Hot Buttered Toast – unknowing + growing
Co-creating, unlearning and being certain enough to embrace uncertainty
Unknowing is rich. There is an expansiveness to not knowing. Spacious. Open. Generous. When someone says to me, ‘I don’t know, but I’d like to learn more,’ – I like them, immediately.
How can the light fall like this? The setting sun so warm, gentle on my bare face. The frosted grass, beneath my feet, sparkling as though the kids have been at the glitter again. Watch the light dance – wild sprites. Marvelling. Marvellous. Is this real? How is this joy allowed?
The Pup so excited to be out for his second walk of the day, he can’t slow down – his ears pinned back by the momentum of pulling me, at quite some speed, all the way down the road to the field where I walk him (when he’s really walking me).
These are the thoughts that ripple through me, while I walk. The thick cloak of worry I left the house with, beginning to lift.
Mr R (sort of) hit someone else’s car this week. He wasn’t sure if the wing mirror was already cracked or not, but left a note, with his name and number, explaining what had happened. The reply, at the end of a long day – our eldest finding her feet anew, in a new school, with all the emotional fireworks you might imagine that entails; our youngest, incredibly grumpy with the entire world for no apparent reason and every good reason – felt like that moment in early Spring, when the light suddenly changes.
“Hey Paul. Guess what, it’s your lucky day. The wing mirror was already cracked! No damage done. Really decent of you to leave a note – good chap! Life-affirming actually. Take care. Phil.”
Mr R, who’d not had the best day either (still feeling the remnants of fatigue post-virus, last week) came to show it to me, half-stunned, half-smiling.
I’m more cynical than him I think… born and raised in the rougher bits of South East London, where if you didn’t have your wits about you, you’d lose your keys and credit cards in the blink of a blind eye. Three bikes stolen. Two cars broken into. A phone nabbed from the table. Several purses and pairs of sunglasses. A favourite ring, once. I used to expect people to take things.
When Mr R told me he’d left a note on the other car, I nodded. My mind went in two directions, simultaneously – one, an angry voicemail, listing the extensive damage done and our car insurance premium sent through the roof. The other… well, you already know that ending.
It was what we both needed to read. To be reminded that yes, there are SO many decent people in this shared world of ours. That, in fact, our days are made up of many interactions, big and small, with many, many good-hearted people.
And I’m wary of the phrase ‘like-minded people’. It’s used a lot, I know, and by lots of people I admire and whose communities I am part of, but I’m also aware that some of the most important conversations I’ve had have been with people who were not, ostensibly, like-minded.
To agree is easy. To look all around and see nodding heads. No tension. No scope to learn.
The richest marrow comes from those who dissent… who challenge… who say “that’s true for all of you, but THIS is my experience – will you allow it in?”
I read this piece by psychologist and author of Originals, Adam Grant. In it he writes about meeting Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist, economist and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman was, unbeknownst to Grant, in the audience at one of his talks and approached him at the end:
‘Kahneman stops me, and says, “That was wonderful. I was wrong.” His eyes twinkled as he said it, and he lit up.
[Grant said] “You seem to really take joy in being wrong.”
[Kahneman] said something to the effect of: “no one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.
Finding out that I was wrong is the only way I’m sure that I’ve learned anything. Otherwise, I’m just going around and living in a world that’s dominated by confirmation bias, or desirability bias. And I’m just affirming the things I already think I know.”
On the how part, he said for him it’s about attachment. He thinks there are good ideas everywhere, and his attachment to his ideas is very provisional. He doesn’t fall in love with them, they don’t become part of his identity.
That ability to detach and say, look, your ideas are not your identity. They’re just hypotheses. Sometimes they’re accurate. More often, they’re wrong or incomplete. And that’s part of what being not only a social scientist, but just a good thinker is all about.
Well, I love that. The non-attachment and neutrality that my friend
writes about, so powerfully, too.This is what I am trying to do a lot more of in my life.
It doesn’t come easy.
