Resources

A mural in Minneapolis by Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, Greta McLain, Niko Alexander, and Pablo Hernandez Difference holds potential energy. Springs stretch; water flows; objects fall; cities burn. The potential energy of difference is experienced as tension, and it is released as a flood of emotion or action. Sometimes the flood is of learning and love, and sometimes it is rage and destruction.

Life is a constant adaption. —Carlos Gershenson

Over the last several weeks, Mary Nations and Royce Holladay have shared several blog articles about Generative Engagement.This week, they conclude their series with a look at where they've been and where you can take it next. 

Have you ever committed to making a significant change in your life, only to find yourself slipping back into the very behaviors you wanted to change? Regardless of whether it’s personal change or some sort of group or organizational transformation, the hardest thing about change is that we tend to slip back into old habits. Even after we think we’ve have successfully transitioned to new ways of acting, we often realize that we have gone backwards. We feel “trapped” in past behaviors we have tried to eliminate. It’s frustrating, and self-defeating to deal with this problem.

(With deep gratitude to Michael Bischoff, Mary Nations, and Sam Grant, and others, whose narratives of death have helped me step into this self-reflection.) In the HSD Institute, we host a group on FaceBook where we invite you to join us in exploring Patterns with Death. People come there to share their own perspectives about patterns with death; they share others’ words they have found meaningful; they share questions. As I began to create this blog post, I was drawn to explore the creation of my own narrative of death. I share these thoughts with you as a suggestion and an invitation to create your own narrative around death. My hope is such a narrative might ease, inform, and comfort you and others as you, too, step into this unknown, complex transition of life.