A collective reflection on Black Friday
This week our community on the Regenerative Leadership Journey were discussing the phenomena of “Black Friday.”
This is the Friday following the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, which marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season.
Some of the community were reflecting on how this day encourages us to consume in a hectic way, right at the darkest time of the year when we may be being internally called to rest and slowness.
As a gentle invitation to mindfulness when it comes to engaging with this day, some of the community decided to engage in a writing exercise on the topic of darkness, winter and regeneration. This is the result. We warmly invite you to share this poem, and your own reflections on the theme, on LinkedIn using #regenerativefriday.
An “exquisite corpse” is created by different people giving a line unrelated to the previous line. A poem is built from many authors, following the same rule or theme. In this case, there were no rules but everyone was asked to offer 1-5 lines on a Google Doc. You can read more about the writing exercise here.
Dark is not only the color of a shopping day traffic
Nor the Friday where you make huge profit
Can we please stop this degenerative association
And tell the story of the Yin Season ?
It’s a story that hides deep in our bones, in our beings, in our soul.
Sometimes it shows itself through a longing, a calling, or a desperate cry for something we don’t know yet still deeply miss. Sometimes we cover the longing with consumption in all shapes and forms.
We get tricked by a collective FOMO and belief that the flatscreen tv or toaster with inbuilt marshmallow grill function will make us happy and content.
There’s something here asking us to go deeper. Sit with the darkness and the craving we sense in our bones.
How can new understandings about death and darkness make us see the winter differently?
Deep in the inky soil, in the nexus of death and decay, that’s where new life begins.
Death turning over to life turning over to death.
Full of possibilities in the soup of life
What will emerge? Is it life? Is it Love?
Winter is coming a month before the Solstice
There is more in Black Friday than false myths
November is a great time to slow down
and regenerate before the new spring dawn
There are no written laws for what we witness
What we know in our bones
We live as though all life is lived
In solid shape and fluid form
Dreaming of neverending horizons
As the sun disappears early on the winter horizon,
Who is afraid of darkness I ask.
As for darkness is a space of possibility, of transformation.
As I stumble in the unknown,
Remember darkness is your friend,
Allowing you to leave the old behind,
Let it fall into pieces as newness rises.
What does it take to thrive in scarcity I ask.
As the seeds in the soil and the wildlife around us
prepare for winter and a time of leanness,
we are reminded of the simplicity and humility of this season.
As virtual and physical shopping carts worldwide are flowing over,
What is it you actually need I ask.
As for our earth might not be scarce, but finite, fragile and fantastic.
I feel fantastic and a little bit elastic
Winter is coming…
… and life is moving
Rhythm is slowing down,
Regeneration is awaiting at the end.
Let's stop and breathe!
Let's stop and enjoy this beautiful time of the year where Fridays are not Black but ordinary days full of calm and relieve saying
"It is the end of the working week"!
For the flower to bloom again in spring it must go through a sacred process of letting go, shedding the old and deep hibernation for it t flourish and regenerate.
How can we celebrate the death and decay that life brings? That flourishing needs as its fertile soil?
I see black. Cars. Coats. Coal and Oil. My lungs are filled with urban smoke. My hopes turn dark as I pass by the Black Friday ads.
I look at the faces of the people on the streets. Everyone’s so busy with rushing to the next instant gratification. What are we running away from, I wonder.
It was so light, I saw the neon performing her dark humoured dance as if no one was watching.
It was so dark, all I could see were bright little lights twinkling.
I feel so dark, the bright side keeps pulling me.
But I decide to sit with it for a moment. In peace.
Black, cyber: dark days
Of myths of separation
Yet, Great Turning lights.
Written by : Emilie Grau, Tarn Rodgers Johns, Christine Freeland, Jean-Philippe Steeger, Laura Storm, Anika Spindelmann, Kalina Tchepileva, Miranda van Gendt, Anne-Marie Brest