“Mommy, you seem to want to be a teacher.”
“No honey, it is just that a mountain is a community and we have to look out for one another or we all suffer.”
My daughter and I were in the lift line to leave Heavenly Ski Resort, and I was trying to demo for the flailing woman up the incline from me how to use her edges to hold ground so she didn’t slide back down the hill onto us over and over again. She was struggling and seemed grateful for the help.
Parents are in the habit of teaching. All day long, we are explaining the rules of how things work. I am like a life Cliff Notes writer, quickly and succinctly breaking down everything about everything. That mental muscle is well-toned.
Burning Man is a temporary community - an ambitious week-long one. But there are temporary communities everywhere if we see them as such. This pizza place, this traffic, a trip to Costco, an assembly at school. They are all opportunities to consider the overall flow of a group.
How do we participate in those temporary communities? Do we reach out of ourselves to share information kindly? Do we react defensively if anyone reaches out to us? Do we pretend we aren’t in a community? Do we respect the unwritten rules of BART or the men’s bathroom and avoid all personal contact? Do we put everyone down, assuming they are all imbeciles? Do we cut ahead one car in a many-hour line of traffic to make sure we are winning at least a little? Do we harness our self-control to wait and allow others to pull ahead - to move first? Do we focus on ourselves, do our own work, and add something for the greater good?
No one really knows what we are thinking, but there is an energetic time stamp that we ourselves have to live with. This is all we get. This one precious life. What felt experience do we want to use to fill it?
Heavenly departure lift line 2023