Think Back.

'Magic is first and foremost about wonder. Perhaps there is more to this world, than we can see.."

Today marks the day that the entire process is finally complete. The first part of it anyway... 8 months of struggling. Within those questioning, re framing, changing, re crafting. With fear, with hope, with many many quiet wishes and without question, with a lot of hard work. We called it the organizational visioning process. Something that could carry forth with the new - the old, something that could keep the essence of identity but push those edges of discovery.

Utopian wanderlust. I learned somewhere. of the infringements of your and my reality and the world that lies in between us. The unmistakable clarification that to a certain degree, the old cannot go with the new, that identity is merely something you get to keep with you for that one particular moment and that try as hard as I can, I cannot reconcile 5 years of being The Youth Parliament with this 1 new year, and this new direction, of being The YP Foundation.

We've gained. Yes, we have. Not an identity as much as a purpose. To struggle with the things that are worth struggling with. We've had more arguments about our perspectives and our issues this year rather than our budgets and our project time frames and that makes me, in the midst of my exacting demands, a little satisfied. We're pushed. Never have numbers played such large roles in our lives and my slightly jaundiced eye wanders to note that yes, it hasn't taken our roots away from us, swayed the ground beneath our feet or then shifted our perspectives. But it's made changes, like all things do..

By YP standards, the visioning process, was bold.

Every single step in itself. Every moment of choosing to selectively nurture the wings of certain fragments of potential, certain aspects. With those from across the years, from different times and spaces. Taking all the coordinators for a retreat this time, those 7 days of giving time to not just our work or ourselves, but giving time to the issues. To spend time thinking about the validity of the impact we create. Some days it's clearer, some days it's not. To rediscover the fire in you, to do this. To keep doing this, until you get that last moment of clarity. Of necessity. The joys of being an extremist and an idiot and a dreamer, all rolled into one :)

But I think we know now, why we do what we do.
And I think somewhere last year, it was perspective we were beginning to loose.
Because.

Numbers just overtook. in people. in projects. in expenses. in milestones.

Then came the action research plans. The chance to formulate. build stand stone from clay and cement it back to ashes again. We have such stark vulnerabilities sometimes, I wonder if we will be able to work around them well enough. On other days, I wonder if we should at all..

But the singular moment, that brought a closing. a fitting moment, that shared so much in it. The YP Birthday. Something we've all spoken and dreamt about for a year and a half before... what it would be like, the machinations of the mind traversed to a space where the accountant became weaver became speaker became poet became actor became a single note of song became a trapeze artist and eventually, came back to being me again.

I clearly remember walking somewhere, outside that hall. Just looking at the sheer energy and the expanse of the room infront me and the people within it, wondering whether I would ever find enough loopholes to satisfy myself and when I would cross that single moment of self artifice and break the mould.

The visioning process. Yeah.
It helped me. Speak out loud what I've always known.
I've never cared about how it was meant to be done.

Then the strangest of all, the loneliness, the intense drive, the questions, the pushing, the stress.
Like I've suddenly travelled back 5 years in time to start something all over again.
In moments of music, when I can breathe deeply and remember what it feels like.

The music, your freedom, my inner self consicous child, our instinct and sleep.
I think we'll be more than okay.