By Lia Aurami for Enlivening Edge Magazine
If you’ve been feeling slowed down, blah, apathetic, perhaps from summer (or winter) and/or from various things going on in the world, here is some good news of real-world happenings to lift your vision, your spirits, and enliven your edge moving into September and beyond.
The inspiration for this sharing is the June 2021 EE Magazine Editorial which presented the metaphor that your endeavors might be living under, on, or as a bridge to the future. I’d like to look at a representative sample of articles from EE Magazine published in August so far and identify for you which endeavors might be considered on a bridge or as a bridge.
Both kinds of endeavors are inspiring and uplifting. They offer us specific places to put our feet down. As we march from day to day possibly into what many people can see as an uncertain or even undesirable future, the more bridges to desirable futures we are aware of, the more we can foresee an other end of the bridge that’s going to be excitingly satisfying.
As a wise thinker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Once we’ve done that exercise together here, you can begin to take heart as you read our other articles, noticing how many bridges are becoming available, and how many exist and are just now becoming more visible to us.
Brief refresher:
Living under the bridge means the endeavor/group/organization is struggling to survive. Its future is uncertain. Yet it can ask for help, and can receive resources, and become itself a bridge to the future.
Living on the bridge means the endeavor/group/organization is doing well, and expected to continue. It is well connected to its resources, and they seem stable enough. It has some resilience, some agility, and its future looks about as solid as anything can be regarded to be. These endeavors will help keep the world stable and going. Our lives will be based on their functioning.
Living as the bridge is both more risky and more exciting. A group/endeavor/organization/project which is just now getting going, just now still in its formative stages, just now being crystalized or co-created, is living as a bridge to our collective future. It is “building the airplane as we fly it” or laying down the steps just before we step onto them.
However, when living as the bridge, the future is not completely uncertain. There is momentum. There is a trajectory. It is a discernible bridge, not a jump off of a cliff. We can see the future that is likely if things continue in the way they are currently headed.
So, looking back over August’s EE Magazine offerings, here are some examples:
Evolving Holacracy Meeting Procedures
On “Leadership” – Part 1: Assumptions and Motivations in Two Leadership Paradigms
Reaching Game B through Enlivenment – Social Ecosystems Connecting Event September 12
Research Shows That Self-Managing Organizations Have Better Occupational Well-Being
The public Central Library Oodi in Helsinki, Finland, has gone through a process of “becoming Teal” and represents primarily an endeavor living on the bridge to the future. It’s operating according to plan; its circumstances are unlikely to change; it offers a solid and inspiring example to others who might be living as a bridge to such a future for their organizations. We can pretty much count on the Oodi Library being in our collective future.
We are aware of many more than just the endeavors mentioned above, just as you are, and some of those which didn’t get mentioned here are downright awesome! That’s where you come in: share the ones you know about, via the comments here!
Lia Aurami: Within Enlivening Edge, I energize a variety of roles to express my sacred life mission: to amplify our human capacity for living, working, and relating within shared higher consciousness. That optimizes the chances of success of transformative changes, by operationalizing collective and spiritual intelligence to help organizations be efficient and effective. I delight in creating and amplifying ripples of all that!
