And then with herbalism, I guess, that’s kind of the same idea, also because of the whole environmental crisis. We tend to look at it as if we should know what to do with nature, we should know the solution, instead of stepping down from this dominator view of like ‘We have to do something, we have to make this better’, instead of kind of stepping back and connecting to nature and kind of being like ‘What is this actually telling us?’ Yeah, it’s kind of vague in my mind, too.
“When you change your perspective of other living beings, and you start listening, you start stepping out of that hierarchy where you’re at the top of things.”
But, I feel like when you create… This zine that I mentioned, they talk about creating a relationship and deep listening, and they talk about how, when you change your perspective of other living beings, and you start listening, you start stepping out of that hierarchy where you’re at the top of things, and everything is serving you and you’re the one arranging space and resources. We tend to look at nature in that way, right?
And when we start connecting to nature this other way, it’s more like ‘How do we interact in a way that is more symbiotic?’ Of course we still need to use plants, but what are we giving back in this relationship? It has to be reciprocal, too. So, how do I give back to the land around me, to the other animals around me, to plants around me, to the people around me, right? For me that’s one of the biggest things.
L: And how can people do that for you, give back to you, make space for you?
I think that that’s a question I might think more about… Because I often don’t really think about what my space is in spaces, I guess. I think I’m just starting to give myself permission to take up space, also because I feel like I’ve always been this kind of weirdo who’s on the outside of things, and this is the first year and a half where I kind of feel like people are actually listening. As in deep listening, like I mentioned before, listening to what people say and not having all these preconceived ideas of what…
“I’m just starting to give myself permission to take up space.”
Also relating to gender, for example, when people have this preconceived idea that there are only two genders, and I start talking about how I am nonbinary, then it really takes deep listening and letting go of preconceived ideas to even try to understand what being nonbinary is like, because I feel like for cis-people, it’s really vague when you talk about it, like ‘What?’
The thing that I’ve learned is when people actually take time to listen to me and let go of their own thoughts regarding the thing about me that we’re discussing, then it’s easier for them to create space for me, and for me to feel like there is space for me. Because being queer is not really living your life the way other people expect you to. And then you’re looking for ways to make it understandable or even let it be, right, ‘cause it’s even hard for us to just let it be.
So, to answer your question, I feel like the way people can create space for me is just by creating space in their minds for something that they might not really understand, and that it’s ok to not understand things. Like at one point in my life where I was just like ‘Nothing has answers’, like I have so many questions and things that I want to understand, but there’s no answers actually, nobody has the truth.
And I feel like that’s my life motto right now, ‘There are no answers, let things be how they are, accept things how they feel…’ I mean, this sounds very easy, but I also struggle with that a lot. But just creating space in our minds for things that are a bit outside of our understanding is a super important thing for letting people who are different than us inhabit spaces with us. And really listening to each other. That’s difficult, because we also don’t listen to ourselves often.
L: Especially in the kind of environment that we live in…
Yeah, because everything goes so fast, and we have to be busy with thinking about how we’re gonna pay our bills… [whispers] fuck capitalism! [laughs] I mean, that’s what resistance is about, right? I’m thinking about plants again, about these wild flowers that grow on the sidewalks where there’s just a small opening. We have that in our house, there was this super tiny hole close to the wall, and somehow a seed landed there. First it was a very small plant, and I was like ‘You can stay here’, and now it’s this pretty big tree growing there, and I’m just thinking like ‘Woah, if we leave this tree here, it’s gonna grow so big, it’s gonna start breaking the house and the sidewalk as well!’
“We can take those small moments when we are able to listen to ourselves, the small seed that falls into that place, and then we can start growing from there…”
But then that makes me think of how we can do that as well with these systems, right, things that force us to be disconnected with ourselves, and how we can take those small moments when we are able to listen to ourselves, the small seed that falls into that place, and then how we can start growing from there, and little by little maybe end up breaking the side walk, being a super big tree.
