424: Until I Thought of Myself as the Sea

On the astonishing power of metaphors to reframe our sense of who we are, what’s possible, and how we might hear and speak with one another… and on the ocean’s vastness and depth as a invitation for us to contain multitudes, especially when in the midst of our most challenging conversations.

This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction and Context Setting
03:05 Exploring the Poem: 'Until I Thought of Myself as the Sea'
05:58 The Ocean Metaphor: Embracing Complexity
09:05 The Power of Metaphor in Self-Understanding
11:47 Widening Perspectives: The Ocean as a Shared Experience
14:52 Navigating Difficult Conversations with Oceanic Awareness
17:50 Truth and Multiplicity: The Ocean of Perspectives
20:59 Systems Thinking: The Ocean of Relationships
24:02 Conclusion and Reflection

Here’s our source for this week:

Until I thought of myself as the sea

I used to separate good days from bad until 
I thought of myself as an ocean. I used to 
split times I felt strong from when I felt weak 
until I imagined myself as the sea. Calm and 
rocky, wild and soft, still and powerful and vast 
and more than any one thing. In the ocean it's 
hard to divorce one mood from another, one wave 
from the next. Now, on my worst days, I think 
of how good life is too, how I still can greet joy 
while swimming through grief. How fragile 
strength feels. How I'm not any one thing in any 
one moment on any one day. I'm all of it and 
all of it is me.

Hannah Rosenberg
@hannahrowrites

Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash



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