In times of ongoing crisis, it can be hard to know what to do.

Some of us fight — choosing a side and pouring all our energy into battle.
Some flee — retreating to whatever feels safe or predictable (yes, that’s me watching Grey’s Anatomy… again).
Some freeze — holding tightly to routine and compartmentalizing to get through the day.
Some gather — tending fiercely to a close circle of family or friends.

These are all natural nervous system responses meant to keep us alive during short-term emergencies. But when our crisis becomes a constant (as they have been over the past years) and the changes we face — ecological, social, technological — demand something deeper, the question becomes: Where, and how, do we stay in relationship with this?

At Open Circle, our approach to problems is deeply aligned with the journey of “seeing with new eyes”. Instead of rushing to patch the surface issues, we invite people to inquire beneath behaviors, into the beliefs and assumptions that shape them. In facing the need for collective adaptation, as we are now, this work is both individual and collective. It requires that we develop the capacity to quiet our nervous systems and courageously expand our listening through the uncomfortable territory of the unknown.

It’s not an easy path, and our resistance to it is often strong. Many people only become truly willing to engage when they’ve reached a point of surrender—when old solutions have led them in circles and the problems keep growing. It’s often only in this place that they can accept an invitation that offers no quick fixes or guaranteed outcomes. Instead, a slower path of learning to see through new eyes which means navigating moments of confusion, confronting deep-seated fears over inevitable loss and uncovering long-buried trauma we’ve tried to contain or forget.

In collective work, seeing through new eyes begins with the slow task of taking time to listen deeply together, and to commit to continuing to come back to that again and again. In the face of collective crisis and the urgent need for solving immediate problems, the necessary pause in urgent action to develop this capacity can seem counter intuitive. But unless we take time to unearth inherited beliefs and assumptions that are constricting us, we are limited in our ability to see the new paths forward and we run back and forth between different solutions that are not working. 

This is foundational work. It means individually and collectively exploring the root cause of  cracks we’ve been patching over for years, deconstructing structures and systems that have taken many resources and sometimes decades or centuries of work building.  And then courageously leveraging those cracks into windows where new light shines into places those structures have kept deliberately hidden. 

At its core, this path inevitably leads us to confront our fear of the unknown — and ultimately, our fear of death —and  accept the vulnerability  of being held by a force beyond our control. This power, whatever name we want to give it, is beyond our rational understanding and its nature we  can experience most easily together in our shared  connection to the natural world.. The natural world  provides us with an experience of the underlying power of creation through everyday cycles of light and dark, life and death and its interconnection.  More often than not a deep and shared experience of the natural world shatters illusions to what we as humans have given power and expands our definitions of  love and its binding force between us and our place within it. 

While our nervous systems resist this letting go, in our work we have witnessed time and time again that when we open to the unknown with courage and heart, we find solutions, creativity, and resources far beyond our current limits.

Our current danger is not just in the crises themselves, but in clinging to self-protective patterns that have hardened into something destructive. We see it in the devastation of unnecessary wars, in the constant barrage and blending of fact in fiction through online reporting of political power plays and in the quieter erosion of our humanity in systems that value profit over care.

Yes, speaking truth to hypocrisy matters. But more than ever, we must move beyond catharsis into this hard work of collectively working towards new ways of seeing — into listening together across differences, connecting to the deeper spirit that lies beneath our wounds and disagreements. From this place of shared belonging to each other and to the Earth, hope grows. Sacrificing short-term comfort for the sake of future generations becomes not a burden, but a natural choice.

This is why we continue to commit to the work of Open Circle despite its challenges — our response to the overwhelming problems in the world is the building of this capacity in our communities to do this deep, foundational work. It is a fight sometimes to stay hopeful, through the noise and old constructions that say impact is in the numbers not in the depth of relationship. But we continue because every time we take a group into the wilderness  or sit in a listening circle with courageous people sharing their stories and vulnerabilities, we are reminded of a creative power that binds our world.

Whether we meet politicians, teachers, environmentalists, veterans, social workers, parents, entrepreneurs, or young adults trying to find their way in a world that feels overwhelming — this work is for all of us. It is about discovering and using our gifts, courageously, in service to life.

Because that is what is required of us now.

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