Parts & Pieces
Ways to Move
The Emergent Game invites thinking in more than a dozen different directions: inward, outward, awkward, sideward, upward, downward, backward, inchward, homeward, toward, onward, windward, leeward, wayward... and staying still. Each direction has its own “sense,” its own set of lenses and tools. Learning to cultivate and combine these directions can help you develop a deep and wide approach to feeling, acting, and understanding.
When you’re not sure how to move, try this quick check-in. What do you think you might need right now?
inward
to feel
Awareness, feelings, emotions, stories, state, identity. What belongs to only you.
How often do you check in with this direction? Do you listen when the inner voice speaks?
Moving inward often requires time and quiet. Learning to feel and process your own states — physical, energetic, mental, emotional, and imaginal — is the work of a lifetime, but it’s also something you can do right away, today.
upward
to see
Perspective, distance, clarity, altitude, vision, mapping, planning, the bigger picture, non-attachment.
Put a little distance between yourself and your question or situation. What does the picture look like?
Moving upward helps you detach from the emotional investment of a situation to take a long view of the situation, mapping where you are and where you want to go. It also helps you look systemically. Especially in our individualistic society, we tend to believe that our problems and solutions are a strict matter of individual behavior, when what’s really required is a bigger view of the historical and societal forces at work.
outward
for help
Expansion, communication, research, information, mentorship, travel, relevance, reach, impact.
Reaching beyond yourself. Who else is (or should be) involved? What can’t you do alone?
Moving outward purposefully expands our scope. There is no project we do entirely alone; learning to value and solicit the input of others (while maintaining our own integrity) transforms our work and way of being.
sideward
to play
Lateral thinking, sharing, collaboration, surprise, randomness, non-judgement, links.
Insights that linear thought can’t reach.
To move sideward is to make a creative leap. Creative thinking is not an inherent talent but rather a natural human capacity that can be practiced and improved.
homeward
to belong
Appreciation, rightness, way or quality of being, values, limits, belonging, safety, culture, what feels like you.
How you want to be; the specific quality of a space or experience. What are the precise, individual values that give your life or your work meaning and satisfaction?
To move homeward is to follow the aspects of your life that make you feel like yourself. These are not general values like “community” but, rather, answers to the question of how you feel community (for instance) in your daily life. How do you like to be with friends? What, specifically, makes you want to connect and feel connected? Identifying our own particular values and culture is difficult but worthwhile.
inchward
to do
Habits, time, tasks, iteration, progress toward a goal, measurement, evolution.
What’s the very next step? You don’t need to change your position radically to open new pathways; all you need is one inch to change your line of sight.
Moving inchward is taking baby steps. As opposed to upward, which might map a longer journey, inchward focuses on what’s right in front of you. What do we do right now?
backward
to remember
Reflection, memory, history, ancestors, influence, inspiration, revisiting. How you got here.
What brought you to this point? What was the original spark or inspiration for this situation?
To move backward, you might imagine taking an actual step back. Take a look at this scenario or situation with a longer perspective. When we feel stuck, it can often be because we’ve lost sight of our original vision or inspiration. Revisiting the reasons we got into this in the first place can often help to get us moving again.
downward
to root
the intuitive, the body, the unconscious, grounding, stability, resources, plowing and planting.
What deep knowledge exists in your body? What might you need to let go of?
Moving downward connects us to the knowledge we carry around in our bodies, the complex neural intelligence of our hearts and our guts. Once we start paying attention, we realize that this knowledge been there all along, getting the attention of our language brain through dreams, flirts, hunches, physical symptoms, and many other ways.
awkward
to try
Vulnerability, discomfort, risk, bravery, stretch, judgement.
The space of being a beginner, the discomfort of newness and unpredictability. What would you like to try but worry you’ll be bad at?
Deciding to move awkward is a choice to step out of your comfort zone. Almost every new thing we try feels awkward, at least at first. As we cultivate the habit of stepping into awkwardness, we learn how to navigate our anxiety and fearfulness, our shyness, our need to be good and impress people, and thus free ourselves to try many more new things. As a place we haven’t been before, awkward offers the possibility of big growth.
toward
to engage
Choosing to engage with, moving in the direction of the disturbance
What’s a daunting space you might rather avoid? A counter-intuitive direction to go?
Sometimes you can’t go around; you have to go through. Toward is the choice to get closer to the pain point rather than try and ignore, avoid, or deny it. If you’re caught on a bramble, pulling away only worsens the snag; moving toward the thorn allows you to try and unhook. There’s wisdom to be found in moving toward the problem. There may be pain as well, but often you’re already in pain, and moving toward it, paradoxically, brings with it an easing.
onward
to continue
You’re on the right road; keep on keeping on.
How do we find the fuel for a long journey? How do we pace ourselves?
Some goals and ambitions seem within our capacities, but take a long time to complete — or may be the continuing work of a lifetime. We move ever onward in the direction of these goals. What do we need to keep us oriented for the long haul? Whom do we recognize as fellow travelers on the same road? Onward is a hopeful and heartened journey, intentional, with a destination in mind if not in view.
betweenward
to sense
Relationship, potentiality, the formlessness that allows form, the energy and quality of a space.
How can we feel the space between?
“Space” is our word for the relationship between — between ideas, between people, between desire and reality, between now and then. The end points, the “things,” are easy to see, while the space between is often literally invisible; yet learning to attune to that invisible shape can change the way we experience, relate, and move within it.
From Ursula K. LeGuin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11:
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn’t.
wayward
to diverge
Against expectations, divergence, “misbehavior,” counter-cultural, not in order/uncontrolled, off the track.
What are you “supposed” to be doing?
Wayward is often defined as “disobedient” or “difficult to manage.” Those terms are all about other people’s expectations, though — which may not be right or healthy for you. Wayward is an invitation to rexamine the “shoulds” that may structure your life. While some of your tasks may indeed be required and important, there are other burdens you may be carrying for reasons that no longer serve you. To move wayward is to risk judgement and misunderstanding, but it can also be a liberating swerve onto the right path for you.
straightforward
to be honest
Open, frank, free from ambiguity and pretense, plain.
What would you like to say, if you could? How can we speak truth without violence?
Speaking our honest, unadorned truth can be difficult. What if our straightforwardness hurts someone? What if they get angry, or ignore us, or find us foolish? Learning to speak our hearts skillfully — giving voice to what matters inside us while not blaming, judging, or trying to manage or manipulate the listener — is a lifelong process, but one we can learn, practice, and improve.
weward
to connect
Interbeing, the “we space,” community, collaboration, togetherness, our own multiplicity.
What is the relationship between the “I” and the “we”? How can we overcome the story of our separateness?
n order to overcome the great modern story of separation, we need to relearn how to see, appreciate, and share the truth of the many “I”s, “we”s, and “otherness”es that constitute an “us.” What does it mean to be, not just in the same place at the same time, but an actual “we”? How do we create a group that emerges not through just defining ourselves against another group (Red Sox vs. Yankees) but through shared vulnerablity, reciprocity, relationality, and care? How do we create (in the words of Mikhail Bakhtin and Teddy Taplitkis) a “unity of unmerged voices”?
here
to be
Stillness, acceptance, staying put, choosing not to move.
Can’t feel your next direction clearly? Maybe what you need is not to move.
Be here now, says the guru. Staying right here is, in some ways, a radical choice. We want to move; we want the feeling of progress. Yet what we need most might be right where we’re already standing. Stillness gives us a place where the chatter in our minds can become, in writer Natalie Goldberg’s phrase, “distant white laundry flapping in the breeze.”