To coordinate a dance that emerges out of self-organizing cooperation

“The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Oh, how I notice myself trying to control situations and processes. Here I mean the attempt to overcome doubt, as Joyce Oates mentions. I find myself in, invite myself to situations that indeed are complex; there are many, very different persons involved, there are many different relationships between them, and everyday social norms seem outdated to regulate the associated intra – and interpersonal dynamics. Also, a lot of different ‘sides’ of my personality are involved in the process of trying to navigate this social landscape. I notice my minds tendency to want to identify with particular sides, a tendency that of course triggers resistance from the other parts, they tend to feel unseen and unacknowledged after a period of identification with their supposed opposites, grasping for attention and space, experiencing the joy of release from what does not feel anymore as enabling constraints. I laugh at the image that the complexity of the social landscape is also a mirror of the complexity of (my) personality. A memory pops up and I hear my father’s words: ‘joe laughs, joe cries.’ A little sting of worry pops up, that little girl thinks there is something wrong with the change of emotional tone and intensity.

It feels sad, at times, that I allow myself to be mentally emerged in stories that suppress complexity. There is this nagging voice telling me ‘I should be such and such.’ Out of fear that allowing the complexity to be as it would mean chaos, I create narratives that suggest a controllable complicatedness. Expand, Lot. Endorse the shape shifting. Do I need one big, overarching narrative to include all the complexity that everyday life and the grander stream of motions and choices mirror back? How to enjoy and find meaning in storytelling without being enslaved by the structure seeking mind? Before I know it, I am convinced that I need a solution when it is actually gentleness that is more than enough.

While writing I feel this tender energy rising in my body. An expansion of my chest finds its way through my fingers, its promising affirmation of presence swirling on the computer scheme in wordy bits of stroked life, a transformation breathed out in between words. Now I feel like dancing as if I am a person who never stands still, fully overcome by bodily intensity, out of sight of a contemplative life. It’s the contrast that makes up a good story, right ? What I deem to be opposites, is sheer movement, dynamism.

We humans are trying to coordinate a dance that emerges out of self-organizing cooperation, we are surfing the waves of emotions in a deep ocean of feelingfull life.