Yesterday we kicked off the winter cohort of our 8-week virtual experience design course, Designing Experiences for Radical Imagination.
If you want a little taste of what it feels like in there, join for our next free public gathering, Designing for Feelings, on February 26th @ 11 am PT.
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I’m writing you from my couch, watching the juniper outside. It looks as though someone went heavy handed on the cream cheese frosting, thinking it was a cinnamon roll in need. Clumpy lumps of white snow sitting heavy on the branches.
I’ve never lived somewhere with winter, until now.
And so I’ve never seen what it’s like to have something make so visible the act of neighboring.
At the beginning of winter, the HOA sends out its annual notice: “It’s your responsibility to keep the sidewalk in front of your house clear of snow. If you need help, feel free to reach out and we will make sure someone takes care of it.”
Only, that’s not really how it works.
It’s early morning, and I’m not yet out of my jammies. Perched here, with my coffee, I just watched the dad from three doors down snow mow the sidewalk outside. My sidewalk, according to the HOA.
Yet there he went, bundled in mittens and a droopy knitted hat, ruddy cheeks and a big grin.
A few days ago, I shoveled ours, and the whole culdesac. And also Linda’s driveway. She’s older, and a widow. Though yesterday, early afternoon, she was out with her shovel, shoveling my walk.
Our first winter, we made the mistake of leaving one of our cars on the street during a big snow. Our neighbor walked by two days later, as we were digging her out. “Oh yeah, cars slip slide down this downhill in the ice. You’re definitely in danger of getting dinged. Let me help you. I have a bigger shovel.”
It’s my friend Annee, her first big winter in a tiny home community, being sent two middle schoolers with shovels: “Our mom said you are new and look like you need help. So here we are.”
Snow seems to have this unique way of making care visible. Let me help you with that. Yours isn’t done yet — I’m out here already, I’ll do it. They must be out of town, I wouldn’t want their driveway to build up so they can’t get in when they get home. Wow, did someone do ours already?
No one is shouting about it. Ringing your doorbell to let you know they’ve done a good deed and to receive their praise — except for the twelve-year-olds, who needed a candy pick-me-up halfway through. We all just quietly do a little more than our share.
It’s a gift, to have something so obvious to offer each other. And to be visually reminded of what others have gifted you, without your asking.
In the college co-ops I spent time in, there was a rule: “Yours plus one.”
You pick up after yourself, always do your own dishes. And also, you always do one more. Some plate has inevitably been left behind, and you do that one, too.
It doesn’t work if we just all pinky promise to clean up our own messes. We’re not perfect all the time. We forget. We miss something.
And even if we were perfect about it, we’d be missing something else… emotional.
If you’ve been in this Substack for a bit, you’ll know that of late, more than usual, I’ve been thinking about boundaries (here, here, and here, among other places).
The image that comes forward in this, for me, is that of circles. If we all kept to our own, swept up to our edges and no more, we’ve reinforced these hard lines. And we’ll have the inevitable garbage that blows into and collects in the liminal spaces between.
But if we go a bit further, if we all do some just beyond, we create this interlocking pattern. Where the places that we cross, and co-exist, are overlapped.
They become what holds us together.
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
What are you making? Whom are you gathering? What places do you exist within? Who are the humans you are near?
And then consider…
What could be your snow? How might you make the opportunities for care more visible? And what would it look like to create a culture of “yours plus one?”
Tell me about it. I’d love to hear.
Yours, Olivia
Join our next gathering of Designing for Feelings on February 26th @ 11 am PT. We’ll take a slow, sweet hour to look at the world through the lens of experience, and sink into the breadth of a single emotion.
Come play!