Inner Stability Allows Citizen and City Agency
I woke with a lurch last night from a dream. Two loved ones and I were in a precarious situation that required physical balance. We had to each provide that balance for ourselves and there was a point where one was reaching down, to put her hand on my head for balance and I asked her to take her hand away because she was going to cause me to fall. She let go of me and a moment later she fell.
Imagine a criss-cross of I-beams, allowing you to step up from one level to another. Like a rock scramble, only it’s big bars of metal and between them, and below, is air. A fall is not a good thing.
So when my loved one fell, she bounced around and then landed on a bar, near the ground. She called to us, and then stopped speaking. When I scrambled down to her, she was unconscious but breathing.
As I’ve been pondering the symbolism of this experience, I’ve asked myself a few questions:
How do I risk destabilizing myself and others by allowing them to lean on me too much?
How do I risk destabilizing myself and others by leaning on them too much?
When someone leans on me in a way that destabilizes me, where is the threshold where I must say so (or risk us both being destabilized)?
On the outside, between us, is a balancing act; If leaned on too much, I become destabilized and that destabilizes both of us, and when I need others to stop leaning on me it can be destabilizing for them. And the balancing act gets messier when I believe I need to have someone leaning on me to feel stable. And messier again when I avoid destabilizing someone else and causing disruption, allowing myself to be destabilized.
(NOTE: This is not about the times when we need to depend on others. For example: I’ve broken my leg and need help for a few weeks; a family member is ill or has died and I need extra support; I have a disease or condition that requires long-term support. This is about the the times when we lean on each other when we should be standing on our own, or building our capacity to stand on our own.)
Agency and inner stability
At last week’s Community of Civic Practice gathering, the words of a participant reverberated throughout my body: do not do for others what they can do for themselves. This helps me discern two kinds of ways people lean on me and I lean on them: things I can’t do and need someone else to do, and things I can do myself and ask others to do (consciously or unconsciously).
“Do not do for others what they can do for themselves.”
The dream illustrates that there are big risks that come with asking people to do work that is theirs to do, or doing the work that is mine to do, whether the work is mental or intellectual work, or emotional. Some examples:
OTHERS’ WORK
Taking on work that belongs to others:
Make lunches and do laundry for my children.
When a relationship isn’t working, I stuff down how I’m feeling and pretend everything’s ok. I do the emotional work to keep the relationship stable.
Give advice to others because I think I know what’s best for them.
Make decisions for others because I don’t believe they’ll do the right thing.
Asking people to do work that is theirs to do:
Teach my kids to do whatever they can as soon as they are able (and remind them the work is theirs to do as needed).
When a relationship isn’t working, I speak up and identify my feelings, needs, and any requests I have to repair the relationship.
Support others as they work through their decision-making; if I have expertise, I offer it if asked and leave them to do what they think is best.
Identify choices for others, as appropriate, and leave them the space they need to proceed (if not morally or life-threatening).
MY WORK
Asking people to do work that is mine to do:
Exert demands and expectations on people around me to make me happy.
When a relationship isn’t working, my stance is that the problems are external to me (they need to change, they need to do things differently), or I deny the problems exist.
Follow advice blindly, leaving research and decision-making to others.
Allow others to do the work of organizing life around me (warning: we generally don’t know this one is happening).
Doing work that is mine to do:
Investigate the things deep inside me that I enjoy, independent from anyone else.
When a relationship isn’t working, I explore how I’m feeling and examine my unmet needs to identify the emotional work that is mine to do. (Many unmet needs are mine to resolve, not on the other person.)
Exert my agency and make decisions, large and small, for myself.
Participate in the work of organizing life’s activities in ways that are active and proactive. (This involves seeking and integrating feedback from others.)
The above examples illustrate how to cultivate agency in self and other, and when we do this we are strengthening our individual and collective resilience. Resilience requires inner stability: an ability to not let my ego needs run both myself and my relationships, a confidence in both myself others to make the best decisions we can for ourselves. This inner stability is an awareness of when I need to be the focus on my attention (and others’ attention), and when others need to be the focus on my attention.
