If you’re like me, you have a to-do list that’s already longer than life will allow for. And it’s growing. By the day, the hour, sometimes by the minute.
Over our lifetime, we are influenced by the world around us; personal experiences and a library of influences and influencers contribute to the ideas we have, the projects we create, and the things we do. In Failing to consider the various people and experiences that contribute to the people we become, we close ourselves off to sharing recognition for our influence, and responsibility for our impact.
--What if I don’t get to do everything I plan to do before I die? Could I cross these things off my list anyway?-- My cousin came to me in a dream and asked.
She paused and waited.
Enough for me to notice. Even in the odd way that time works in the dream world, I noticed. Puzzled, I reflected on why she would ask my permission (she is older than I, and always the responsible cousin). Should I not be the one seeking her sage advice?
This is her hypothetical list of goals, after all.
...
--if you promise to do them for me.-- and then she said this.
And suddenly the pressure and responsibility shifted.
I couldn’t rest easily, she seemed to say --knowing that I’d left essential tasks undone.--
In the real, waking world, my cousin has two children and a husband, and was going through radiation treatment for a tumor that would not take her life.
I never thought it would, nor did it.
I don’t often remember my dreams.
In fact, I remember my dreams even less frequently than not often. I remember my dreams almost never.
I love and adore my cousin, but don’t often think of her. No more than I think of any of my other cousins and relatives whom I see at most once every year or two, and so her appearance in a dream (that I remembered) was shocking to my conscious self.
Afraid of forgetting the dream, I wrote it down.
I told my mom about it, and many of my friends, and I think about it often.
I don’t know what [I thought] my cousin’s plans were -- her to-do list that she was asking me to take responsibility for, were she not able, but this was not the point.
She was not in my dream, I dreamt of her.
This dream was a product of my own internal dialogue; my subconscious seemed to understand and see things a bit differently and was doing its damndest to communicate another perspective.
On one hand, the dream reminded me to remember and value my role and responsibilities to my community
On the other hand, I was reminded to remember the role and value my community has on me.
Don’t be so sola, as my Colombian friends would say in Medellin.
Independent is the way of the gringa, acting and thinking for and of themselves.
But everything beautiful and worthwhile is a collaboration. From the person we are to our successes and failures, nothing is entirely our doing, to our credit, our responsibility, nor our fault.
Sharing is not just caring. It is not a decision we make, but an inevitability; inherent in the human condition.
--The way you do something is the way you do everything--
a friend once told me; a philosophical or buddhist concept that has stuck with me ever since.--What is your way?-- he asked.
I don’t recall how I responded to this question.
Often chosen hastily and without much thought, my first response is frequently wrong and unsatisfactory.
The way I do everything, I’ve determined, after considerable thought, is in parallel.
What I’ve come to call togetherish.
We oughtn’t just share space and resources to build ourselves as individuals, but to build the community we live in, for an individual is no more of a single unit than a single family is, or a neighborhood, a city, a state, a country, or a species.
Of course, there are a myriad of ways we can break ourselves down further into groups, highlighting our differences and “unique” traits; our successes and privileges; our failures, obstacles, and handicaps. In so doing, however, even those who view themselves on the metaphorical “top” of whatever qualification hierarchical chart they’ve come to define as success will fail to feel served.
Preferably, in seeing ourselves as one with other people rather than one opposed to others , we may also begin to see ourselves more clearly.
As such, my dream was much the same.
Even beyond the grave, our duty to our community relies on sharing both responsibility for, and recognition in, the process of reaching a shared goal.
As my cousin’s abstracted words continued to settle over me, it seemed that to build a “better” world would require unconditional collaboration and unlimited flexibility in both the process of design and in its execution.
Not only does my own mental and emotional wellness rely on taking care of myself and others, but also in welcoming the help of others. In other words, building and creating trusted collaborative partnerships.
Most importantly, to share openly; making available, the ideas I generate without feeling ownership over their execution
I did not feel that my cousin was seeking a replacement for herself, but that she didn’t want to leave her most valuable asset -- her children -- without leaving a plan in place.
I feel much the same for the many ideas that build in my mind; the dream began to make sense to me.
While I’m unsure of what lies beyond this life, my concern is not in the future, and whether I’ll be around to experience it, but in feeling that I may waste the time and resources that are at my disposal.
Ideas are like water; they’re free and there’s plenty, but they’re not all good, and access is inconsistent and unjust.
A bad idea, I figure, either won’t see the light of day or will be improved upon before reaching success.
More difficult are the good ideas-- their execution will inevitably be different than I’d have imagined and planned, but that’s what makes them authentic.
The result of collaborative work will look and feel different based on the person(s) who execute it.
And so, I’m setting a goal to share ideas, get them out of my head, if for only my own peace of mind.
From personal and ethnographic stories from across the United States and the world, to ideas about how the built environment can, and has, changed our social dynamics for better and for worse, I plan to write about and freely share my perspective on our world, which I believe is inherently rooted in--and in desperate need of--more opportunities to practice parallel play.
In other words, a world togetherish.
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