Longing for the world to feel like home again
by (Re)sear participants
At the beginning of June, we hosted the kickstarter call for our six-month project (Re)Search in times of Corona. 29 young people are committed to undertaking common and individual questions with the view to generate transformative actions for self and world.
During the call, we asked an input question: what is the nature of change? what is the link between inner change and societal transformation?
Here is a reflection from a participant after our first gathering.
Longing for the world to feel like home again
Part of my own process I chose to listen during our first encounter, to try and not be reactive but proactive by trusting that with so many people, what I thought or felt would also be present in what the other participants were saying. And while that was true for a lot of things, there were other aspects that I still wanted to address here.
The first thing that came to my head was the philosophical problem regarding Theseus ship," if all the parts of the ship are replaced, is it still the same ship?"
It feels like everything changes constantly, in fact the call for this research was in part a reaction to "COVID-19" and the changes that it brought to our lives (if any) and so there is that physical aspect to change, the one of ageing, sickness or growth, our cells are completely replaced by the time we die.
So, change in a way is life.
What I saw as the problem however, had to do with the answer to the Theseus ship problem. For although it is fundamentally a different ship since all the parts have been replaced, the fact that this happened gradually through its voyages the ship's identity is preserved in" essence".
Change everything so everything remains the same.
Yes, in a materialistic sense everything is changing, everything has been broken down, teared apart, the structures that supported western society, the sense of direction seems all but gone. Still somethings seem to remain the same, at its core, at least that’s what we perceive, a sense of anxiety a sense of frustration a sense of impotence.
It seems that for all that changes that which remains the same is that we are not an active part of that change, but simply the receiving end, we are asked to make sacrifices, to fight for our future but following set guidelines.
All the changes in Theseus ship could not change the most important aspect, and that’s that it was still a ship, and we, for all that changes around us, seem stuck in time in our ways.
I don’t think the question is so much what I would like to see changing but rather, what am I changing already. Recognise that simply by living we have an impact and manage that impact in an empowering way, realise what we are so we can then determine where we are. Bring the question to the immediate present, to right now, rather than postponing it to a future that doesn’t quite arrive but at the same time seems that we have missed altogether.
"What would the world look like in 2030 if what lives within you becomes a reality, and what will you do to make it happen?"
I do not know what lives within me other than myself, if the world were to look like me in 2030, I fear it wouldn't look too different from its current form. I do somewhere in me have a nostalgic feeling. Not so long ago I saw a title for a movie called “I don’t feel at home in this world anymore” and maybe that’s it, maybe I long for the world feeling like home again, is that why I look for potholes and cracks around me? So I can fix them? So I can own them, so they feel mine, so they feel like my place, my home (not in the sense of ownership but more on the sense of responsibility).
By a (Re)Search participant - 29 years old, Spain.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin