Even failed collaborations can grow our souls

Spreadsheets are great to collect, organize information, but cannot take the place of interpersonal communication. Any collaboration that hopes to rise above the purely functional must make time for process. 

Information stripped of the element of interaction cannot replace, within complex systems, what Nora Bateson terms "warm data"—data that keeps the nest of relations intact.

It is a testament to the influence of the machine paradigm that we have come to see giving time to the uncertainty, emergence, and complexity that experiencing the relational process brings us face-to-face with as unnecessary to co-creating with each other.  

Co-creation—as the instinct of play—asks of us eye-gazing—the ability to connect and synchronize and align with how each of us partnering is moving. Anything else is a low-value offering that is operating in a paradigm that sees us as discrete entities, and promotes disconnection as well as low trust. 

While I have worked in a variety of settings, I acknowledge I have different expectations from people who come to me speaking the language of wanting to challenge white cultural norms. I confess to having my heart broken a little when, even there, I see characteristics such as transactional communication, perfectionism, individualism, and fears of open conflict play out. (See characteristics of a white supremacy culture, as adapted from Tema Okun.) 

AND

To acknowledge the other's sovereignty. 

​To acknowledge that Spirit is always steering me in the right direction, and if a collaboration constructed on apparently similar values collapses, it is not a bad thing at all. 

I move into the knowing of my own commitments, contribution, and values. It is upon the other to know how they did or did not show up—where they turned rigid.

I move into taking in the learning that I would like more clarity from potential collaborators early on about how resilient they are when intentions and stated values come face to face with the "slippery mess of variables, changes, and ambiguities." I take in the reminder that I find it hard to move well with rigid people, and that this speaks to hidden forces within myself that, for now, come into play to founder my own equanimity.