This is a short tale about a world where humanity flourishes in symbiotic unity with nature, bound by empathy, interconnectedness, and a deep reverence for the exquisite tapestry of life's fragility and beauty, by our Creative Director, Anne
"I've just returned from Small Giants' Mastery of Business Empathy prologue retreat at Flowerdale Estate in Victoria, Australia, nestled between the Yarra Valley and Macedon Ranges. With an incredible group of people, we delved into philosophy and practice concerning the construction of good societies in light of the challenges of the metacrisis, laying the groundwork for a year-long journey unfolding before us.
By the end of 2024, we'll be equipped with a business model for our organizations, or perhaps a model of organization for our lives, responding more sensitively to the challenges of the dangerous geological era we've pushed ourselves and the planet through: the antropocene, which I prefer to call the Androcene, but that is a matter for another blog post.
Despite being aware of this, one word encapsulates this gathering: AWE. For those seeking more than the capsules our social media avatars have to offer, here's a short tale.
Travelling through time
It took four days for my body to adjust to the jet lag, precisely on the day it was time to leave. Being in Victoria, Australia, coming from London, United Kingdom, there was an 11-hour time difference.
That morning, I woke up at the time the sun rose in Australia, while it was going to sleep where I come from. I live in London but come from Brazil, and there, whenever we wanted to do something that would get us ahead in the future, we used Australia as an excuse. For example, it's not advisable to have a drink on a Thursday, but in Australia, it's already Friday. Cheers!
I realized that while I was awake with my course colleagues, my loved ones were all in a deep sleep for the dawn of the next day, where I already existed. This led me to experiment with the imagination that maybe I was also dreaming. In the last minutes of the gathering, we were asked, sitting in a large circle, to share our final thoughts, and hence my word: AWE.
I wasn't dreaming. I was indeed in the future; after all, in Australia, it's already tomorrow. And I promised then that I would go back to the past and tell that, despite all fears, conflicts, and enormous threats, everything turned out fine.
A vision for the future
In the future, people are completely different from each other, and yet everyone fits. They are shrewd, intelligent, and happy—interesting, generous, and upright humans. Everyone comes from somewhere.
They sit in large circles and then in small circles, discussing important issues with respect and courage, listening to their shamans, and spending some time alone in silence. They wake up early and take sound baths. They take care of the garden and walk near waterfalls. They eat planted food and, occasionally, some junk.
During the day, everything is accompanied by the cacophonous voices of cockatoos; at night, people dance to the songs of the past generation with the movements of the past generation, for the entertainment of the young ones.
In the future, the sky is much farther from us, small humans, and our awareness of our insignificance and, at the same time, a profound admiration for the vastness of each individual vibrates in blue color and emits a warm and fragrant light. In the future, people quickly switch roles. Sometimes they care, sometimes they are cared for.
When they are away from the people they already love, they spend the rest of their time investing in the arduous task of loving more people. They support themselves in a gentle waltz between afflictions and rhythmic breathing, a lot of fun, and very hard work that hurts the bones, which can rest, if they want, with a dip in the cold stream.
I've been to the future, and it's AWEsome."