forandringens vinde

Ecosystems flourish because they are teeming with diversity. This can teach us a lot about human relationships, as we often reject those ‘not like us’ in favour of those who seem outwardly familiar. Living connections depend on two basic things: allowing the self to exist while at the same time helping other(s) come alive. We lack this idea of reciprocity in our relationships. If you look at philosophical books about love, you find that you allegedly love someone or something because you gain what you don’t already possess as an individual. In this view, love is a resource. It is something we can ‘extract’, just as we extract from the living land. We have colonised love in the West. As we all know from the partnership war zone, such relationships often fail because they inhibit the freedom of others. They fail because they are not faithful to ecological reality. Healthy relating means growing through the other’s growth. For me, this is a working definition of love: a practice that makes others alive and, through this, enlivens yourself. Our bodies still function according to this ecological love, a harbinger of our animal nature.

“Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.”

“In order to be free you simply have to be so, without asking permission of anybody. You have to have your own hypothesis about what you are called to do, and follow it, not giving in to circumstances or complying with them. But that sort of freedom demands powerful inner resources, a high degree of self-awareness, a consciousness of your responsibility to yourself and therefore to other people.”