Saturday, January 10, 2009

Embracing the work(shop)

When Tree Bressen led Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community in a consensus decision making workshop in September 2008, she said, "Joining a cohousing community will be the longest and most expensive self development workshop you'll ever do in your life."

She went on to model for us a receptive attitude towards life in an intentional community. That is, when there is a bump in the road, we have the opportunity to treat it like a workshop exercise. We can observe it, ask ourselves what's going on, figure out if there is some learning we can extract from it.

Since Tree introduced that concept to me, I have found it very helpful to approach everything like that. In fact I believe that has contributed enormously to the happiness I described in a previous post.

But, while the saying that Tree quoted was cute, I have come to disagree with it. I now would say that life is the longest and most expensive self development workshop you'll ever do!

Cultivating an attitude of curiosity about my life and everything that happens in it -- whether it's supposedly good or supposedly bad -- has felt very supportive to me.

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