silence

It has been an empty few months… absolutely packed full of thoughts, emotions, experiences, conversations, interactions and meaning. But there has been nothing to post. How can so much be going on and yet the urge to communicate anything about it all be so reluctant to emerge? Why the silence? This is a question that has come up time and again for me during my relatively brief life (so far) in the blogosphere. Why the silence? Why are there those moments when there is nothing that can be communicated. And why do these moments tend to come in such sizeable chunks? It’s not as though I’ve been thinking or feeling the same things for the last few months… No! There have been multiple and often radically divergent states. But is there something that characterises them? Something that draws them together… other, of course than the silence itself. Is it something to do with the nature of this outlet? Is it a reluctance to put out there in the world critiques and criticisms that I fear could be harmful or painful (whether honest or not)… Is it doubt about the conclusions I am reaching or is it living so much with an absence of conclusions that I feel there is nothing I can just type out and say… or at least not anything that would make sense to anyone else… Because, like I said… a lot has been happening. Many things have ‘progressed’ though what this means and who’s yardstick gets used is not at all clear to me. Is it possible that as things ‘get better’ (what does that even mean?) – like as we slowly get deeper into engaging with the issues that matter – the feelings, emotions and reactions that accompany this transition get less and less positive? and not just other people but my own? is it the feeling of anxiety of digging into those sensitive areas that are all covered up which hurts? why did I feel so lost and purposeless when Seva Mandir finally decided to wholeheartedly jump on the NREGA bandwagon (now that’s an overstatement, I admit… but it’s at least relatively wholeheartedly!)… why did I feel so frustrated and disconnected when my attempts at using stories to expose people to some of the underlying social dynamics in Delwara were completely misunderstood… because these kinds of incidents and the countless other little stories like them get right at my sense of purpose, of who I am and why I am here… Which strongly suggests that that very sense of purpose is part of the problem… because I create in myself the reaction that I experience by setting myself up for it… by creating the expectations I create in the particular way that I do. By working towards the creation of situations based on logics that just aren’t harmonised with reality. So perhaps this just points me to the fact that I should be stepping back a moment, contemplating, breathing… rethinking how I am integrating what I am setting out to do into the ongoing flows and forces around me… which I may be succeeding in at times… but not so much at others… It’s almost an issue of style… a kind of pre-thought establishment of general approach to responding to what is going on around… that becomes part of the background against which thoughts and deliberations emerge into being as part of the ongoing unfolding interactional experinence of being and changing with others in an organiastional context. maybe this is a really good time to be heading back to IDS for some deeper reflection – alone and with others…