Emergent Strategies: Fractals

I’m currently reading the book Emergent Strategy but adrienne maree brown. As an activist and organizer, she lends her ideas on successfully enacting change. Her main point is simple: everything is connected. To better explain, she uses Nick Obolensky’s quote “Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions”. These patterns and systems are not only in human interactions but in nature as well.

Though the concepts of this book are not new to me, they’re amplified in a new way. A way that sticks and matters. I’m sitting here outside on this beautiful day hyper-aware off the smaller things around me. The lyrics less music in my ear allows me to open eyes to my surroundings. I notice the small fly and the seeds of a tree that are abundantly everywhere. It makes me think of that seed as something that was designed to spread through vast areas, it might not be living, but once it finds fertile ground its rooted and gives life. I would like to think adrienne would have preferred it that way. 

This chapter I’m currently on is about fractals. “A never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop.” In the previous chapter she associates this word with a fern. She encourages the reader to understand that the small scale impacts the large. She writes, “ what we practice at the small scale sets the pattern for the whole system.”

“Ferns are forms of fractal. A fractal is an object or quantity that displays self similarity meaning its looks roughly the same at any scale.'‘ - adrienne maree brown

She shares there are several negative patterns reinforced by society, that start small and shift to the whole organization. One that affected her personally, was overworking. In our culture “the grind” is admirable and someone who works day until dawn to reach a goal is a person we would look up to. I’ve definitely tapped into this pattern. In college, I had such a hard time saying no to opportunities and realistically I could never give my all to one responsibility. Some could say wow, you really did it all and work so hard doing it, but I can argue I was never truly successful at it. She realized as she was overworking she wasn’t present in the lives of family and friends and her mind was always somewhere else. She writes:

“My life is a miracle that cannot be recreated. I can never get these hours, weeks, years back ... This means actually being in my life and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.”

I’m inspired to take the concepts illustrated in this book and apply them to my life. I already knew that everything, literally everything small and large, is working simultaneously together as God created it to. But with this information, what am I going to do about it? The quotes “What we practice at the small scale sets the pattern for the whole system” followed with “transform yourself to transform the world” moved me. Throughout this week, I’ve thought “am I practicing the characteristics and values I want to live by and want to see others live by?” “If I want to lead, I would certainly need to practice what I preach" There are habits that I need to break out of and some that I need to take on. I’m continuously reflecting on ways to make my lifestyle more intentional. I want to start with creating a habit of a morning routine with devotion and laying my intentions for the day.