Have you ever lost the experience of knowing? I have the intellectual understanding of what I do well, but the substance that fills that out, the experience of knowing? I’ve lost that.For me, the experience is embodied, the knowing is developed and nurtured in collaborative, generative conversations. They’re like a gym & garden, in one. A place where I can exercise my strengths in different ways. And a place where I (and others) witness being co-creators & participants in a living ecosystem; an ecosystem alive only for as long as the conversation lasts.However, over months and years, I’ve observed group dynamics have shifted into more and more verbal transactions and extractions by way of subtle and overt games of dominance. Speaking at one another, cornering, leveraging, asserting positionality over one another. I’ve wondered, is it me? Am I seeing more clearly than I once did? Are larger social patterns more accentuated, now? And then I wondered, surely there are still gym-gardens just waiting to be discovered? Maybe, all of the above? When I see the signals being dropped, redirected, & (frankly) obliterated, I don’t experience myself as part of the whole. Instead, I find myself wondering: ‘Am I really here?’ Not just in this conversation, but existentially?For years, podcasting has served a need that followed knowing my thinking abilities. A weaving of self-expression & thought. Not in comparison to anyone, but as my own. With the experience of knowing sucked out of my intellectual understanding of self, I feel unmoored. I need to step away for a time.I’m going to wander, contemplate, be — for a bit. When I find the experience of knowing again, I’ll be back.If you’ve been listening all along, thank you. If you decide to remain through this quiet season, thank you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heldinmotion.substack.com
