Medium Short: On Methods and Madness

A week of trusting the training to push onwards

Graffiti under a bridge spanning Toronto’s Don Valley, captured on a training run last weekend during a short visit with family. Some bridges have a clear structure and a curious, colourful underbelly. (Photo by me)

Welcome to the latest Medium Short, a weekly accountability practice highlighting what I am reading, writing, and doing along the unmarked trail towards #IndustrialHealing. This is a personal update — my (debatably) more professional writing is freely available through this link.

Anyone who has trained for a big event will recognize the phrase “trust the training”. It reminds us that although there are moments where it feels insane to be doing what we’re doing — running a marathon, rewiring the global industrial complex for healing, whatever — the training readies our bodies and minds. And so we must trust it and keep going.

There was a reason we signed up for this event, even though we knew it would be tough. So when it feels hard — maybe even impossible — that’s a sign we’re on track. Trust the training.

I’ve had to draw on this principle a lot lately. I am in what feels like the most challenging time of my life. (And I’ve cooked up some tough times before!) Next week I will be hosting a workshop, Matereality: Why, What & How (x 3 for time zone inclusion), in which I will (1) guide people through Matereality in all its magic and (2) facilitate dialogue on our roles in an economy in service of life. In two hours.

Both of those things feel kind of nuts.

Yet I feel like this is a race worth running. That even getting to the start is a win. That every cliché about the-journey-not-the-destination is true. That I’m the only person who can do this. I’m the only materealitarian (so far…), the only person who spent 20 years mucking around in corporate disclosures across industries and regions and then dreamt into being a new way of seeing this stuff that shows both the cracks and the pathways to healing, using the very things companies use to do the harm. It’s like corporate homeopathy.

If not me now, then who when?

So now I fall back on the structures and processes I have put in place to not only get to the start, but to have the best performance of my life. And to be in fine form to get up…