The next instalment in our Letters to the Future Series. Our guest is Bhavana Nissima
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward & Frank Spencer
Songs and Letters
Letter from the Future Correspondent
Postcard from the Future Correspondent
Transcript
Sonja Blignaut: I wanted to respond to the letter that the future wrote and almost credit the future for introducing this idea of mystery One of the sentences the future wrote was I look to your words as though to the weather on the edge of a storm uncertain but alive full of possibility It really spoke to me because I studied meteorology Peter.
I don't know if you knew that I'm a meteorologist, but I have a love for extreme weather. I realized recently I studied that not because I wanted to understand the weather because I wanted to be in it. So first, I just wanted to acknowledge that the mystery already started before this particular recording.
I thought about what I would love to leave as a breadcrumb or a provocation for your next guest what kept coming up for me was this quote by Bayo Akomolafe. It's quite short, but I find it fascinating. I would love to leave that, as my ending he says, falling may very well be flying without the tyranny of coordinates.
The Future Correspondent: The three of you together create something rare - a willingness to work with ambiguity, to not demand that the unknown declare itself in tidy terms. I see in your dialogue an echo of what Sonja described: "the weather on the edge of a storm." There is a charge in the air, an a liveliness that comes from not yet knowing what will emerge. It is a precarious, beautiful place to be.
Sonja, your mention of falling as flying "without the tyranny of coordinates" lingers like a question that refuses to resolve. It makes me wonder: what if we have been too enamored with direction, with naming the points on the map, when the freedom lies in letting the coordinates dissolve?
For all three of you, I wonder: if we are to rewild our imaginations, our ways of being, and even the future itself, what must we first allow to unravel? What do we need to forget in order to remember?
Frank Spencer: Welcome everyone to another. Episode of future pod X, and I get the privilege of kicking us off today. Of course, every episode is wonderful. And our guests are always wonderful. And I want to first welcome my cohost, Peter Hayward. Peter, how are you?
Peter Hayward: Thanks, Frank. I am. Wonderful we're now sitting in the new year hoping that the new year has been good for you and your loved ones.
Frank Spencer: It has so far. It has, so far it's we're, it's a short time in, so we will hold our expectations close to the vest. But I expect that, just as we're recording these episodes, has, it really has to do with our heart and our soul, our heart and our soul and our perspective does it more than anything else.
Peter Hayward: So let's start let's do you want to go first with our first introduction for our guest?
Frank Spencer: Certainly, yes. Certainly. If you've been listening to the two previous episodes up to now, you haven't, or if you haven't then what you would find at the beginning of those episodes is what we're calling a living eulogy.
Which we think is just a beautiful way to introduce our guests. So normally when someone is in, when someone is introduced their bio, meet, their bio and their accomplishments, and today we, have a very special and very talented and well equipped and expert in their in their field person on as our guest today.
But I think it's much more beautiful to read these living eulogies that come from someone that is a friend or an associate of the guest. And so before I, as I have in the previous episodes, before I formally introduce this guest, I'm just going to read living eulogies that were sent in.
And then we will formally introduce after we read the three that were sent in there. All three of them are fairly short. Here's the first one. It says, I wanted to share, I wanted to share and celebrate ordinary life of Bhavana, a woman whose presence was a gift to all who knew her. Her wisdom, compassion, and generosity inspired me.
I never thought possible, as I got to know Bhavana, I was struck by her openness, new ideas. Her eagerness to learn, and her willingness to share, her knowledge with others. Her listening was a gift -- deep, empathetic and nonjudgmental.
Her guidance was a treasure trove of wisdom helping me navigate life's complexities and unlocked my own potential. One of her most precious gift to me was her reminder to slow down, to allow solutions to emerge rather than forcing them. Her words: “You're trying to fix a problem, not allowing the solution to emerge,” continues to guide me in my own personal and professional life.
What are my identity metaphors? And adopting these metaphors has resulted in some transformative changes inside of me. And I've seen these changes in others as well.
So Bhavana's legacy is a testament to the transformative power of human connection. The questions, the dialogues, have made me imagine a very different future. A topic which Bhavana spends time, reimagining over and over again. Her presence in my life has been a blessing. I am forever grateful for the lessons and the way of thinking that she taught me, the wisdom she shared and the love and deep care that she expressed.
It was quite beautiful.
Peter Hayward: In the Mayan calendar, B’atz is the feminine figure of the weaver. The weaver is not only a master of her craft, she is also a seer. The weaver of time, the weaver of realities. To me, Bhavana was such a masterful weaver. She could bring worlds into manifestation with a depth of understanding that came straight from the heart.
