Hospice Workers and Midwives

Sometimes, the most important thing, is to ask the right question, says Daniel Wahl, PhD in a talk based on his book Designing Regenerative Cultures. Wahl is a Sustainability Educator who works in sustainable community design.  

In talking about the great upheavals of this present time, Wahl uses language that is  easy to relate to on an individual level.   He feels that we need to be both hospice workers to the old system that is passing away and midwives to the new system that is being born. 

Wahl does not use the revolutionary language of killing, ending, or murdering but instead uses the more feminine approach of allowing something to pass away in its due time. He doesn’t use the aggressive language of imposing or forcing a new system onto people.  Instead, he uses the language of birthing.  Wahl feels that it is useful to recognize the old system patterns that are still working in us.  Then we can be compassionate and understanding in hospicing those patterns, to let them go and resolve.  We can also be enthusiastic and visionary about the new story that is coming into being.

This language struck me because I understand hospice or palliative care which is gentle and nurturing.  It allows someone to pass away with dignity and with as little pain as possible.  I understand midwifery which allows someone to come into the world as gently as possible while the baby and mother are nurtured and supportes for this difficult passage.

Wahl asks two important questions: “What things do we need to be hospice workers for?” And, “What things do we need to be midwives for?”  He asks these questions for us as individuals, communities and globally. 

Wahl did not give specific answers to these questions as he believes that these questions are important for each of us to think about. I have been mulling them over for a few weeks now, trying to answer these questions for myself personally.  I found it difficult to apply these questions to myself.  I think the hardest part was acknowledging that I have the choice to hospice and midwife things compassionately, gently, for myself.  That put me in the proverbial driver’s seat. 

Wahl feels that it is important to answer these questions for ourselves personally because we are part of nature.  If it is good for us, then it must be good for nature, for our communities, for our world.  I spent time with these questions and some answers began to bubble up.  For instance, I want to hospice the idea that I am on my own and that any problem must be solved in my own head.

Here is an example of this way of thinking.  Last week it was extremely cold and my four-year-old car, which I still think of as new, would not start.  Even worse, the hood latch was frozen closed.  Anxiety rose quickly since I spent years and years driving old cars and running into trouble.  I reasoned that I could call the roadside help line but the hood wouldn’t open.  I came inside and told my partner who very calmly came outside with tools and a flashlight to have a look.  Together we thought of applying heat and he had a little heater which we aimed at the frozen latch.  A few minutes later the hood was up and he started my car with jumper cables from his car which luckily did start.  I called my mechanic and asked him if he had any batteries since mine was obviously worn out.  He told me he would order one and I could come in that afternoon so he would install it.  Later that day, it was all solved.  My old way of thinking, that I had to solve this problem on my own needs to be hospiced, to be allowed to pass away.  Clearly, it is not a helpful way of thinking and only leads to anxiety.  Getting help from people who are good at this sort of thing makes much more sense.  That is a way of thinking that I want to be a midwife to.  When a problem emerges, feel the support of the web that I am a part of.

To apply this example to a community or more globally, would be to move from  more isolated, protectionist ways of solving problems, to a more cooperative, co-creative way of solving problems.  This can happen easily if the problems are big enough.  But it does require letting go of the notion of solving problems with limited resources and knowledge and midwifing the idea that using the collective knowledge and intelligence of more people will provide a better diversity of solutions.

Dr. Daniel Wahl

Wahl believes that asking the right questions is important.  He believes that the new story will be born from the answers to these questions. 

How would you answer these questions in your own life?  What is it that you want to hospice?  What is it that you want to be midwife to?