Finding better stories
Join the discussion on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_i-spent-winterval-taking-stock-of-2024-and-activity-7282325400075046915-ViQ4
I spent winterval taking stock of 2024 and, most important, thinking about 2025 and beyond. I’ll share more of our big plans soon.
But in the meantime, I keep circling back to two quotes: Wittgenstein’s reminder that genuine understanding spurs action, and MacIntyre’s warning that if we don’t know which story we inhabit, we can’t know how to act.
So many competing stories swirl around us — especially in UK public services.
Councils founded in 1889 (before the discovery of penicillin or the invention of the aeroplane, just before the Eiffel Tower), are meant to vanish in a few short years.
Social workers brace for a national service — once they’ve got past local government upheaval.
GPs contemplate the promotion of new, confusing pathways and employment structures which seem to negate their roles.
Weary carers just hope for something to make their lives a bit easier.
People want to be able to live better lives.
The easy stories are all disempowering ones. Old man shakes fist at cloud never grows old, and never achieves anything positive.
As problematic guru Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche says, it’s like we’re in freefall with no parachute — and there’s no ground either. That frees us to choose a story that actually empowers us.
So my focus for 2025 is on enabling more inspiring stories — citizens, community, collective journeys not hero’s journeys, the theme of ‘we are the heroes we are waiting for’ — all the things we explored during lockdown, that somehow slipped away. If we don’t choose, the narrative is chosen for us.
Maybe the ‘bad news’ is the ‘good news’: that sense — and reality — of groundlessness gives us room to build something genuinely new.
What’s your positive story for 2025? Join the discussion on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_i-spent-winterval-taking-stock-of-2024-and-activity-7282325400075046915-ViQ4