The Edge of Freedom Between Problem and Possibility
Living into what is possible from where we’ve been and what we know.
At the end of this year, South Sudan will make another attempt at a first general election since becoming the world’s newest country in 2011. Since independence from Sudan, intertribal conflict has ravaged whatever unity the south might have developed in its fight against the north, making it difficult to hold legitimate elections. And we’ll see if this time it has found its way out of its self-destructive hell enough to heal from its divisions and find a way forward.
In 2010, I had the rare opportunity to monitor Sudan’s regional elections, which ended the transitional peace agreement period and set the stage for South Sudan’s referendum for independence the following year. The region had seen decades of war, massive migration, and untold suffering. The elections were the population’s first real opportunity to voice their opinion about who should lead them forward from here. They had five days to do it in.
Early on the first morning, I went to a local “voting station” (a big acacia tree providing a modicum of shade from the intense sun) to observe the preparations. Young election volunteers were busy taping together cardboard voting booths to provide secrecy for the voter. It was an intertwining-parts kind of construction puzzle but hours later the booths stood basically upright inside a cordoned off voting area. The volunteers donned their official vests and name tags, sat behind tables, and announced the opening of voting to the now long line of excited citizens. The look on all of their faces was one of anticipation and pride.
For the next five days all over South Sudan’s remote landscape, people escorted each other to the voting sites, often walking for half a day. They sat on the ground sometimes for over 36 hours in front of such voting stations tucked under trees or in sweltering, dilapidated mud buildings. Their stamina and resolution to sit in the sun or all night for a chance to put their inked finger on the line liberating the south from 20 years of Sudan’s rule was impressive. It was a hard won fresh start and they were taking it seriously.
At one point, an elderly man leaning heavily on his granddaughter wound his way into a cardboard booth hung with instructions that few could read. He emerged with a toothless grin and shuffled his way to me and thrust his inked finger in my face with a pride that was priceless.
In the years hence, I am truly saddened and disappointed by South Sudan’s inability or unwillingness, despite international support, to heal from its tribal divisions and launch into its enormous potential. I say this in deep recognition of the complexity involved in healing entrenched identity issues. And yet it is exactly this process of lifting our heads up to see what is possible that allows us to enter into a new era. Perhaps this year will be the year…
Real freedom comes in letting go
Freedom comes not from holding on to a typology or story from childhood or any identity that we’ve used to define who we are. Freedom comes from recognizing that those things are where we’ve come from and they allow us to springboard into who we are becoming.
Unpacking how we define ourselves and what has made us who we are is essential to growth and to uncovering our capacities. No doubt. However, after we recognize it, name it, and heal from it, it is time to move onto what life force is calling us forward to create. We will continue to heal as conditions require, but freedom lies in our prospects, in what is possible from here, not in dwelling in our identities and where we’ve been. The gift of healing allows us to open to what is next. Then what is possible is what demands our attention.
Imagine a page with a line down the middle. The left side is addressing ‘what is wrong’ and the right side is leaning into ‘what is possible’. The left offers potential healing with the general intention of improving, rectifying, and feeling better about who we are. It roots out our stories, our ancestry, our wounds and trauma, our definitions of ourselves and identifies problems such that we can fix them. In South Sudan, the problem too quickly gets reduced to ethnic rivalry and among the solutions is war to establish dominance (apologies to the South Sudanese for over simplification).
The right side is about living up to our potential, ideas, and creative impulses. It is standing in our wisdom and living into what else is possible from here. South Sudan has tremendous cultural resources, significant oil reserves, remarkable self-reliance and sense of confidence, all backed by considerable international support. As a brand new country, it could create whatever it wants.
In the classic description of modernity, we are rather good at the left side reductionist thinking to shrink the issue into something manageable, a single problem, something we can conquer. Absolutely understandable: we want to change the situation, so how do think about it? Our challenge is that we get fixated on the problem and don’t see the larger picture. South Sudan was at that edge of possibility 14 years ago and it has chosen to remain mired in its tribal wounds until now.
What is possible from here…
In Climate: A New Story, Charles Eisenstein describes how we have reduced the complexity of climate change down to carbon and now single-mindedly think decreasing it will solve our climate issues. And yet, taking a step back, what is really motivating us beyond the problem analysis and “what is wrong” is that we love this earth, we love the planet, nature, and wildness. We care deeply for the environment we are living in and we are inextricably intertwined. This step back allows us to see into the right side, which offers what is possible from here.
“What is wrong” permeates much of how we see our world. Another example is race relations, let’s say from a US perspective. On the left side, there are myriad things to point to that are wrong. Absolutely. Looking at it from there, we see cultural suppression, annihilation, violence, total denial of different forms of humanity, and more. No question. So we understandably try to fix it with Critical Race Theory, Land Back efforts, collective action, language-centric education, and other targeted solutions. We desperately want to rectify and heal from our painful past and come to a place of peace.
What is underneath that hurt is an understanding for and love of humanity in all its forms. When I dive deeply into why my own history hurts so much, I find it is because I feel a denial of a part of humanity that is different from me. I feel the pain and deep love for all people and when some are cut out of that, it hurts. This is where the edge is and from here I can feel new possibilities arise. The edge is where we touch life force and where we integrate our histories and our pain into our potential. When we put our attention on what is driving our hurt and articulate the life behind the problem, we step into what is possible.
There is a danger here, of course, of The Bypass, of what I used to call ‘Love, Peace, and Granola.’ It is the leap into putting our attention on what we want to be true and not being with what is. The risk here is in becoming passive, getting lost in abstractions or theory, avoiding our discomfort and injury, or simply ignoring reality altogether. The counter danger is in getting mired in the problem and attention-fixing on what isn’t working.
So what is it that brings freedom, that brings our attention to that edge between the two and allows us to enter the realm of potential? This is dancing on the edge, living into what is possible from where we’ve been and what we know. In South Sudan, it is acknowledging and reconciling from its historic inter-tribal rivalry and leaning into what they want to become in their richly diverse new country. This is where their freedom lies: not in their liberation from Sudan, but in what possibilities they can realize from their hard-won independence. This is where they can dance freely.