Clear Vision 2021
This post was originally published on Medium.
We’ve just completed our annual review in the lab at ETC and felt it necessary to share a few highlights from the session. Certainly, every human on the planet will have testimonies to share about surviving the past 12 months. So, we won’t waste your time pontificating about how the past year’s events on the local, national and world stages shaped who we have become both individually and as an organization.
Instead, we asked our team to come up with a theme which encapsulates all of the things we could appreciate about 2020. A foundational belief that we hold close to at ETC is “images have power”; and this premise helped us to recognize that our theme for 2020 had to be:
“The Age of turning Darkness into Light”
According to Carl Jung:
“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”
- Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14
While Jung’s work refers to the individual, there is sufficient evidence to assert that a group (collective) of individuals who share the same core beliefs can also repress the same traits; particularly when these traits don’t align with the idealistic (and often false) realities which the collective holds to be true. This condition has been at the center of everything that represents the political, social and economic status since the founding of our country. The shadow behavior is so pervasive that it has infected an entire population to a degree more significant than this current pandemic. Yes…so insidious that it seeks to justify the fear that equality for all translates to loss for some.
How can we make such a bold statement about the history of an entire nation? The answer is quite simple…we were told by
74,000,000 American citizens
Therefore, we’re actually thankful to 2020 for bringing to the forefront the shadow behaviors of those who would dare to take advantage of (rather than fix) the compromised system of government within these United States.
- Anthony Boyd, Aug 2020
And, just like that basketball, nothing can stop the greatness of destiny. So, we’re also thankful that 2020 shed light into corners of our humanity, our compassion…our resilience. From selfless acts of kindness; to empowering stories of individual success. There lies within us a heartbeat for so much more. For those of you who are igniters in your communities.
We see you. We hear you. We feel you.
“When you want to quickly; go alone. When you want to go far; go together.” — African Proverb
Let’s bond together and shed more light onto darkness. Let’s lift our voices to be heard collectively. We have the ability and the responsibility to stitch our quilt back together again. The beauty of the human mind is that what was once repressed can be resurrected to remind us all of the greatness from whence we first came.
At ETC, our mission is to be a conduit within our community for unity, collective responsibility and cooperative wealth.
One individual. One family. One community.
At a time.
Go Deep 4 The Culture.
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