By: Jenna Andrews, Social Work Student on Placement
What comes to mind when you think of the path of life and the aging process? Who do you see? What does it look like?
These questions have been at the center of my thoughts lately as I have learned more about Nova Scotia’s aging population and reflecting on how I want to be in this space and time. But before I dive into these questions, let me take you back to how they came to be…
During my time at NS GovLab, I’ve had the opportunity to read the book “Towards Braiding” by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti with Sharon Stein (you can read the book and do some exercises related to it here and make a donation in recognition of the work here). This book provides many rich learning opportunities and one of the biggest take-aways was learning from the authors’ metaphor about bricks and threads sensibilities. As noted in “Towards Braiding”, brick sensibilities are “…set ways of being that emphasize individuality, fixed form and linear time” (Jimmy et al. 2019, p.13). Thread sensibilities, on the other hand, are “…set ways of being that emphasize inter-wovenness, shape-shifting flexibility, and layered time” (Jimmy et al. 2019, p. 14). Soon after reading this, I had the opportunity to engage with the “Path of Life” social cartography stewarded by Mo Drescher, Jocelyn Yerxa, Rachel Derrah and Steven Pedneault (you hear them speak to this social cartography here). Experiencing both works so closely together offered some critical reflections and insights about how my perspectives of the pathway of life and aging has been shaped by brick sensibilities. The following are three questions that keep swirling in my mind from my connections between the two.
How do the multiple realities of the paths of life shown up in my perception? What is informing my view?
The first frame in the cartography shows a life path that is linear whereby we age by “achieving, achieving, achieving towards finally being recognized.” Seeing this graphic, I thought, “I know this path of life isn’t what I believe in anymore. I don’t need to worry because it won’t show up in my actions”. However, I now see that it is a brick sensibility to believe that I am neutral and have the power to ignore and disregard my relationships with everything around me, even if I perceive them to be “bad”. The first frame of the Path of Life shows a narrative that was thrown at me right, left, and center. It showed up in my schooling, in television, in books, in daily conversations, the list can go on and on. To say I’m simply immune to being influenced by this narrative after this exposure for twenty-three years is unrealistic. For example, I have always been someone who heavily tied my self-identity and life path with achieving high grades. I have come to recognize over the years that I do not want this specific path of achievement to be the singular facet of my identity and life. However, just because I choose to not “promote” this path of life anymore, does not excuse me from the responsibility of checking to see where it shows up. For example, while I choose to no longer self-identify myself and life with my grades, I am still in a post-secondary system that requires that I “achieve” to reach my end goal of receiving a degree (which in itself is also a part of the achievement life path). If I am not consciously checking my thinking patterns, I later catch myself falling back into previous thoughts of self-identity and achievement. This is just one way an aspect of this life path shows up when I am not consciously looking for it. I realize now that there are plenty more aspects that I haven’t reflected upon yet. Moving forward, I have to continuously reflect on the complexity of de-constructing this life path and the different ways it can manifest. To not do this, will allow it to continuously be portrayed in my live, my relationships, and change work. I have to think about how I operate in systems that still promote this path of life of achieving, while working to de-construct it both within these systems and myself.
Who’s involved in my view of the path of life and all its complex intricate processes of pain, joy, violence, grief, joy and happiness?
The next few frames in the cartography show the multiple realities and layers of the path of life. As I went through the process, I tried to close my eyes and picture what my own graphic of the path of life looked like in my head. For a while, all I saw were humans. Recently, Jocelyn shared a learning with me that Western society is founded on human exceptionalism, we have created this hierarchy where we believe our lives are the most important ones on this planet. We take many actions that are entrenched in that assumption, whether it be for our own successes, for our own longevity, etc. But what would life be like without the plants and animals that lose their lives so humans can continue on their life path, without family pets, without the connection to the land we grow up on? This made me recognize another brick in my thinking patterns. My perception of the path of life was portraying this human superiority. Unknowingly, my bias is a hierarchy of worth and value with humans at the top. However, to work towards thread sensibilities, all life has to be valued (Jimmy et al., 2019). As we talk about aging, other life forms are aging too. I should not separate the human life course as something that is better than or deserves more attention than the life of the creatures, the land, and the planet around me. Now, when I close my eyes and view my life path, I’m trying to see the interconnections between myself and the land where I grew up, how the life of my dog and fish interact with not just my life path but those my of my family, partner and friends, and how the life of the overall planet impacts the different interconnections in my graphic.
What assumptions do I have about value and worth?
When I went through the frames of the cartography and came upon the last frame, I noticed that my heart rate sped up and that I was beginning to shift a lot in my chair. These movements usually indicate to me that I am feeling resistance and discomfort. As Mo mentions in the video, it can be easy to get caught up in the happily-ever-after solution before the last frame, which was exactly what I was doing when I checked in on this discomfort. I saw the earlier frames as valuable because they provided a path forward for me that provided a feeling of comfort. I simply had to check my biases at the door and start valuing the interconnections and entwinements of my life with others and all would be fine. However, this is a brick sensibility. As Towards Braiding offers, brick sensibilities involve believing that, “…the value of something is based on how it’s measure against it’s value to move things forward” and also that knowledge only comes from institutions (p.14). However, when I accepted that my body had knowledge and explored my discomfort signals more deeply, I learned a new insight. The discomfort was telling me that while I did need to go back and start applying these new learnings regarding the interconnections of multiple life paths, I could not do so without looking at the entwinement that my life path and others have with the darker side of the interconnection- the violence and oppressive structures and systems. My body was trying to teach me that I could not continue on as is with my old perspective of only viewing the good. It was signalling to take the time to go back and question the contrast between when I felt comfort and discomfort. Going back and spending time questioning these feelings is just as important as going forward.
As I move forward with these questions and use them to continuously shape and un-shape how I approach aging, I am interested to know if anyone experienced any questions themselves when they interacted the Path of Life cartography. Please free to share any questions that may be swirling in your mind below.
References
Jimmy, E., Andreotti, V., & Stein, St. (2019). Towards Braiding. Musagetes. https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/braiding_reader.pdf
