The biggest, hardest lesson I learned this year.

Nov 23

Here we are, late fall, holding on tight.

The nights are sinking in, COVID-19 numbers are skyrocketing, the American election remains in tense limbo. Some of us are preparing for holidays we never imagined.

Can we take a breath? Right now. A nice, soft in and out.

It seems like a strange time to talk about desire, but I learned a big lesson about this early in the pandemic and I want to share it with you.

Third week of March. Remember it? I’m sure you do. For me it meant days in a blur of emails, hand sanitizer, and the fear of losing Firefly.

People were pulling out of classes and coaching programs every hour. We had no online programming, and I couldn’t even imagine how to begin. All retreats were cancelled and our numbers no longer added up to anything resembling a business. I was petrified.

In those foggy first days, our rent bill became my focus. We couldn’t use the space, and I knew that a lot of our neighbours on the Danforth were getting rent relief. I hated to ask, but I knew I had to. So I psyched myself, up, cleared my throat 30 or 40 times and called my landlord.

It did not go well. He yelled.

He said it was ludicrous to ask and irresponsible to need to. He said he’d rather have an empty building than tenants that can’t pay rent. He reminded me that my 5-year lease was legally binding and mentioned “teams of lawyers” he had on standby should any cheque not arrive. Then he lowered his voice and said, “Listen to me. There’s no such thing as free rent.”

I hung up and the tears just fell and fell and fell.

It’s weird to tell you this because of course I want to be the under-control business person who had a plan. But vulnerability is the thread that runs through every creative process, which is every business process too. There’s no growth without it.

The next day I went to the studio just to smell the air, and I ended up in the basement storage unit shredding old bills. I was sitting on the floor waiting for the machine to warm up, when something caught my attention on the wall.

I almost didn’t recognize it at first. It was a poster board covered in neon yellow and pink and green stickies from a consulting session we’d had with educator Erin Kang just before the pandemic. We’d been brainstorming how to make our work more accessible and where we wanted to be in five years. Each sticky, written by a team member, held a little Firefly dream.

More money to bursaries and scholarships
More free and PWYC programming
More support to other arts-based organizations

My first thought was the obvious one — what is wrong with us?

Of course we have no money, we’re giving it all away! What did I miss about Capitalism 101 that my shitty landlord didn’t? That shame flooded. The tears flooded. How did I ever think this thing would work?

But then — because cheap paper shredders are very slow, and I had to sit there for a while — something else started to happen.

I noticed that that those little sticky notes made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time. They made me feel like myself again. They flickered a purer vision of my heart, a version that had gotten layered over by all that fear.

I realized that the reason I was so hurt by my landlord was that I saw myself in him. That I, too, had become rigid and overly focused on the bottom line. Fear does that. And that those stickies — they were the counterbalance; doorways back to who I was, who I am.

And something else was true. Outside that basement, the world was coming apart. If I kept indulging in shame and worry, I would have nothing to contribute. And that’s what I really want, always, to contribute.

Walking back up the stairs, a familiar softness moved back into my body. I smelled the air in the studio, the smell of wood from the bookshelves my father-in-law built and installed, the smell of books, almost all of them donated by our community members. I remembered our open house, the roars of laughter, the champagne and poetry, all those people gathered on the sidewalk applauding and hollering as our sign lit up for the first time. That’s what I needed to get back to.

Over the coming weeks I turned all my energy to those little sticky notes.

We created new free and pay-what-you-can programming, including Coffee Sessions, which we committed through the summer to only take enough money from for our rent, and to donate the rest to the rent of our neighbours. (“No such thing as free rent.” Hi John.)

We reorganized our bursary program to be led by community members, and pumped more money into it than ever before.

As the blur started to pass I was able to really check in with my team again, and I opened up access to our therapist for any issues we were facing, not just work-related ones. We all needed a soft place to go this year.

Of course there was enormous risk in all of this. The little capitalist in me that was desperate not to fail was waving her arms. But I had to turn away from her to make what needed to be made. I finally had my feet planted in my desire, my vision and my hope, and all I could do was keep moving towards it, small step by small step.

This is all we’ve got: What we want, and what we’re willing to do for it.

Desire is fuel for the most important races. It is how we come to know ourselves, and offer ourselves to others. It is the campfire that can keep us warm on the longest nights.

And the new plan seems to be working. We got used to Zoom, even came to love it. New people found us through the low-cost programming, some filling the spots in our mainstay workshops we’d lost. We donated more money than we reasonably could, and it filled back in as we found our feet in a new sustainability. In the end we created a suite of workshops for workplaces who are struggling to locate their humanity and hope in this stressful time.

Mostly, I feel like myself again, because I’m working from what I want, regardless of whether or not it seems possible or plausible or right.

It’s nearly December. There are a thousand reasons why this year has been hard, and why entering the shortest days of it is scary. What I want for you, as you move through this, is to stoke that little fire. To ask yourself what matters to you right now, what you want to grow, how you want to deepen, and move towards it, tiny step by tiny step.

For me, writing is always part of the journey.

I made a new video writing prompt to help you sink into this question in your own time. And just beyond that, we have our lineup of workshops. I can’t wait to know that computer screens are lighting up across the globe with the warmth and connection that these classes offer. And here’s a poem to inspire you.

I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for listening, and being part of this beautiful, implausible dream.

Daniel Berrigan wrote:

Start with the impossible. Proceed calmly toward the improbable.

Here’s to impossible dreams, big and small, and keeping our engines warm all the way through winter.

In it with you,

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