Sunflower #3: Finding Community and Mindful Media
“If you go as a river, you will surely reach the ocean.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
“Sunflower” posts are to share inspiration about activism. They are to explore our ideals, passions, and motivations.
Like a young sunflower, it is helpful to orient ourselves towards the sun, letting it guide us during hard times of growth. So that when we are grown, we can face proudly east together, to greet the sunrise we know awaits us in the morning. See past Sunflower posts here. Put compassion into action using the Dandelion Report, or Spring Rain posts.
This sunflower has two parts; Finding Community, and Mindfully Consuming Media.
Finding Community
“If you are a drop of water, then you will evaporate halfway; but if you go as a river, you will surely reach the ocean.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Maintaining political engagement for the long term is difficult, but in many ways we are in a marathon, not a sprint. Or more likely, we are in a marathon with sprinting sections, making the management of burnout and maintaining interest all the more important.
We are influenced by our environment -- the people around us, the work we do, the media we consume, the thoughts and habits we feed. Like a runner, we must consider our diet of our internal and external environment. If we can improve it, our performance will be greater during good times, and our recovery better during bad times.
Unlike food, we influence our environment while it influences us. How do we carry ourselves around others, do we inspire action and compassion or despair and hate? We must find ways to have and be the support network we all need right now. We need to find understanding of when we personally need to recover, run long distance, and when we have to sprint.
For myself, The Dandelion Newsletter, has been a way to explore my thoughts and help build a community of action. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this endeavor, there are now nearly 50 people subscribed across 13 states and 6 countries!
I hope some of my words have been a helpful addition to your environment during this time.
To better serve this community, I have made a short survey called “The Sunflower Seed Survey.” It is where you can share what challenges you are a facing in your personal life to taking action or maintaining your current level of engagement. It is also a place where you can share what has been inspiring you lately. These responses will plant the seed for future Sunflower posts, so we can all learn and grow with each other.
I have also turned on the subscriber chat function available on Substack. You are welcome to use this as a place to ask questions, share ideas, and find support.
Additionally, since this Newsletter is online, we are all consuming digital media. I want to offer two brief practices below to bring mindfulness to how we engage with media. It ultimately serves as a reminder to myself, but I hope you also find it helpful.
Mindfully Consuming Media
It is possible to spend more time listening to people in the media or online than we listen to people in our daily life. What is the content, or their platform, trying to tell us?
Most of the media platforms today aim to hold our attention for as long as possible, to sell that attention to advertisers or maintain our subscriptions. Sometimes this is achieved by offering us something useful, sometimes it is by being enjoyable or sufficiently distracting, sometimes it is by offering us something addictive. Often there are elements of all three, or at least two.
Here are two ways to become more mindful of how you consume media— Stopping, and Reflecting.
Stopping:
This is a possible use for our mindful breathing. When you reach for your phone/laptop/remote/book, use that as a cue to take a mindful breath or two.
We may not even realize we are reaching for the media because the habit has grown so strong, so just stopping for one mindful breath helps us turn this unconscious decision into a conscious one. If you like the breathing poems, you can use one like the following:
~ Breathing in, I know this is a powerful (Device / Tool / Book / Etc.) ~ Breathing out, I will use it mindfully to benefit myself and others. Or ~Powerful Tool ~Mindfully
You may find you didn’t actually want to consume that media after a mindful breath. Or, you can now bring a little more mindfulness to the process, enjoying the bizarre and amazing ways in which we can connect with others, with more awareness of its pitfalls.
Occasionally, you may also want to try the next practice as well. Reflecting.
Reflecting:
Write down what you hope to gain or experience from engaging in some kind of media, then reflect on what you wrote down after you finish.
If it was rest, do you feel rested after you stop?
If it was joy/happiness/fulfillment, do you feel that afterward?
If it was knowledge, do we now have a more in-depth understanding of the situation or did we just strengthen our preconceived notions, can we put this new knowledge into practice?
If it was community, did the communities we engage with inspire us or drag us down?
If it was to numb or distract ourselves from a difficult feeling, does the feeling just come back when we are done? Has the feeling now calmed, or is it inflamed?
After watching a movie, reading an article, scrolling on social media-- did it give you what you were really looking for, what you really need right now? Even if consuming something related to activism, did it give you the knowledge, inspiration, or connection to be more engaged?
Try this even when you read this Newsletter! If the Dandelion Newsletter makes you less equipped to take action, and fills you with anger and despair, please stop reading it. I would prefer it help just a few people, then have a massive following that it harms.
I hope you find these practices helpful. May you eat well from your environment. May you find a community that lifts you up, and lift it up in turn.
Thank you for being here,
Chris