Sensing a Possible Connection

This past weekend, I found myself on a journey to observe and understand a population whose occasional public behavior feels “other” to me. 

Four years ago, my family moved to a town with two colleges and the flagship campus of a large state university. Our neighborhood is filled with students, professors and others in service to the institutions. There are plenty of cultural, communal and aesthetic benefits to being here, and, simply put, I love it. I tend to view my relationship with the students as symbiotic, but there are aspects of it that sometimes break down for me… when I seem incapable of understanding the behaviors of a subset of students… and it happened again last weekend. 

The university’s home football game day festivities began early, and on this Saturday morning, my dog and I already felt the vibe, which was different from our normal morning-walk vibe. The changed energy began pulsing inside me.

I looked around for other signs of onslaught.

I felt my body tensing up at the thought that this experience would last well into the evening. 

Already the booming pop music (I’m generally not a fan but realize I’m overwhelmingly outnumbered).

Already the red plastic cups, cans and bottles in young hands. 

My mind continued with its predictive habits around this particular conflict, reminding me that a considerable fraction of those cups, cans and bottles would soon be spent, littering our town’s streets by evening.

Back to my body – which by now was seemingly a prisoner to my mind’s lack of understanding, already experiencing a symphony of alarming sensations, including shallow breathing and an impulse to enact another plan. “Maybe we should go home, jump in the car and go on a nature hike instead?” I thought, willing my dog to agree.” Simultaneously, old, familiar, judgment-packed questions, fueled by my initial impulse to flee, were coming up… their general theme feeling similar to the question I repeatedly ask myself each morning, when I read the day’s news… “how can this behavior... at this point in our global, societal evolution, still be acceptable… and even encouraged?” 

I took some deep breaths and committed to the original plan. And then I realized this experience was meant to be my “sensing journey,” an assignment that’s part of my curriculum for u.lab 1X - a global edX course co-sponsored by MIT and the Presencing Institute. Sensing Journeys – stemming from the work of Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer – are one of the experiential assignments for the module I’m currently working my way through. 

I continued walking, now intentionally trying to take in the game-day culture… to remember my own college days back in the 80’s… to sense into what some of these young people might be experiencing… or wanting to experience. Was it joy? School Pride? Release? Part of me remembered my own experiences with the collegiate party culture, and the seeming compulsion to let loose on the weekends. Part of me wondered whether this behavior is just one way of playing out a natural, developmental tendency teenagers and young adults have. And a much larger part of me wondered… hoped… continued to believe… that our country… and our world… can transcend these old, habitual nods of acceptance for the excessive use of alcohol and other substances as a way to connect – or disconnect – depending on the need or the occasion. 

I continued in this back-and-forth experience, with one side of me wanting to meet these neighbors where they are, without judgement… and the other side wanting to look away and walk home… when I passed some young men with red plastic cups in their hands, convening around a car blaring pop music from its open windows. Just as I expected to be swiftly leaving them behind, one of the young men noticed us. Actually, it was my dog – our family’s sweet, intuitive ambassador – who caught his attention and enabled the connection.  “Mam!” he yelled, and when I turned around to face the group, he looked me straight in the eye with a big, adorable smile, and yelled, “I love your dog!” 

In that moment, I used more than just my voice to respond with gratitude to that young man and his friends. I shifted my energy, and experienced the cheerful interaction as a hopeful and positive step. I felt the relief of a deep instinctual out-breath, and noticed the huge smile that was now spread across my own face… as we headed towards home.

My thanks to Otto Scharmer (@ottoscharmer), Eva Pomeroy (@evapomeroy), Antoinette Klatsky (@antoinetteklatsky), Kelvy Bird (@kelvybird), Dayna Cunningham (@daynacunningham), and everyone at Presencing Institute’s u.lab and u-school (@presencinginstitute), for this Sensing Journey assignment, and for giving so many of us across the globe a tangible platform to explore, connect, and collectively help to manifest a new and healthy world.