For the past couple of years, I’ve been living more and more like a philosopher, and figuring out a little more each day what that actually means. While this has been true for the past 20 or so years, the most recent chapter since I quit my career and ventured off on my own with Positive Philosophy Consulting has been rich and challenging, at times unsettling, but more often than not, really encouraging.
Despite the inconsistency with which I’ve been sharing the process along the way, I have been doing philosophy in ways I could hardly have imagined over a decade ago when I got my doctorate degree. In terms of being a philosopher, a public philosopher, a philosophical practitioner, a philosophical consultant…each year it changes.
Once I stopped being open to roles in organizations and started intentionally focusing on a strategic and purposeful approach to my own work, what I have been since referring to as a form of “deep local engagement,” many people in my community shared my enthusiasm for approaching “the work” differently.
Last year, I was met with opportunities to create learning spaces for our city, local businesses, youth of color, and non-profit leaders. I created and shared new content about love, liberation, freedom, power, healing, and how to move together to create the kind of equitable and inclusive communities we want. There were even candid conversations about white supremacy and how whiteness shows up in leadership spaces, well-intentioned equity efforts, and our interpersonal relationships.
It is worth noting that while my own understanding of all these things has continued to evolve and refine over the past few years, none of it was really up for discussion when I was leading equity and culture change efforts within higher education. Even though I did “experiment” quite a bit in my former roles, I also ended up catching a lot of backlash, which eventually pushed me out of those spaces completely.
The fact that I do what I do now, and share what I really believe in with groups of people who want to engage in these ways, is itself a tremendous shift in experience for which I am always grateful. At times, I’m still genuinely surprised that people outside of academia are often more receptive to transformative ideas and participating in different types of shared spaces. Despite my own (well-documented) frustrations with academia the whole time I was in it, I guess I held out a little hope it would be a natural place to embrace learning, critical thinking, reflecting on who we are, together, with a willingness to do things differently.
Turns out, you have to do that work in community. And community isn’t always a given in the places where you work.
If I were a more serious business person, or a philosopher with a stronger penchant for marketing and self-promotion, I would have been noting the happenings along the way of my solopreneur journey. In just the past year, I’ve done keynotes about becoming who you are, retreats to nurture equitable collaborations within local communities, created six-, eight-, and ten-week series to move groups through the process of transformative learning experiences. As the year wrapped, I was astounded at all we did together and overwhelmed by the willingness from others to support and engage with me in this work. If I don’t share it here, or elsewhere, how will others know what I am up to?
Part of me regrets not sharing the rationale behind experimental fishbowl dialogues and how that all played out. Or the oh-so-predictable ways motivated staff get frustrated when leadership is too hung up on themselves to follow through on stated commitments to change. Or the incredible shifts in how people understand themselves, and how they can go about their work differently, after just a few supportive sessions where we got below the surface of what was really nagging at them. Or how much healing and love and learning and intimacy is truly at the core of doing all this well.
I didn’t document and share out those insights, lessons, and observations. Nor did I share how much I’ve been wrestling with my own nagging feeling that too many adults (particularly, adults who engage with each other as professionals) are resistant to actually thinking. Even more don’t seem to know what learning feels like. Perhaps this is why some people are so uncomfortable when presented with an opportunity to really learn something. Also because this creates space to align knowledge and belief with action — to change.
This is a hard tension for me, because I also wholly believe there are so many people who long to be in learning spaces with others who share that desire. There are people for whom connecting in these ways is energizing, motivating, and clarifying. I’m one of them. And each day, I think there are more and more of us who feel this as a not just a want, but a need.
Especially as the world continues to shift and break open before our eyes, as we witness ongoing devastation beyond our worst nightmares, and we are forced to look at ourselves more honestly.
This may seem like a hard shift, but there’s no use in equivocating. I’ve spent hours every day, for nearly six months, every morning and every night, watching horrors unfold as Israel escalated its 75-year-long oppressive colonial project into full-blown genocide and live-streamed ethnic cleansing of Palestinians with impunity, shamelessness, and blatant disregard for international law or any ounce of humanity. To be in the belly of the beast, knowing the US has made all of this possible and continues to protect Israel while so many people remain silent or continue to defend these atrocities, is a soul-ripping experience of dissonance.
All of this has changed me. I’m not going to make this about me, but I am encouraged to know I am not alone, that there are people in my own community and across the planet who are similarly touching new dimensions of understanding when it comes to what liberation really requires, what liberation really means. Through the agony of unbearable grief and rage, I sense that we have been shifted, collectively, and we have been called to change still, again, in very real, tangible, human ways.
I’m not completely comfortable talking about philosophy things knowing there are people dying in the thousands and millions in Gaza and Sudan and Congo and Haiti and on and on. One can rightfully ask, “Is this really what we need from you right now?” This exact post? No. Not this. But there is something burning me up inside and I know I could be doing more and I believe there is a thread here worth tugging to see what it undoes and where it leads.
I don’t know that I will ever get to a place where I review and share details from the past couple years about what it has been like to be a philosopher getting gigs as a consultant. To be honest, I don’t want to be that great of a business person or expert marketer, and I hope I succeed in living in ways that move me further away from those things.
Because more than anything, I want to remain responsive to the world, to move with it, to be willing to change in ways that are demanded of us, particularly if we are to meet the historical realities of the times in which we are living. I said every year has been different, and this year, I feel more underdetermined and open-ended than ever before.
As usual, this is a long-winded and somewhat meandering post. I guess the point, if it is necessary to make one at all, is to note that I’m still learning. I have been learning. Over the past couple years, I’ve continued to grow and change. Where I am today and what we are all confronted with in terms of our own humanity is hardly fathomable to the me of ten years past. Through all this, who I am remains in flux while being grounded in some very simple, steady truths.
I still believe in the power of philosophy to change us, that when we learn to see ourselves and each other more clearly, we better understand ourselves and our place in the world. That gives us the path and power to change it. Of course, this is what we must do.
It is within this context that I feel compelled to share. So, after a long period of sporadic silences over the past couple years, may this post be the one that breaks the ice.*
*As mentioned in my previous post, I am doing more writing and sharing other projects on my Buy Me a Coffee Page. Please follow along there if you’d like updates, downloadables, and other ways to support my work.