Saving our world did not require all of us to change – just enough of us.
My part in the Great Turning – the transition where Earth shifted from the Planet of Division to the Planet of Cooperation – was so very small. The majority of us who catalyzed the Turning can say the same. But when enough of those small parts combined into something greater than each of the individual parts, it was at once as substantial as a mountain, as gentle as a calm breath, and as lovely as a field of wildflowers in full bloom. Without any force at all, the old world gratefully bowed to the majesty of our collective radiance. And when the knees of the old world hit the soil, the decomposition and regeneration process was swifter than any of us ever imagined.
It’s why we’re still here in 2050. It’s why humans and nature are well on our way to being completely unified, thriving, cooperative, and unafraid.
As I mentioned, my part in this was so very small. All I did was listen.
Back in 2024, many of us were hearing without listening. And of course it was this way. The opportunity to hear was all around us. We could hear about the corruption of governments, the impending death of our earth’s ecosphere, the mass murder of children in schools, the rampant crime and homelessness in cities, populations experiencing starvation despite massive excesses of food, inequitable and ineffective systems of care, mass extinction, the neo-slavery of prison systems, the horrible pollution of factory farming, multigenerational wars, and infinite other stories decrying the horrors of life on our planet.
You could hear paradoxical and conflicting viewpoints on what to do about these things, and hear even more about who was to blame – and often it was you. You could hear a lot about how your water use or your poor recycling habits or your refusal to buy organic food or your traveling habits or your politics or your sexuality or your skin color or your job or the actions you were taking or weren’t taking were to blame for the world that appeared to be crumbling before our very eyes.
As a collective, hearing the beating of these endless drums of fear led many of us to believe humans were a lost cause. And so, many of us became instruments in a monotonous symphony of apathy conducted by the refrain, “Unless all of us change, nothing will change, so why change? Unless all of us change, nothing will change, so why change? Unless all of us change, nothing will change so why change?”
And of course it was this way. Most of us alive in 2024 grew up on the Planet of Division.
But this story isn’t about all of us. It isn’t even about most of us. This story is about my tiny part in Great Turning. And, as I mentioned, all I did was listen.
I didn’t always know how to listen. For most of my young life, I was one of the many who heard without listening. I heard that it was my purpose to go to college, so I did. I heard that I was supposed to use the privilege of my degree to change the world, so I tried. I heard that grad school would make my dreams to change the world legitimate, so I went. I heard that marriage and kids and home ownership would make me whole, so I proposed to someone. I heard that $75,000 a year would make me happy, so I got a few salaried jobs where I sold my employers most of my attention.
By the end of all this, I was in chronic pain, I wasn’t menstruating, I was heartbroken, and I was addicted to marijuana. I certainly wasn’t happy, healthy, or well.
Serendipity would have it that my final job in a career spanning twelve years opened the door for me to take a deep dive into human health and wellness. At the time, I learned that human thriving is based on connection to nature, the ability to tap into and move by our own internal rhythms, and – perhaps most importantly – thriving rests on understanding the gifts we are uniquely here to give in service to the greater good. I learned that this understanding does not and cannot come from external standards.
I looked around me, and I was in a system that – innocently and with the best of intentions – forced everyone involved to sit inside all day and follow a schedule they didn’t have any power over. It was a megalith that crushed human spirits in an endless grinding gauntlet of external measurements for “success.” I couldn’t reconcile the difference between what I had learned about wellness and the system I was choosing to support.
There was a voice inside me with the cyclical refrain, “It’s time for you to leave behind everything you’ve built.”
Despite this clear message from within, I kept hearing the dismal rhythm of the drums of fear: “How will I live without a job? Who will I be without my directorship position? How can I let go of everything I’ve put my entire life force into for the past 12 years?” The beating of these drums paralyzed me for months, and the thought of changing was terrifying.
But my body kept failing. My inner voice kept screaming. It would take the serendipity of a car crash where my first response was, “I’m just glad I don’t have to go to work today,” to get me to finally choose listening over hearing. When I listened to the messages my body, my inner voice, and my research about human thriving had been sending for over a year, all of a sudden I had courage beyond measure.
In this infinite courage, leaping away from my fancy job titles, my tens of thousands of dollars of educational investment, and my financial comfort was effortless and obvious. I leapt toward nature and toward service. My chronic pain went away, my menstrual cycle returned, and I found myself in the radiant energy of one of the most compassionate leaders I had ever met. He lovingly infected me with the question,“What are your gifts, and why aren’t you giving them to us?”
I said yes to the quest behind this question, and for years my life would boomerang back and forth between hearing and listening in search of the answer. The steps in my quest followed clear patterns. When I defaulted to hearing, my life’s experience was riddled with doubt, fear, victimhood, and I often felt dead inside. When I pushed myself to listen, my life freely flowed in a river of trust, courage, power, and feeling exquisitely alive.
While hearing never brought me closer to the answer at the center of my quest, listening always did.
Listening brought me to the questions, “What would I do even if I never got paid to do it?” and “Who do I love to serve?” and “What forms of giving fill my cup as I give?”
It was through listening that I learned that my identification with my race, sexuality, gender, nationality, culture and politics sowed seeds of division. When I put those down, I stopped hearing others and started listening to them. In listening, I learned that I could connect to and cooperate with anyone because enacting the patience to understand eventually reveals common ground and a win-win solution.
It was through listening that I learned that the past doesn’t exist and we have no control over the future. I forgave myself for all my mistakes, and learned to forgive others for theirs. I realized that the best strategy for the future was to do what felt right in every moment, and hold all my preparations loosely so they’d be flexible enough to accommodate moment to moment changes.
It was through listening that I learned that not all of us need to change for the world to change, and I certainly don’t need to be the one to change others or the whole world. Especially because of how listening taught me that change begins with full acceptance of all that is as it is.
Through listening I learned that I wasn’t the only one listening. There were lots of us listening, gaining courage, discovering our true gifts, and stepping away from the habits, patterns, behaviors, and systems that no longer made sense to us. At some point, I started to trust that there would indeed be enough of us for this world to change.
And as it turned out, there were. Over time, those of us who were listening found one another, and started coordinating our listening-based efforts.
The engines behind the endless drums of fear began to fade as more drummers chose to transition from making noise to listening. The monotonous symphony of apathy faded to a whisper as a new symphony conducted by the joy of living in alignment with unique purpose filled the air. We were all so busy listening and cooperating there was nothing left to hear.
My part in the Great Turning was so small and so simple. All I did, over and over and over, was listen.
And I was just one amongst enough of us.