Magic and Wonder

One of the special interests I have had a private study of for basically all of my adult life is, “why are people like this?” I guess it was inspired by what I thought of as fairly baffling human behavior where people are doing things that tear apart the social fabric or harm others and it feels hard to understand why someone would do such a thing– indeed, why so many someones would do such a thing. So I read and studied lots of psychology and philosophy, history and anthropology, and yes, novels and essays and poetry, and one of the major things I learned studying all that was that people are still wired like we were at the beginning of us being human beings, when everyone lived in small bands, and it was imperative that people acted in mutual cooperation with the people that they considered their people (of course there was the opposite effect of identifying some people as “not our people”, and you probably know how that turned out). And still today, that is pretty much how people are wired and how we operate– we identify some group of people as our people and we act in mutual cooperation with them, and that feels good to us. 

One of the parts of that that I didn’t learn until I got to Cottage and started reading neurobiology as a component of how we work with kids is that people have a deep seated need to feel safe. We are wired to be our best selves when we feel we are safe. That’s when we have best access to our thinking and planning, our decision making that is based on understanding the consequences of our actions instead of the need to act quickly on instinct, despite whatever negative impacts that might generate. And that is very important for how we understand how to work with children and how we parent, because prioritizing relationship over compliance, and generating co-regulaton in order to teach our kids emotional regulation, so they can access those interpersonal skills they are learning since birth, are then the focus of what we do.

But what I have come to see is that being a part of the parent community here, the community of adults which includes us teachers, also recreates that feeling of safety that allows us to flourish. Because we have all agreed to do this together, and because we keep on showing up for each other and doing volunteer shifts in the classroom and doing our pod jobs and going to board meetings and fix its, and signing up for meal trains when one of us needs extra support, and all the million little ways we are there for each other– this practice, and I do think practice is the right word, because it is entirely dependent upon our continuing to do this–this practice is part of what people call The Cottage Magic. The way most of us live now– in nuclear families, in big, sturdy, lonely houses full of walls, driving around in small family cars with the windows rolled up so we have a private and separate experience even in the middle of a huge traffic jam, an absolute crush of humanity, kept at bay through the technology of the last thousand years or so. Such a short time really. 

We crave human connection, but we can't understand why we feel so disconnected, when we live in one of the biggest cities in the world, so we channel it into romantic partnerships that are somehow supposed to replace an entire village, and then feel dismayed when loneliness persists. We do anything we can to recreate spaces where we can feel safe and thrive, but people keep acting in unpredictable ways and that makes it hard for us to feel safe. We designate and call out safe spaces, but without an ongoing agreement, these don’t cover us for long. 

But Cottage has been going on for fifty years, a lifetime for most of us here. And though I have lived through times when Cottage didn’t feel this safe, since becoming part of the leadership here– and I implore you to remember that I am part of the leadership, and many of you are also part of the leadership here, lest you think this depends solely on me– since becoming part of the leadership here, I have prioritized relationships. I have prioritized mutual cooperation, showing up for each other. And I know that every person who has been here a while knows what it feels like to show up for someone who needs support and give freely, knowing that you too will be cared for when you or your family needs support. And that ongoing trust we have with each other is what creates the relational safety that makes room for us to be the very best version of ourselves.

I heard a bunch of you saying after our 50th anniversary gala in the Spring how nice the people are here, how much we like each other. Yeah! We get to show up here and be the very best version of ourselves, which feels like a miracle even while it’s happening, because we also show up crying a little while we sweep the yard in the morning, the first chance we have had to process the rough night or the hard phase our kid has been having. We show up wondering if people are going to like us, or if there is room for us, with everything we are bringing with us. We might show up guarded because how could this preschool really do all these things when it’s just a bunch of kids playing in the dirt. 

I would argue that even then, we are showing up as our best selves, because the vulnerability of being a part of a community of mutual aid and cooperation is revolutionary. It is life saving.  It’s a refusal to be fooled into thinking that material success and acquisition or rugged individualism can fill the hole in our hearts that is waiting for what turns out to be other people. We need each other, and our acknowledgement that we need each other and that other people need us, here, is part of what makes Cottage feel so magical. It’s a view straight into the fabric of the universe, the fundamental truths of existence that we are all interconnected, that we are a part of each other. 

And that brings me to wonder. I think we generally agree that it feels wonderful here. It’s because we here are full of wonder. We are marveling at tiny bugs, surprised by our prying hands in their habitats under rocks. We are stopping mid-conversation to notice a helicopter as it passes overhead. We are sitting with a child who is not yet ready to go play, listening to their observations and the things they are thinking about, not worrying about time passing or state standards or what has to happen next. We are hanging back and waiting as kids try something we have done a million times, but they have not yet learned to do. It’s a special way of noticing, with any of our senses that we can use to notice, anything there is to notice, that leads to wonder. We are, briefly, while we are here, invited into the now. And slowing down the rush of the future to be in the now is the only way, really, to experience wonder, at all of creation, all of nature and all of the experience of being a person and being together with each other, here and now. And noticing, and being in the now, unrushed by the future, is a practice you can learn and keep using to experience wonder anywhere you go. 

And so in summary, I want to say how wonderful it is to be here together with all of you in the community we make together.