Upside Down

I made an upside-down fire the other day -- logs on the bottom, paper and kindling on top. It went against every natural instinct to form it this way. Forty years of building a traditional log cabin or teepee style. I'd seen this upside-down method done successfully, so kept going despite it feeling so wrong. I lit the paper and kindling on top, and it went up in a flare, as if the cake icing was infused with alcohol. And then it slowly and beautifully burned down through the middle of the logs. It's a unique and stunning burn, holding the fire within the solid foundation. And it lasts for hours -- it's resilient and independent. I'm converted -- something out of my view, and against the grain of tradition, now my new normal. How often we delete ways of doing things that don't match the way we've always done it.

*And found this great blog post from Tim Ferris on Upside Down Fires: 
https://tim.blog/2009/02/02/how-to-build-an-upside-down-fire/

Ripped Apart

In 2006, I remember walking past this home in India that had a 6 inch slice right up the middle of the front of the building. It looked like a giant had reached down and ripped the house in two. The building itself looked almost new -- shiny exterior, fresh windows. The split in between was rough -- there was material hanging off the sides in the gap as if it had been haphazardly torn apart. There was a man standing in front of the gap holding a saw working his way through the structure of the home. I stopped and was so curious what was happening. He turned to me, and I asked him what was happening. He said that he owned this house with his brother, that they'd had a disagreement that could not be resolved, so they went to court, and the judge ordered them to split their house in two -- for each brother to own half. Literally.

In 2020, divisions seem to be increasing, getting wider, and louder. We're required to wear masks and be 6ft apart in a pandemic for our safety. Yet we also keep a distance from people to be safe from their difference -- people in our lives who see the world differently, who have opposing views, different ways of experiencing things. They can become our enemies -- dangerous, a threat. A threat to our own view, which is the correct one. If only they would come around, and see it our way, then we could get along. We then avoid them, and the story builds stronger and more elaborate. They become more wrong, and more of an enemy, more of a threat, and we need to defend and build our walls higher. Six feet isn't enough. How do we interact with this difference, disagreement, conflict? Find people who think like us, and be with them, and then we are validated -- we are ok, we are right.

What if it wasn't this way? What if our enemies are not that? What if they are the gold? There to teach us, to open up our world to seeing difference, richness, variety? What if we were to go towards the discomfort, to call up that brother we disagree with, knock on the neighbour's door who is different from us, reach out to the co-worker we avoid? To connect, listen, build relationships, to be open. To ask and really hear other perspectives, and maybe even be surprised that we align, that we share some things in common. That we don't need to agree, to be good neighbours, siblings, colleagues. That we just need to reach out, and start. Maybe we can co-exist and collaborate, cultivate a rich diversity of people and points of view, and keep our home in one piece.