Disrupting for Good: Possibility Imagining

Last month I wrote about a new word for me, acurpar. And then within days, I had a chance to practice acurpar as encampment residents were forced out of a park in Barrie.

And then our premier went on TV and said people in encampments just needed to get off their A-S-S and get a job. And then the BC government yoinked harm reduction supplies. And then multiple provinces started talking about legislating involuntary treatment for mental health and addictions. And then the House of Commons went back in session, and the divisive rhetoric ramped up to 11, to the point where it seems impossible that any conversations of substance can take place this fall among our federal elected policymakers.

So it’s been a rough month for the hope-y change-y crowd. It feels like a lot of ground has been lost. Mix in some energy-draining conversations in my own life, and my September fresh-start optimism had worn thin. 

And then. 

A couple of things happened. 

I heard Sonya Renee Taylor on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast. She is the author of The Body Is Not An Apology, and about 30 minutes in, she casually tossed out the idea that we have been living in someone’s imagination for a long time…it just happens to be the imagination of a powerful, white patriarchy. “So the invitation is, what would it look like to live inside some other imaginations? What else is out there? What else is possible?”

Then, the next day, I saw this quote from Terry Tempest Williams: “Despair shows the limit of our imagination. Imagination shared creates collaboration, and collaboration creates community, and community inspires social change.”

And I was reminded of one of the shifts that I was trying to really lean into in the earlier part of this year, but it has fallen to the side: shifting from problem-solving to possibility-imagining. 

Because Jamie Margolin tells us, “Creativity is the heartbeat of activism, and dreams are the fuel that drives our determination.”

And as Keira Lowther says, ““Anything that is made can be made differently.”

I’ll give Albert Einstein the last word: “All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out.”

This is helping me keep going right now - the idea that we can imagine a different reality, which is the fuel we need to create change. In fact, all good change first has to be imagined…and then shared.

It is tempting to put our heads down and thug it out, as my kids say, but infusing our activism with imagination is more sustainable and more effective. So that’s what I’m deciding to practice. I hope you’ll join me. :)