in a moment
a non-theory of change
My spam folder is full of emails telling me to try a new AI communication tool or automate my SEO content to increase my audience. Yet here I am with my pencil and blank page, writing to you as my cat is curled in her basket and my tea is warm in a handmade ceramic cup.
Over the years, I’ve read and heard lots of business advice to pick a lane and stay there, share easy bite-sized content, and create a consistent brand. Yet my work, including my writing, continues to meander in many realms—sometimes about children and their learning, sometimes for adults (you) navigating the energetics of this time, sometimes simple and practical, sometimes lofty and the stuff of longing, wisps, and dream.
I am who I am. And when I write, I share this. I show up and do my best to essay (try) to say something true and alive in the moment, for the moment—this moment between me and you on the page. I don’t worry about how this “fits” with other layers of my work or if my words are effective “marketing.” I don’t choose words that are helpful for search engines. I write because writing is my most honest creative expression and it’s most alive through its connection with others.
I trust that creativity is alive beyond me. I trust that our days are full of moments robust with aliveness beyond what we can see.
My usual creative process is to sit at my desk, close my eyes, breathe through my heart, and listen. I write what I hear, and this begins to stretch and play on the paper into what it is. My practice is to let it be what it is. To listen, to trust, to awe. To engage with the delight* of the moment.
This is also my practice with children. Side-by-side with one child drawing or at the carpet with many children and some blocks, my practice is to let it be what it is. I trust that it is (already) magical. My work is to listen and awe and guide from what emerges in the moment. I don’t try to control it.
I know that I don’t know more than the moment.
This is my practice, too, when I work with a school, organization, or team, when I give a talk, lead a workshop, or facilitate a conversation. I attune: May I be present with the wisdoms that are here. May I listen, awe, and invite opportunities for us to connect with the energetics of this moment. May the aliveness of what is here guide us to stretch and play and create together.
And, this is my practice as a citizen in our world. I show up with curiosity and an open heart. I trust that I don’t know more than the moment. I listen and engage beyond what I can see.
No matter where we are, what is here isn’t something we can control with planned action steps or theories of change. We can tell ourselves that we are in charge of change (and certainly this is how humans have been doing things and we can see where this has led us).
The truth is, what is here doesn’t need our control or our ideas to justify possible pathways of control.
Where we are needs us only to be present with it.
To trust that we don’t know more than the moment. That even with our widest, most generous apertures and guided by our deepest internal knowings, our human orientations grant us but a glimpse.
Here, in a moment, is where curiosity breathes, where we may soften and unfold, where play enlivens from within us, where we remember to laugh and fall and roll and reach out to each other.
Here is also there. The arcs of “tomorrow” live in the soils, the waters, the moon, and the hum. We are part of this, but we don’t control this.
We don’t need another theory of change. We need expanded capacity to connect in a moment.
Connection is breath and bumblebee.
Can you feel the aliveness of this?
How where you are—what you notice, what you feel, what you think about, how you trust, how you listen—is breath and bumblebee.
This isn’t an idea.
Every moment is alive and pollinating what’s inside it.
I’m not sharing this in order to convince you of anything. Just as I trust that I don’t know more than a moment, I also trust that I don’t know more than you. No matter who we are, we can only see a little.
As I loop this wisp of thought back to the page, I find a row of pencils dulled from use, my tea long gone, and my cat who has uncurled and curled herself in her basket too many times to count. I am grateful for this moment with you, and I trust that this little essay is much more than I can see.
*
So it is. Melissa
We don’t need another theory of change. We need expanded capacity to connect.
*I know delight as an expansive energetic landscape of opening, passage, and pollination; it is palpable material and fertile soil for reciprocal connection of light; it lives well beyond its dictionary definitions.
