Thursday, November 18, 2010

If eagles can evolve, can we?

There are a pair of eagles in Clayoquot Sound that are apparently evolving - to lessen genetically-programmed violence. It makes me think that if eagles can evolve, maybe even humans can too!



On a small island off the harbour of Tofino, there is a pair of eagles, mated for life, that have lived there for almost two decades. This is their story.

Normally eagles have just a single chick each year. They have several eggs, but only one normally survives. This is because in the eagle world fratricide is the norm. The first chick born kills the others. "Neither parent will make the slightest effort to stop the fratricide," says the American Bald Eagle Info Site.


But Tofino wildlife observers have noticed that this particular pair of eagles always has two chicks. Every year for more than a decade. Two chicks. The guide who was telling me this story thinks that the parents must have intervened in the sibling death matches.

I find this striking. This means that this pair of eagles is going against its - well, conditioning.

I mean, don't you, as a human, find it extremely difficult to change? Imagine how hard it must have been for these eagles! They don't have language, self-help books, or therapists - or even cops to maintain civil order amongst eagles. They did it anyway.

Makes me take a look at those things about myself that I get resigned about, or think are genetic and therefore unchangeable.

Makes me think that maybe humans might just evolve too, in time to save ourselves. (Okay, I know it's a leap, but it makes me think that anyway!).

What do you think?

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

How I went from bad to good in a day

Today I flipped a family situation that was difficult and painful into something that was awesome and met everyone’s needs. I want to tell you about it. It was kinda cool actually. And scary.

You see, for a couple of weeks my partner Ian has been exhausted from all the energetic touring he does for our company DreamRider Theatre. Coincident with this, I’ve been coffee-ing and lunching with some of the brilliant people I met at Social Venture Institute and generally they have been expanding my own brain and vision considerably. So this weekend I was in a bit of a contraction. Meaning I was cranky, tired and whiney. (Lucky Ian!!!) 

His fatigue and my whininess left for a not-very fun couple of days. (I am not perfect, I am astounded to discover.)  Meantime I had been planning for some time a beautiful little mini-holiday to Tofino for my family this week. Full disclosure: I really needed to go – I used to live there and every now and again my soul just needs to get back to the wild west coast. But I was bringing them. Happy family times were planned. Except. Tia was going to miss saying a few sentences at her school’s Remembrance Day ceremony, and Ian was just too f’ing tired to contemplate the drive. They were both mad at me.

photo (c) Vanessa LeBourdais

And they revolted! They didn’t want to go. The day before we were due to leave. When I couldn’t cancel the reservations any more.

And the secret piece is that I’ve been spending too much time alone lately and really needed – I was sure! - to connect with my family.

My friend Erin – who is a wise witchy woman I call upon for inspired advice – said, with her typical way of cutting to the essence of it – “You should go. On your own. Face your fears of being alone front and centre. Do it.”

Now – everybody’s happy. Exact same difficult situation, looked at differently. Ian gets to stay home and do nothing, just as he has been dreaming of. Tia gets to do her presentation. I get Tofino. And I get to look at one of my deepest core fears. But I’ll do this in the place, where, in the loneliest part of my life when I was younger, the sea and forest and sand and wind embraced and held me as I healed.

Now that I'm looking at the upside, I notice some other things: I'm going away, guilt-free, from my kid and my husband for four days, to do whatever the heck pleases me. I could get used to this!  What a different perspective I got by surrendering to what was happening and opening to my fears.

I might even be able to let that old fear go. After all, the room I rented in my Tofino days is now a chocolate factory. Miracles can happen.

photo (c) Tia Gschwind 



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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

What's with all the single women?

I am thinking about single women.

There are a lot of them I am meeting, in this socially-conscious-sustainability-progressive community I am in.

Amazing women.

Powerful, smart, courageous, clever, sassy, attractive.

And all of them single!

I keep thinking about them, because I was one of them for a long time. Friends told me that my standards were too high, that I’d never meet someone who met them, that perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be in a relationship. My mother told me that I should pretend to be less smart so a man wouldn’t be threatened. I ignored her. I ignored them. And I ended up being together now fifteen years with the most amazing man I’ve ever met. Who, incidentally, surpassed my standards. By quite a bit.

So why me, and not these other women?

Or more importantly, perhaps: what the heck is going on that these amazing women are all single?! 

I put this together with what the Dalai Lama said: “The world will be saved by western women.”

But if all these women are coping with life/rent/mortgage/laundry/hangovers/illnesses just with the support of their friends but no mate –

 - then how the heck are we gonna save the world?!?

So what’s going on?

Because what these women are needing – assuming they want a partner, which I’m pretty sure they do – is support. A friend once described it as “having someone else to hold up the sky sometimes”, which I think is an apt description.  Someone to come home to at the end of the day, who still loves you even when you collapse into a ball of pathetic-ness because you used up all your energy being incredibly brave at your job all day, changing the world and generally being a super-heroine (as these women all are! I mean, truly, these women ROCK and you know who you are).

We women have had decades now of liberation, movements, therapy, support groups, feminist theory, etc. etc. etc. We have been evolving out of our former allotted roles at a rate that would be envied by viruses. We have been part of a movement of change for several generations now. As I told my daughter this morning, grandma didn’t have nearly as many choices as you or I about who she could be or what she could do.

One way Ian evolves... (Photo Joe Menth)

But men. Who’s been helping them evolve? I mean, really, they’ve been blamed quite a bit, as a gender. Not without reason, historically. But they’ve been left kind of high and dry on the evolve-into-a-new-kind-of-being support scale. You only have to look at the nearest playground to see boys being peer-pressured into the same limited behaviours as they have been forever.

Lately I have been meeting some great men who are completely giving me hope for the future of man-kind. (You know who you are).  So I can see that things are starting to change.

BUT WHY AREN’T THEY GETTING TOGETHER WITH THESE ROCKING WOMEN?

I think it’s because the old stereotypes live on underneath.

It used to be: the powerful man had the supportive woman.

Most women are still, underneath, looking for a man to be stronger, protective, ambitious, bigger.

Most men are still, underneath – no matter how evolved they think they are – still really looking for the little woman, in some way. Are threatened by a woman fully in her own power. (Sorry guys, I see this a lot still).

It’s nobody’s fault. It comes from thousands, millions of years of enculturation. And this amazing-single-woman thing is a trend, a symptom of being in the middle of the process of change. One day, the guys will catch up.

In the meantime? I hope men will start letting go of needing to be the Big Important One in the relationship with a Little Lady, and honour the awesomeness of powerful women.

And I hope women will start looking for someone who’s going to support them in their amazingess.

What do you think?









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