Intentionally Influencing
Blog by Emma Howarth, Director of Operations
I have always enjoyed being outdoors. Not doing particularly ‘outdoors-y’ things, sometimes just sitting with a book and enjoying the cool air and birdsong. I have mentioned in previous blogs how much this enjoyment has grown over lockdown, not least because of the (mostly) lovely weather. One of our volunteer chaplains recently drew my attention to a very beautiful song called ‘Blessing’ from an ensemble album called The Lost Words: Spell Songs https://www.thelostwords.org/. The album is a musical companion piece to a book written in response to the removal of everyday nature words from a widely used children’s dictionary which grew to become a much broader protest at the loss of the natural world around us. Not only is the song beautifully haunting, but it made me think of when, as a child, I heard about te ‘Silent Spring’ http://rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx which talked about the adverse effects of chemicals and pesticides particularly DDT on the natural world. Silent Spring highlighted how mankind was forwarding their development with no regard for the devastation of nature. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but, owing to public opinion, it brought about numerous changes. The Lost Words: Spell Songs is gaining a foothold in bringing the removal of nature from our language to our attention by being used in schools and live performances throughout the country.
How our attention drawn to the changes and developments that are happening in and around us in the world and our reaction to this takes many forms. When we think about the ‘now’ and what the Government, the media, the neighbours, the grapevine tells us. What do we listen to? What do we believe? I don’t know if you are the same as me, but I feel as if I am overloaded with information. Do this, don’t do this; you can’t go here but you can go there; do it like this but never like this and so on. A lot of the time it is not good news either. Someone I know told me that early in the lockdown she changed her radio alarm clock so that she woke up to Classic FM rather than Radio 4 because she would rather be bombarded with inane commercials than scaremongering bad news. This made me think a few things about how we look after ourselves and our outlook. Firstly, we need to protect ourselves from unnecessary upset and disquiet. That does not mean blinkered vision and only living in rainbow-and-lollipops-land, that is unrealistic. What it does mean is avoiding the scaremongering and doomsayers that are constantly pelting us with portent of danger and misery. Practically it may mean intentionally listening to only one or two news reports from reputable sources (you choose this one) a day. We could limit our use of social media. If there is one way for something to take hold it is through social media platforms, and then it can be addictive, just one click and another and another. Secondly, we need to intentionally seek to do something good or positive. This can range from actually doing a good turn, like litter picking or putting a neighbour’s bins back in after the refuse collection, to going for a short walk or sitting outside with a cup of tea. Both measures require intentional action. You have to do this deliberately for yourself. No one else can monitor your intake of bad news nor can they do something good on your behalf; these are conscious actions.
I find that the majority of my life is unconscious action in what I think and do, however, some of the time I have to make a conscious decision, an intentional move. A phrase that became somewhat parodied is ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ or ‘WWJD’. As trite as it may sound, I actually find this a good hook to hang intentional action upon. For example, when people are acting irresponsibly over face coverings and this is causing upset to others (as I have seen) a small, calm intervention or distraction to deflect from the situation can help. So intentional thought over what is the ‘right’ course of action rather than unconscious joining in can make a difference.
Going back to the initial thought of the Lost Words: Spell Songs we could let things slide and carry on, or we could intentionally do something however small.