingly slowly across the foreboding desert. No need to plan and measure every move. And no need to turn back constantly and see if we are doing it right, if it agrees with our established frameworks. We live differently now.
That requires regular refreshing. It requires a commitment to not using old language, structures, and patterns of behavior. We leap over the adjacent possible to the possible beyond. We don’t let our pants get caught in the thorns of the desert and stop us in our attempt to reach the horizon. We learn how to fold the paper together.
kimmaynard@substack.com