Something, I feel, about having a name which translates as ‘self-certain’ has either given me god-awful imposter syndrome because I am always doubting myself, or perhaps (if I’m being a little more kind to myself, which I definitely want to be), a curiosity about all the ways in which I am not assured or confident about anything, and how this seems to be more and more true as I get older.
And, most importantly, how I do not feel it is a bad thing.
Unknowing is rich. There is an expansiveness to not knowing. Spacious. Open. Generous.
When someone says to me, ‘I don’t know, but I’d like to learn more,’ – I like them, immediately.
I am 43, the world around me is full of crises and contradictions; division and distraction politics are rife. Those in patriarchal, capitalist, dogmatic power know that when we fight among ourselves – even though almost everyone on this Earth ultimately wants the same thing: peace, love, security, community – we are weak, suggestible, gullible, futile.
We may all want to live better lives and see our societies become more equitable, our land flourish, our communities thrive, but until we come together, we are insignificant shards. Which is not to say that one person cannot do extraordinary things – they can – but I’m more interested in MORE of us making the extraordinary, ordinary, together.
I’ve written before about how my youngest was really taken down by anxiety last year. Had you known her from babyhood, this fact would have floored you. Ebullient, curious, loving, warm, chatty, sociable – she has always been full of unmitigated joy; cup, full-full-full.
What I’d started to pick up on though, was her incessant need (which felt very fearful to me, as her mother, to recognise) to justify people’s actions. All people. All actions.
A crushing headline or piece of historical fact or conversation about an upsetting incident or an argument at school were increasingly met with her mind scrabbling to find moral absolutes. That everyone is good and that the world is good is her foundation. Heartbreakingly flawed and simplistic though it is.
Except that, for her, it holds (mostly) true. And how madly lucky that makes her, and us, and the community we’re part of, I do not, for one iota of a moment, take for granted.
Her friends, her family, her teachers, our neighbours, our wider friendship circles and community – almost everyone she has met is, in her eyes, plainly wonderful.
So… is she wrong?
Is she wrong to build her assumptions on humanity, solely on the sphere she inhabits?
No. I don’t think she is.
When I look at my children and realise, again, with lightning strikes of sadness through my heart, that their porous openness, their goodness, their trust, their love, is precisely what makes them most vulnerable, I do not know what to do with myself.
We read stories of warring tribes who come together for the common good. Of bickering siblings who remember their love, and go on to save the world. Of living creatures of myriad animal and human incarnations whose hearts are all that matter –it’s their hearts that always save the day.
My youngest – who was so fearful of the truth, that she was compelled to make up her own fictitious back-stories to soften the blow of what she knows, underneath it all, to be heartbreakingly true – taught me a huge amount.
She taught me that our ideas and stories are fluid. That a headline is not a human being. That the lives we live are so multi-faceted, it’s impossible to ever tell the story from ALL the sides. A slight tilt of the head, and there’s another angle.
She also showed me that we have to be able to see the very worst for what it is and witness it without fear. Rock-bottom brutality exists among humans. Horror exists among humans. Cruelty and despair and destruction exists among humans.
She began to overcome her anxiety when she opened herself up to questioning and making sense of her fears. Some fears are senseless and we cannot explain them away. And she learned other ways of feeling those feelings without letting them carry her away, too. She learned to reframe, and tap, breathe, move it through her body.
Somatic Therapy remains one of THE MOST POWERFUL tools we have found and it’s a core part of the new 2024 Cycle at mine + Mr R’s co-created space (more on this below), The Clearing (which Mr R and I launched five years ago, back in 2019).
Our 9-part Somatic Healing Course, created by the inimitably brilliant
saves me, over and over and over again.It reminds me of what my body holds on to and how it can let go.
It reminds me that what I thought I knew, I only suspected, and even then, I was as wrong as I was right.
And in this increasingly divided, increasingly frightening, increasingly chaotic shared world of ours (and yet, no less divided, frightening or chaotic than it ever has been, if we scan our her-story and history books) it feels as though the most helpful thing I can be, is neither right nor wrong; separating my ideas from my identity, one thought at a time.
