Dear Future, From Quarantine
Wild Iris Illustration by Amie MacPhee, from her new “Sheltering” series
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Having worked together in the field of branding and communications for 14 years, the heart of our process is asking our clients where they see themselves now, helping them to articulate their vision for the future, and providing them with the building blocks of language and visual design that empower them to activate that vision powerfully in the world. Given that the pandemic has changed our lives so abruptly these past few months, we asked ourselves the now familiar question, “what’s next?”
We started by sharing what we were feeling and envisioning for our own futures – Marianna shelter-ing in place from her hillside home in Mendocino County and Alex in her Brooklyn apartment. We realized we should extend this conversation further in order to connect, give voice, and learn from the ways we are all experiencing the world now.
We scheduled a series of 20 minute conversations with people from our network from Northern California to Colorado, Texas, Maine, New York City and London. We devised a series of questions based on the concept of place, that unique parameter that encompasses physical location, climate, culture, and the natural and built environment. We asked about where we are now, in physical and emotional terms, and where we see ourselves in the future. Not surprisingly, we found that among the unique features of each story, common themes began to emerge.
The visions we collected express a mixed sense of gratitude for what is and an awareness of the need for reinvention at all levels. There was gratitude for physical safety and relative abundance – appreciation for daily pleasures of food, family (both in person and on screen), beautiful locations, sunshine and birdsong. As Hooman Koliji , CEO of Creo put it, he is, “Now more present to the basic needs of myself as a human being to have a good life.”
Expressions of gratitude were always immediately followed by a recognition of the privilege of being healthy, fed, sheltered, and a desire to give back and effect change. Annie Burke, Executive Director of TOGETHER Bay Area noted that this crisis is a catalyst for change in both policy and perspective, recognizing that, “On a global scale, this is about the we not the I. This shows us that if we are asked to sacrifice for the greater good, we can do it and its worth it.”
Emotional experiences were mixed and sometimes contradictory – from bouts of extreme anxiety to a sense of utter calm; the spaciousness and joy of slow, quiet time to watch plants sprout in the gar-den followed by a sense of grief and foreboding that the comparatively freewheeling world we took for granted will not return. Isla Murray, creative director of Llama6, spoke of her sense of isolation and her simultaneous recognition of the beauty of people’s new-found willingness to, “share in a real and vulnerable way.”
The theme of connection to the cycles of the earth recurred: the euphoria of buds, blossoms and bees that riot in spring; the intensity of color at the center of a wild iris; the stability found in the slow life of trees; the humbling joy of feeling connected to a system of being that this so much larger than any one of us. This sense of connection also inspired a renewed sense of citizenship. Anne Dickerson Lind expressed this awareness in her story of watching a pair of mourning doves roosting above her garage in Marin – the mother dove sits in place on her eggs for days on end. She doesn’t move. She has a job to do, Anne realized, just like us.
Each one of our respondents spoke of the awareness that the pandemic is not a great equalizer because our society is not equitable. John Hagan from the Maine Climate Table expressed a renewed commitment to working across cultural and economic divides to heal the environment and address climate change through social equity. Influencer and activist Gaye Quinn spoke of the need for new, collaborative (read women’s) leadership, as well as the need to create a more equitable future. Max Korten, Director and General Manager of Marin County Parks noted that this shake-up has already given rise to nontraditional leaders, breaking down traditional hierarchies and making way for collective problem-solving among agencies, like county departments of parks and public health.
We heard also of the power of this moment – the force of realizing that we are, in fact, in a new moment. Unprecedented times present unprecedented opportunities for change. As Stephen Hohenrieder, a leader in regenerative agriculture and reimagining the food system put it, we find ourselves in a moment where we can “resurrect better systems as opposed to resuscitating what we had.”
Amie MacPhee, an urban designer and landscape architect from Cultivate, spoke of transforming her San Francisco home into a live-work space for herself, her spouse and her adult children, musing about how reinventions of our physical spaces can manifest also in the public realm to accommodate new behaviors. Kindly Lawlor, President and CEO of Parks California recounted how connecting people with parks in virtual space via tools like live streams may make such places more inviting and accessible to underserved communities when our cities, counties and states begin to open up again.
We heard again and again about the strange and elastic experience of time in these days of isolation and of the sense of presence that it mandates. The collective awakening to presence affords us, as Julian Mocine-McQueen of the Million Person Project says, “permission to be our whole selves.” As a storytelling coach, he wants us to remember this time – what it reveals to each of us about who we want to be and how we can continue to offer a fuller version of ourselves to the world.
Visions for transformation spanned from the level of individual work/life balance to the urgency of creating an equitable society, to the need to devise regenerative, human-scale economies that reverse climate change and support life on earth. Sharon Farrell, Executive Vice President of Stewardship & Science at the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy spoke of creating a newly compassion-ate work culture and honoring the “outdoor feeling” of simultaneous freedom and connection that humans desire.
Kristin Coates of SecondMuse spoke of cultivating honesty at the levels of the self and the collective. She, along with others, noted that the pandemic illustrates our interdependence and posited that the future will be “about emotional intelligence because people create the systems that make visions come to life.” Max Kirchoff, Technical Director of Llama6, envisioned bringing emotional intelligence back to the internet by shifting from mass-market-oriented goals to a focus on serving smaller, more intimate communities that are also interconnected.
Subjects of intimacy in our relationships with other humans and the earth we live on played strongly in our conversations. For some, intimacy can be found in social media, while for others, such as Marc Landgraf, External Affairs Manager at the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, constant Zoom calls and FaceTimes only highlight the importance of live interaction as a unique source of energy, joy and wellbeing.
Across the board, a renewed appreciation for daily experience of the natural world – the sky, birds, a growing garden, or any patch of accessible outdoor space – facilitated communion between the self and all that lies beyond. Cathie Barner, Director of Red Bridge, spoke of how the rawness of this time has clarified her purpose of connecting people with parks and wild places and hopes that our experience of relative isolation from these places will sharpen our focus on their importance to our physical and mental health.
Through all the suffering and anxiety of this moment, we are also afforded the gift of waking up. When the buzz of routine activity stops, we suddenly see ourselves exactly where we are. Nothing is more unsettling to human existence than the revelation of the true and constant uncertainty of being alive. At the same time, this unsettling is a gateway between one world and the next. As the Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa said long before the pandemic, “The bad news is you’re falling through the air [with] no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”
Let’s remember this moment of crisis and the questions we asked of ourselves, of the societies we have built, and of forces beyond our human knowing. Let’s remember what is truly essential. We are neither passive bystanders waiting for the next directive nor lone controllers of the fates. Our hopes will author the immediate future. Let’s keep this collective consciousness alive even as we face the uncertainties that lie ahead.
Let’s dream big and creatively in this moment of possibility.
We will all shape what’s next.
Be safe, be well, be kind,
Alexandra Hammond & Marianna Leuschel
PS: In the spirit of loving and living the questions, we invite you to interview yourselves and others in your close community. Then share your dreams and stories. Our stories connect us and can be contagious, spreading hope for the change we wish to see in the world.
The Questions
Place as Geography
Describe the Place where you are now sheltering. How far from home are you venturing?
What delights or surprises you about this place? What do you miss?
Place as a State of Mind
How are you feeling?
How have your emotions changed since the beginning of this crisis?
What worries you most now? What surprises or even delights you about what you are experiencing now?
Place as a Future State
What do you hope to take with you as we re-emerge from this crisis?
What are your big dreams for your personal or professional life? For our society and our earth?
Where do we go from here?