a bit more from James...

I feel so lucky to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have shown me a way into the life I’m choosing today. As a young boy I was taught respect for the overwhelming power of the natural world when sailing a small dinghy in the English Channel with my father, and of her benevolence when forced(?) to pick blackberries on common land!

At university in the early 90s I was introduced to climate change by lecturers who measured change in millions of years. Then in the early 2000s the languaging of much of what I felt intuitively, but buried cognitively, arrived - the worlds of relational practice, tempered radicalism, extended ways of knowing, of adult development and collaborative developmental action inquiry and interconnectedness, courtesy of Judi Marshall et al.

By 1999 it was clear to me that the intellectual stimulation that came with increasingly senior management roles was not enough. My heart was in environmentalism, working to change what is here. I started in a voluntary capacity, and one thing led to another. By 2016 it was time for me to step out of big institutional life for a while, somewhere I remain today (or do I kid myself?).

In corporate life I’ve been privileged to work for some amazing, humble bosses, prepared to be vulnerable in the face of cultures that certainly didn’t encourage it. People who understand how important being human is, how trust and psychological safety underpin performance and purpose. Who gave me space, believed in me, supported me when my inner demons and expectations wore me into the ground, burnt-out and depressed.

I worked alongside a broad variety of people; from operations directors prepared to experiment with manager-less factory shift-teams to consultants who gave people ‘a damn good listening to’; from innovators gambling on setting up a ‘sustainability team’ when they didn’t really know what that meant, to command-and-control types from whom I naturally found myself shrinking, but when finding my voice, and the ability to stick with challenging situations, being curious how it would be to stay, discovered a whole new set of openings.

How to stay in touch with life, ‘even’ when what I feel is apparently painful? I have to remember that each pain point, if I can remain open to it, somehow leads to a new opportunity and insight.

My family keep my feet on the ground; adept at spotting when espoused theory is not practised.

I choose to live with lively curiosity and am old enough now not to take myself to be anything for very long, and certainly not too seriously. I am blessed to have a couple of supportive communities to sit within and am determined to take their (our) work out into the world to create more community again.

My life is centred around increasing our capabilities relating to consciousness and being present to what is. To face in, in the belief (& indeed now with the experience) that this is ultimately a smoother, easier way to live. I feel both immensely sad, and incredibly liberated, when I choose to engage seriously with the possibility of near-term societal collapse. I realise that in a way, when viewed over the millions of years of interconnectedness, when noticing the power of being present to what is here, right now, it doesn’t matter, and in a way, all is well, even in the midst of widespread intense chronic suffering. And, I wonder if today’s societal crises aren’t symptomatic of the current human predominant focus on material not personal (spiritual) growth, and a disconnection, even denial of the reality of death’s part in life?

I am clear, I am working to create safe space where we can explore what it is to be fully alive humans and experiment with our next best steps, wherever we find ourselves.

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