Our ability to link events and create stories to explain them in linear, cause-and-effect terms is a core part of what makes us human. It’s how we try to impose control on a world full of uncontrollable events. While many Asian cultures emphasise the quality of the whole, the context and relational aspects of a situation^⁠1, here in the West we tend to emphasise a linear – and often hierarchical –  causality: how we see time, read a book, learn, follow chains of command, see life stages, manage projects, climb the career ladder… Yet how often do we find this sense of neat order is interrupted and we experience a rough period of events or challenges? Injury or illness. An argument arising as if from nowhere or a relationship breakdown. Loss of a job or your landlord kicks you out. A global pandemic for a few years or a snow storm lasting a few days. Heating bills through the roof or a sudden debt sparked by the need to get your car repaired. Interruptions to our otherwise smooth passage through the days, weeks, months of our lives. A storm to be weathered. An inconvenient exception to the comfortable rule. A period after which we must get back on track, returning to the smooth journey ahead. In control again. 

Our expectations for a good life tend to arise from this linear view of life; yet when those expectations are threatened it’s the very same linear view of life that proves inadequate to help us address them. This is because three dissonances emerge in the spaces between our predicted path and the reality we find ourselves in.The first dissonance emerges in the gap between our current expectations of order and control and the randomness of the events to which we must respond. But that wasn’t supposed to happen! The pain is in the gap and we feel it must be closed as quickly as possible by returning to the norm. We’ve imbibed the notion that we are the captains of our own boats, that our natural agency wins out as we sail back into calmer waters. Those that can’t escape the storm are perceived as being in some way deficient, somehow lacking in the moral fibre to be successful. And so we stigmatise those who lose their job, those who can’t afford to feed their families, those who have multiple co-morbidities, who sleep on our streets. Those who live in a storm and for whom living through a storm is only a dream. This is the agency dissonance.

Our pain may be exacerbated by the assumption that our previous path remains the right one, even after the interruptions we’ve experienced and even if all the indications suggest otherwise. Our sense of peer pressure can encourage us to remain on our original path, worried that we might appear to have failed if we have to change tack. Perhaps the challenges we’ve faced have left us with a relationship that’s no longer loving, skills that are no longer valued or living in a location that no longer works for us. We we may find ourselves doubly lost, feeling the pressure to return to our former path and not realising that instead we might be better served by forging a new one. It is our denial of the gap between our original path and the need for a new one that forms the second, social dissonance in tough times. 

A third dissonance can arise when we consider what we might reasonably expect from our engagement with society as a whole – what is known as the social contract. We play by the rules of the game, contributing to society by through our personal combination of work, taxes, volunteering, voting, community engagement, and so on, and have certain expectations of what we might get in return. Often this works well – we pay taxes and expect our streets to be policed and our rubbish collected. We invest in our employer’s pension pot and expect our retirement to be adequately funded. It’s when we find our pension funds have been emptied by unscrupulous bosses, worked with dedication for companies that sack us the moment growth in shareholder dividends is threatened, paid through the nose for clean water while sewage is pumped into our rivers and seas, invested a small fortune in a degree only to realise the loan companies hold us in their grip for decades to follow, sat at home during lockdown while our leaders partied, invested in public services only to see them sold off to the highest bidder… this is when the social contract feels broken. It’s when we can no longer expect the terms of this unwritten quid pro quo to be met that this third, hierarchical dissonance becomes apparent. 

These three dissonances are all a result of a poor fit between our linear expectations of life and its messy reality. When events knock us from our expected path, when that very path is rendered obsolete by forces outside our control, and when the social contract is broken in any one of a myriad of ways, how do we respond? We might feel the overwhelm and seek primarily to cope, retreating into a smaller, perhaps initially more comfortable, and yet more isolated, world. Or we could stand up for others, pushing for fairness and equity in our communities and public services, ensuring our social contract is fit for purpose and enforced. Perhaps we embrace emergence and the possibilities of the new, even with all its uncertainty and confusion. Or we might look to others, to friends and family, and to our institutions and political leaders to make changes. Perhaps we decide to blend all three active responses, hanging on to the best of what was, while experimenting with the most promising aspects of the new. Indeed, this is the approach my research in this space suggests holds the greatest likelihood of success. 

Instead of looking into the future down an arrow-straight and predictable road called Life we could consider our future to be an unfamiliar landscape to be explored by utilising all the skills, knowledge, experience and instincts we’ve developed to date. This allows us to reframe these challenges and events. They can be seen as moments that offer the potential for something new to emerge; new directions to be taken, new ideas to take forwards, new connections to make, new learning to be gathered and skills to be developed. Opportunities to grow and evolve in ways we couldn’t have predicted. We encounter the unknown, embrace the opportunities it presents and learn from the experiences. Changed by events we are left that little bit better equipped to take the next step on our journey and face future challenges. No longer longing to return to how things were but equipped to navigate afresh into the future with new insights and knowledge. We transition into the novelty of the future rather than seek a return to the norm of the past. But that’s easier said than done. When we close these gaps the dissonances evaporate. Guided by our core values and hopes we are left free to actively engage in our evolution into an uncertain future. It’s the only way forward.

¹ See for example Richard Nisbitt’s The Geography of Thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geography_of_Thought