How to Stay Curious When the World is At War?
How you are breathing and where you are you looking?
The biology of breath
Breathing out activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Our bodies do this naturally. Apparently when I’m under pressure I sigh. A lot.
Sighing or consciously exhaling longer than our inhale calm our nervous system. When we have a calm nervous system we are able to move from a state of hyper focus on what our nervous system perceives as an emergency to a state of more receptive awareness.
This is helpful for how you navigate your day in general but also how you show up and interpret the world around you.
Direct your gaze
The direction we face influences the view we see and the questions we ask influence the answers we find.
Yesterday I was reading a short thought piece written by Yuval Noah Harari. He focused on how the fighting with strengthen the resolve of the Ukrainians for generations to come. He wrote about how the tanks and fighting will lead the Ukrainians to see the Russians as enemies for generations to come.
“Each Russian tank destroyed and each Russian soldier killed increases the Ukrainians’ courage to resist. And each Ukrainian killed deepens the Ukrainians’ hatred of the invaders.”
How does framing the story as a war that will cause a hatred that will last generations impact the reader?
How would the story change if we look at the youth of today who are bridging divides relating to nationality, gender, income?
Staying curious
We can be curious about the past, present or future. All three timeframes offer a new opportunity to expand of field of vision.
The direction I think those of us who are artists and interested in social change can offer to the world is a view of what is possible.
Who has overcome challenges in the past? Which countries had been enemies and are now friends (Italy and the US, Mexico and the US, France and Germany, North and South Vietnam)? What experiences can we learn from those times in history?
What are people doing on the ground today to help people from the Ukraine? What did they do to help refugees from Syria and people from many conflicts of the span of history? I attended a peace demo on Saturday and went past the Französischer Dom, the French church that stands there as a testament to the time when Germany helped the Huguenots who were French Protestants escaping persecution from the King and Catholic church in France in 1685.
And who is imaging a better future? What is happening in the area of permaculture, renewable technologies like algae, human relations in terms of expanded empathy and the navigating of care that is acknowledging the agency of those who need help.
Curiosity as a lens
Crises are times when people show the best of who they can be. Yes, there are a few people in power using their power for bad but there are many people standing for values that cross borders.
Keeping our minds open and staying in curiosity allows us to create a more productive narrative. The stories we tell do shape the actions we take. So it is important that we don’t use our narratives to write a history we do not want to see.
Why is this important
When we are in fear we are paralyzed. We can’t do good for the people directly impacted by the crisis, for our community, for our friends and family or for ourselves when we are incapacitated.
We lose all hope of change because we created an enemy who has not feelings and no rationality.
We lose our power when we lose our faith in humanity.
Be careful in which direction you are looking, in seeing what direction those around you are looking, because this is a matter of self-preservation and it is a matter of importance as it impacts how you show up in the world.
Stories do matter as do the sense of possibility they impart.