(it's unmerited shame)
Monday, January 19, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Storytelling via spaces
Wow, what a great question, and I won't answer it as you asked.
Rather, I'll speak to literacy's role in helping people appreciate and discover stories intrinsic to spaces.
It happens a few ways--literacy--peoples ability to interpret a story intrinsic to the space, and with more human context, historically too.
Forests/floodplains in Michigan
Rivers
and the intersection between plants/water and people
Three helped me realize that:
I worked as an environmental interpreter, did a lot of field biology/watershed analysis, and also did a field project on cemeteries in my hometown. All those projects and courses helped me learn to "read" stories in human communities (e.g. gravestones over time and a cemetery communicates a lot about a place), living natural communities (seeing conflict between plant communities on a forest floor), and non-living natural stuff: reading a river's history via cues from the land itself and what it says about land upstream/downstream.
Doing so allowed me to "read" hints that tell us what a river once looked like and where it flowed when it was "young", what's happening upstream
just by looking at the bank and angle leaning trees,
how wide a river bank might have once been before suburban development happened upstream
, and how quickly (and clear) a stream might be flowing. That's being able to "read" a story in the land. Similar with knowing native plants vs. non-native species--some will disrupt the distribution of native fauna as they compete for space (even to an extent that some species engage in chemical warfare and change soil composition).
Wow, what a great question, and I won't answer quite as you asked!
Rather, consider literacy's role in helping people appreciate and discover stories intrinsic to how they relate to spaces (or other things).
I'll point to philosopher Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic and the role of relationships: the idea that we can look at fellow humans, other animals, plants, water, and the soil as neighbors in the same community--human, biotic (living things), and abiotic (rocks and stuff).
Some plants will grow only in salty environments. People salt footpaths and roads in Michigan--so we see very different kinds of plants near sidewalk borders and roadsides. From there, you can tell a story via sustainability about the social, legal, economic, and environmental impacts of salt.
e.g. telling a story about rock salt and its role in boosting an invasive plant's population (slides intended for science class so some content-specific language, but intended to be mostly accessible for public understanding)
https://www.academia.edu/6992633/The_Phragmites_australis_Invasion_and_the_use_of_Rock_Salt_as_a_Road_De-Icer
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Coping with various degrees of agency
One thing I was reminded about myself last year: when unmet with care, mental health challenges can link closely to abuse, it's actually more subtle and prevalent than the public (even most people I know) make it out to be, and most people are less competent at intervening with detrimental behavior than they'd like to acknowledge—even when it’s their own behavior.
It's sometimes upsetting, but it’s somewhat comforting to know overwhelming suffering isn’t the same as unbearable suffering. You’re cognizant of overwhelming suffering—frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, apathy—you can observe it come and go. If you're at the brink, it's a good time to call anyone for help.
When something's overwhelming yet bearable, the line between what we're able to withstand versus what we're willing to tolerate blurs. At that point one compromises their own quality of life, and in a terribly negative feedback loop, it also takes down others', which tends to make their situation worse.
The guide linked below's helpful for roughly recognizing and coping with some behaviors, but it's missing some nuance and 40% of it feels condemning still--maybe because it focuses on what behaviors fail to fit with a "normal" or "healthy" individual rather than how those behaviors might be exercised to an advantage, and acknowledge that choosing to work through mental health issues is a healthier choice. In October I concluded (but in some part refuse to accept) that some things don't ever really heal, we just get better at managing circumstance and how we respond to suffering until we reach the end of our line. Failures and suffering are inevitable, but you can make them necessary to your life's path and fail forward—fail in a direction aligned with your most genuine aspirations.
The best tweaks for reactively handling stress I can share tend to be (listed from simplest/smallest and most desperate starting point to most significant):
1) Find presence/regain clarity of mind and attention by doing simple things that engage your senses (touch/motion, sound, smell, etc.)
e.g. feel pain (a safe alternative to harming oneself: eat a lot of hot sauce, quickly), try to hold something/someone tightly, cook, garden/farm, do dishes by hand, create music
2) Find your "flow states" and do what's needed to get there--things that immerse and engage your attention in ways that you lose sense of effort, time, and self (aka, get "into the zone" athlete/musician/artist/dancer/physicist etc.)—create the environment or circumstances necessary for you to get engaged to re-stabilize.
