Celebrating Entanglement

couple on upturned tree roots

Listening to a talk given by Bayo Akomolafe earlier this month on overcoming our whiteness I enjoyed his use of the word entanglement and was reminded of the research about trees and their ability to communicate and connect via their roots. The forests show an interconnectedness which shows how much the system relies on support and interspecies support at that.

And what if being entangled with one another is our natural way of being? Boyo talks about a piece of paper… it’s a cloud, it holds the rain and the soil of the tree which made the paper and the people worked and made the paper and the paper came to you. We are entangled with each other and with our planet. This is not a new idea for me. I give thanks for the water as it comes out of my tap- to my ancestors who built this city and the water pipes and the people who keep things working and then marvel that it pours out. I live with gratitude. And Boyo’s talk made me think again… Can I let myself fall into even more entanglements with others… let myself open further to love from my partner, get even more open to love from others? Can I let go and allow the natural entanglement the earth is calling for? Can I feel the trees as they are being cut down? The cry of the earth as pipelines are built? Feel the pain of the child miner or the mother putting her children onto a refugee boat?

My online dictionary has entanglement offered with three definitions, only the definition quantum entanglement* has a positive slant, the other two definitions are negative- caught up, ensnared, difficult, awkward to sort out. And this is where modern psychology seems to have taken us. We shouldn’t be entangled, enmeshed with one another- we should be separate and relationships which are entanglements are ones to get out of. And yet we are entangled. I want to see it and live it and make choices from there. Sure I’ve been in relationships where I was entangled- but I couldn’t see it. That’s what made it messy and unhealthy for me- not the entanglement itself. That I couldn’t see it. So now I work from the starting place that we ARE all entangled- work out how and where and find myself and my needs from that place. Rather than trying to avoid entanglement I want to see it as part of being human. The trees, plants, animals other humans including you, we are all part of a messy whole. I’d like to celebrate this and walk towards it rather than try and avoid it. In THIS place I hope to find deeper connections and a place to live more fully human.

Another piece of research let me to this article- exploring the entanglements we have with things– that’s maybe a post for another day…

“We often manage to live relatively unaware of the full complexity of what and who provides for us, but we are nevertheless deeply entangled in the vitality of things and the assemblages of their relations “- Ian Hodder


*Quantum Entanglement  is beyond my little brain today…but it sounds like the secret of the universe- particles spatially apart act in correlation… seems like teleportation is possible… well that’s what I learned.

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