And that is not often found in someone so articulate. She had this rare capacity to listen so intently, without judgement, and transmute like an alchemist not only the words but the emotions and feelings around them. She naturally inspired respect. I remember how people always asked for her thoughts on important matters.
I think it was because anyone who came into contact with her could sense her genuineness. Her generosity and the grace within which she carried herself in the world. She was a bit like a lighthouse, but she always remained so humble. I feel very grateful to have been touched by her light.
Frank Spencer: And then last but not least, Bhavana is someone who belonged to the earth, rooted like an ancient tree, yet untamed like a river rushing toward that sea.
Embodies both stillness and movement. Grounded yet wild. A reminder that life is not merely to be lived, but to be cherished in each breath, in every fleeting moment. She watched the morning stretch itself awake as if she knew that even time needs moments to yawn and breathe
Bhavana carried one of life's rarest gifts- the ability to notice the quiet magic that most of us just rush past. She didn't rush past life-- She paused, leaned in and listened to its hushed songs. She once told me, “Let your breath catch up with you. Pause, notice, and then notice a bit more.”
I carry these words like a quiet prayer-a reminder to live gently and to notice as much as I can. Souls like Bhavana teach us that being alive isn't about grand gestures-- it's about finding grace in the small, luminous details. To stand still long enough to feel our inner light rekindled and weave it into the world to be fully alive.to be fully alive and present in the sacred unfolding of every moment.
In a world of over eight billion souls, meeting her feels like a whispered blessing from the universe. A quiet assurance that kindred spirits can still exist, reminding us to slow down, to see, to feel. He made life feel like a story worth telling and a song worth humming.
Those are amazing moving eulogies to our guest today, Dr. Bhavana Nissima. And Bhavana, it's such a wonderful blessing to have you on. I wrote this to some of the people that had handed in these living eulogies to me about you that I only hope to be able to have friends of my life like they have with you.
Bhavana Nissima: Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Peter.
I am very quiet right now as I feel the waters of these words just wash over me.
It's not what I expected, just so magnificent. And in this moment, I am conscious that I am joining a conversational stream which already has an ancestry. And so I thank Peter and all the people and your landscapes that have influenced you, that has made who you are. And how you bring that presence here.
I thank you, Frank, for your landscapes and all the people and beings that have influenced you and how your presence enriches the space. I thank our previous guests, Marcus Bassey and Sonja for the wisdom they have already brought into the stream. I step into this stream with care. With responsibility to awe which is right here.
I'm listening to these voices, these living eulogies. The words are there, and I know my friends, and the words are now being held in the voice of Peter and of Frank. And I can sense that the voices have migrated, and something else has happened as it mixes with the voices of Peter and Frank.
And something else is there now. As if, the melodies of those voices have moved on here in a different form, like a pilgrim. Pilgrim is a word that I had heard very recently when I watched Satish Kumar's docu film, Radical Love. And he used the word pilgrim. As he traveled around the world, he just said he was a pilgrim.
And suddenly I realized the contentiousness that comes with the word “migrant” has suddenly collapsed and it's sacred now. Moving is sacred. I'm receiving the pilgrim's blessings in this moment. Thank you, both of you.
Peter Hayward: When you mentioned the word pilgrim, Bhavana my mind moves to the notion of the pilgrimage, that there is no pilgrim without the journey of the pilgrim. You are only a pilgrim when you journey and seek, I would imagine, without necessarily knowing what you will find. And there's a freedom in pilgrimage, but at the same time, you're sensing there's a fear of the pilgrim, such that we don't want or feel comfortable with people that are on pilgrimages.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes, I am hearing into that, and as I am hearing, and I am sensing where is it, where is that fear, and where is the call? And as I'm sensing both I realize that the issue is when it is at the level of the meaning, at the conceptual or the definitive meaning, but not at the level of the gestural.
Part of that communication which is a call is what I sense myself responding to, when Sonja in the previous episode had called about the inner rewilding and this piece that she ended, the gift that she brought in: that falling is flying without coordinates. And I'm sensing that the pilgrim is a different kind of a falling.
And it's a different kind of way of losing coordinates of the usual forms of nationality and belonging. And it's free-ing place. I'm again reminded about Marcus’s words on love being a self-organizing principle and that love as it extends, as the edges of our selves extend.
The pilgrim is … not that specific place based, but it is becoming earth based, and it's beautiful.
Frank Spencer: I'm so glad, Peter, that you jumped right into the Pilgrim piece, because I'm thinking back as well to the previous episodes, and that is one of many threads running through this letter and that the future is responding back to us again, it's almost as if the word unknown is a synonym for the future. And isn't that all we really ever have?
