Reorienting with the concepts of Commitment and Participation
Our culture has a whole thing about "commitment" and "participation." When I was little I was trained out of listening to myself and into masking/lying/manipulation using these two concepts. You have to smile and look people in the eye and speak up and "participate" in the conversation. You have to go to ballet practice everyday even when you're overstimulated and exhausted because you made a "commitment." And the training continued into adulthood. You have to stay in this marriage because you made a "commitment." You have to show up everyday to a place that makes you feel like crap and do work that goes against your values and smile and try hard and "participate" in the meetings because you made a "commitment." UGH UGH UGH. Then we try and do something like a community to connect with and support each other and we see message notifications coming in and group calls and team challenges and all this training kicks in and we can start to really resent/resist/avoid/overextend ourselves. When we dream something new into reality, it's easy to turn it back into something old. Through self inquiry, we can start to pick apart what is happening, how the old thing is creeping back in, and offer new ideas to those scared parts that don't want to get in trouble for "not participating' or "fulfilling our commitment." What are some new values that can replace "commitment" and "participation" in the rooted co-op? Perhaps we can piece them together into a co-op manifesto of sorts! Here's a first one to kick us off, "I am allowed to not fulfill a commitment or participate just because I don't want to." xo, z