Something I’ve Read
Cacophony of Bone by
This is my ‘once the kids are in bed’ book. It demands silence, this one. Reading it feels like taking short, sweet, surprising sips of something delicious and unfamiliar… I pause, re-read, nod, smile and place my hand on my heart, a lot, while reading. The flow of the book is such a joy – it feels like water – allowing me to dip in, absorb, and move out, once more. An extract, below – drink it in. Ah. The joy.
5th
Brought in, for the table, blackberry leaves and cow parsley.
Placed them in the sage-green enamel milk churn.
Seeing it against the yellow Formica made me feel like me again for the first time in so long.
Is this ridiculous? Am I ridiculous? Do I care?
The moon above the trees, in that pale electric blue only to be found here, was somewhat shocking.
How can it all be real:the moon, the sky, the moon in the sky?
The moon in the sky, and us still here beneath it?
Is it possible to fall in love with a field?
With white blossom blowing in a gentle breeze?
With the light that touches both, making untameable things of them?
So close to finishing TP that I could weep.
The hawthorn, in the early evening, seemed to urge me onwards, seemed to say it will all be OK.
When the book is done, I am cutting off all my hair and giving it to this wild, beautiful garden.
Something I’ve Cooked
Lots of kale in this week’s box. Not the easiest, but I do enjoy it until I stop enjoying it, and at that point, usually, we’re approaching Spring. Cut up really fine, pan-cooked until soft with olive oil, sea salt, sumac and all the Mediterranean herbs, a bit of finely chopped leek, and then an egg cracked on top. Eaten on toast, also doused with olive oil, for lunch, with a cup of strong chai, softened with a glug of cashew milk.
Something I’ve Co-Created
Mr R and I like to write together. I’m slowly, steadily beginning to put words down on paper for my sixth book, and can feel the process making itself known, but of all the books I’ve written, it was SATTVA: The Ayurvedic Way to Live Well that felt the most in keeping with the spirit of the thing. A short sabbatical from work, three days/week, the two of us, side by side, wandering, wondering, writing, until we had our 75k words and something we were both immensely proud to allow out into the world.
This February, we are co-creating one more – sharing our fifth cycle at The Clearing.
Mr R and I dreamed The Clearing into being back in September 2019. We wanted to create a home for our seasonal learnings – a place where we could knit our love of Nature, Ayurveda, wondrous weeds, helpful plants and good old-fashioned storytelling, and share it with those who might be interested in that sort of thing.
It’s humble work – foraging and feeling, growing and harvesting – and all the more reverent for it. The Clearing is filled with joy and hope, alongside practical reflections and rituals for the spirit, ceremonies & sacred soulful experiences, alongside biodynamic growing, nourishment & seasonality.
Mr R is the keeper of words + chief nourisher at The Clearing, and from February 1st, Imbolc, when our new cycle launches – we will be pouring recipes, reflections, rituals and rays of hope into a beautiful digital book, every month, which we share with all of our members, around the time of the Full Moon.
For 2024 we are returning to a dedicated
monthly offering of new writing
and rites, recipes and reflections,
within downloadable digital journals,
ready for you to read in your own time.
An old Pagan tradition is the gathering of omens
on each of the Twelve Midwinter days which, in turn,
correspond to each of the twelve months of the coming year.
And it is this simple idea that will seed our storytelling and starting poitns
for the coming new cycle at The Clearing.
We have been open and observing and start with a fresh book of writings at
Imbolc, February 1st, and at every full moon for the year to come.
We look forward to sharing with you.
Paid Subscribers to this letter will also receive their money back via a special discount code, if they’d like to come and join us over at The Clearing too. You can find your code below and if you’d like to become a paid member to my Substack and/or join The Clearing at some point in the future, you’ll also be able to use the code at any time after joining as it’s valid for the rest of the year.
Until next time,
With love,
Emine
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