As I imagine myself back up on the I-beams in my dream, I recognize that a lack of inner stability is dangerous: if I wobble I can lose my balance and fall and if I lose my balance I can harm both myself and others. When I look after my own inner stability I am looking after myself and others. There’s another danger, that’s much harder to accept: that in asking someone to let go (or by stepping away), so I can be stable, I disrupt the other.
When I take action to do the work I need to do for myself, or to stop doing work for other people, I change the rules of the game between us. It is vital to understand that awakening agency, whether in myself or others, is destabilizing. When I asked my loved one, in my dream, to stop leaning on me because her actions were going to push me over the edge, she was unable to stabilize herself. There may be places were others need to ask me to stop leaning on them, and that will destabilize me.
“It is vital to understand that awakening agency, in myself or others, is destabilizing.”
It is not reasonable to expect to feel stable all the time, because that would involve a static world in which nothing changes. Our world is dynamic and our relationships are dynamic. I could reach the conclusion that it was necessary for me to rescue my loved one in my dream, but that would deny the clear communication that is needed from time to time: that it is no longer tenable that “this” continue.
“It is not reasonable to expect to feel stable all the time.”
It is reasonable to expect to experience the discomfort of destabilization from time to time. This is how we practise resilience. In our cities, it is necessary to develop our inner stability skills from the ground up, from individual citizens to families, neighbourhoods and organizations, our cities and our species. Inner stability skills in citizens is a survival skill for communities, cities and humanity.
“It is reasonable to expect to feel the discomfort of destabilization from time to time.”
Humans have an unspoken social contract with each other: we have independent identities and qualities and we are always in relationship with others (for survival, for cultural identity, etc.) How we balance the needs of the independent individual and collective community in our cultures varies greatly and is always in play.
Boundary awareness and inner stability
It is not possible to constantly be stable, or always avoid destabilizing others. The tension in our relationships is what ensures we grow and evolve as individuals and as communities and cities.
Embedded in our relationships with each other, at any scale, is as balancing act of meeting the needs of self, other and the larger community. Perfectly healthy choices for one person will always cause disruption in others. It is unavoidable.
Inner stability is about navigating and negotiating agency for the purpose of self-reliance (at the scale of self and citizen, families and neighbourhoods, organizations, cities and the human species).
Here are some questions I ask myself to be more conscious of my inner stability:
In what ways do I rely on other people’s discomfort so my life feels stable? I enjoy the privilege of white skin and the stability of being in the economic middle-class at the expense of quality of life of Black people, Indigenous People and People of Colour (BIPOC).
In what ways do I transfer my work to others? When I don’t acknowledge my frustration and anger about the progress of a project, I can be difficult to be with. In those instances, I am requiring the other person to do the emotional work of pointing out to me that “something’s up”. Or, when I don't acknowledge and educate myself about the privileges I enjoy, I require BIPOC to do the work of educating me.
What daily activities allow me to create the conditions for inner stability? This has changed a lot over time. In my 20s, it was walking to work. In my 30s, practices like meditation and journalling began. In my 40s, I started to spend time in nature, and in my body, with more consciousness. The effects of these activities are that I feel more centred, rather than buffeted around by what happens in the world. I am more aware of the emotions that run through me, I am more calm.
In what ways am I relying on someone else to provide stability to me? There’s a quality of dependence, in contrast to feeling centred, that frequently needs my attention. Do I need people to behave in certain ways for me to feel stable, and are these expectations reasonable? When someone needs to communicate their frustration with my actions, I find it difficult to listen to them and integrate the feedback. It is easier to hear the feedback if they are calm, rather than angry and loud. I feel stable when they are calm, but this requires them to dismiss their anger and hurt. Even if they are angry, I have to work hard to trust, rather than deny, the feedback.
Inner stability, as a means to generate agency and self-reliance, requires boundary awareness. It requires me to notice when I am invading the sovereignty of others, and when my sovereignty is invaded by others. This is not about not providing support to others, but doing so from a place of inner stability.
REFLECTION
How do you practise inner stability?
Under what conditions do you lean on the inner stability of others? (Is it sustainable?)
Under what conditions to others lean on your inner stability? (Is it sustainable?)