3) To alleviate anxiety and nerves and increase your capacity to cope with stress, push yourself through intense if not stressful situations (especially exercise and intensive work) earlier in the day, and devote time to de-escalate from them (intentional breathing/meditate, read a paper book, hike slowly outdoors, etc.)
4) Find and let yourself fail safely in the presence of caring (actually, if possible loving--in the sense they're willing to help you be at your best or celebrate you as you are if you're already living as yourself at your fullest) people (or animals) to talk it/feel it through with, or at least knowing that they're present, so it can help you re-examine the parameters and mechanisms of your own mental threshold.
"Courage cannot be taught, but when it’s scaffolded, it’s encouraged."
5) Redirect your own awareness of anger/anxiety/sadness/apathy toward preventing recognizable circumstances that contribute to other peoples' or your own unnecessary suffering
http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Programs/Family_to_Family/PTSD_Module_Pevised_Feb_2011.pdf
Note: The five points are also listed for starting in situations where one might have little agency for leaving their surroundings (e.g. isolated.stuck) to situations that allow more time, attention, and space with various privileges or luxuries assumed (e.g. if you're fortunate to have people you can trust). #4's particularly rare and most challenging to find for me--I'm basically resorting to #5 in hopes of creating #4.
It's sometimes upsetting, but it’s somewhat comforting to know overwhelming suffering isn’t the same as unbearable suffering. You’re cognizant of overwhelming suffering—frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, apathy—you can observe it come and go. If you're at the brink, it's a good time to call anyone for help.
When something's overwhelming yet bearable, the line between what we're able to withstand versus what we're willing to tolerate blurs. At that point one compromises their own quality of life, and in a terribly negative feedback loop, it also takes down others', which tends to make their situation worse.
The guide linked below's helpful for roughly recognizing and coping with some behaviors, but it's missing some nuance and 40% of it feels condemning still--maybe because it focuses on what behaviors fail to fit with a "normal" or "healthy" individual rather than how those behaviors might be exercised to an advantage, and acknowledge that choosing to work through mental health issues is a healthier choice. In October I concluded (but in some part refuse to accept) that some things don't ever really heal, we just get better at managing circumstance and how we respond to suffering until we reach the end of our line. Failures and suffering are inevitable, but you can make them necessary to your life's path and fail forward—fail in a direction aligned with your most genuine aspirations.
The best tweaks for reactively handling stress I can share tend to be (listed from simplest/smallest and most desperate starting point to most significant):
1) Find presence/regain clarity of mind and attention by doing simple things that engage your senses (touch/motion, sound, smell, etc.)
e.g. feel pain (a safe alternative to harming oneself: eat a lot of hot sauce, quickly), try to hold something/someone tightly, cook, garden/farm, do dishes by hand, create music
2) Find your "flow states" and do what's needed to get there--things that immerse and engage your attention in ways that you lose sense of effort, time, and self (aka, get "into the zone" athlete/musician/artist/dancer/physicist etc.)—create the environment or circumstances necessary for you to get engaged to re-stabilize.
3) To alleviate anxiety and nerves and increase your capacity to cope with stress, push yourself through intense if not stressful situations (especially exercise and intensive work) earlier in the day, and devote time to de-escalate from them (intentional breathing/meditate, read a paper book, hike slowly outdoors, etc.)
4) Find and let yourself fail safely in the presence of caring (actually, if possible loving--in the sense they're willing to help you be at your best or celebrate you as you are if you're already living as yourself at your fullest) people (or animals) to talk it/feel it through with, or at least knowing that they're present, so it can help you re-examine the parameters and mechanisms of your own mental threshold.
"Courage cannot be taught, but when it’s scaffolded, it’s encouraged."
5) Redirect your own awareness of anger/anxiety/sadness/apathy toward preventing recognizable circumstances that contribute to other peoples' or your own unnecessary suffering
http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Programs/Family_to_Family/PTSD_Module_Pevised_Feb_2011.pdf
Note: The five points are also listed for starting in situations where one might have little agency for leaving their surroundings (e.g. isolated.stuck) to situations that allow more time, attention, and space with various privileges or luxuries assumed (e.g. if you're fortunate to have people you can trust). #4's particularly rare and most challenging to find for me--I'm basically resorting to #5 in hopes of creating #4.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