It seems as if we try so hard to especially in this field of futures, you do the Futurepod podcast. I work at TFSX, you've run one of the most amazing programs in the world, your master's degree programs and futures. And so many people go through these programs as a way to try to convey certainty and find certainty, but all we really ever have is the unknown.
And this pilgrim is just such a beautiful thing because the pilgrim goes to lands. That they haven't been to before and that title is not necessarily bestowed but embodied as someone who is moving into the unknown. As a matter of fact, I'm looking back at a piece of the living eulogy that I read to you, that one of your friends read, and it said, Bhavana's legacy is a testament to the transformative power of the human connection.
The questions, prompts, dialogues have made me imagine a very different future. A topic which Bhavana spends lots of time reimagining. And I'm just reading your words. When you and I have connected online and hearing how you respond, knowing that this isn't necessarily foresight futures thinking as a field.
And yet what you're talking about all the time is exactly what we're exploring here. This rewilding, yes, and just the pilgrimage. And I would just love to hear you expound on that. Peter was so smart to bring that up right away. And how do we flow through episodes one, two, and now into three, not just responding to the future, but in embracing the title of the pilgrim, embodying the pilgrim and the pilgrimage as well.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes, Frank. And on this point, I'm also remembering the piece on masculine and feminine that was also brought in the episodes before, and I'm connecting it to this notion of the unknown. And the way I am sensing is that everything is not unknown. That is always something that is known that is continuing, but that known that is continuing is not in the mechanical rigid category of knowing.
It is there, like a melody, it continues but that is changing. It is changing always. So that which is known is changing. So the present Pilgrim is carrying something of each land he or she has travelled to, and something of those lands have shifted the way something is being felt and absorbed.
I remember my voice. I grew up in Bengal, in Calcutta (Kolkata) and I'm not a native. My ancestors are not from there. And so I was like a migrant in the space of Bengal and I was picking up the language as best as I could because I loved that land. And then I traveled. I traveled to multiple other states. I traveled to USA. I traveled to other places. And when I returned back to India, I noticed that people were confused about my language, my voice. I got the words right, I got the grammar right, my sentences were okay, but there was something about my accent, which had been changed by the many landscapes and the people that I had been around.
And it kept changing so that folks, when I now live in Hyderabad, they sense a Hyderabad piece. And I'm like, when did this happen? How did this happen? It's not that I made an effort to try and belong, but something about the world has shaped me. And yet there is also something of the worlds that I've lived before that is continuing in this moment.
And I was thinking about this program (podcast). And I felt like I just wanted to go off the word-script and move in the state of the music. And I want to offer a small song because the song has got a very beautiful journey by itself. So it's a Bengali song and I learned to sing it in my teens, mostly because I was desperate to show my love and to be part of the world that I was in.
And the song is composed by our Nobel Laureate poet, Tagore (Rabindranath Tagore). It's in Bengali. It doesn't matter, but you'll pick up something.
Phule phule dhole dhole bahe kiba mridu baay,
Totini hillolo tule kallole choliya jaay
Piko kiba kunje kunje kuhu kuhu kuhu gaay,
Ki jaani kisero laagi praano kore haay haay!
So this song was composed at the end of towards the end of the 19th century by Tagore. Now, the interesting piece is the melody is not of Bengal. It's actually from a Scottish song, which was composed in the late 18th century. Wow. And it is Ye Banks and Braes, O Bonnie Doon, and it is composed by the poet Robert Burns.
18th century Scottish music somehow reached Bengal and the poet picked up the melody, but the lyrics are not a translation. The lyrics are what is based in the landscape around him. So he creates it. And 150 years later, I am singing here in this podcast with all of you. There is something that has moved across and still that something is not the same.
Peter Hayward: Wow. I've heard you say this a couple of times and one of your eulogies spoke to the landscape and what we notice. And I wonder, because you yourself said it, people noticed in you what had changed, but you yourself did not notice what had changed in you until someone told you. You were in landscape and it changed you. And we don't have control over how we will change, but we have an ability to influence or shape how we change. Is that kind of your understanding of how this transformation might happen through landscape and notice?
Bhavana Nissima: I am pondering on this, and I'm also thinking of the episode that I saw on Frank's podcast with Sophie Strand and this piece about unweaving. It's not just the weaving part, but also the unweaving part of it. I am feeling that it's not just that the landscapes are shaping and that I can somehow figure out what is going to shape what, but that new landscapes change in ways that don't know how it will change.
And I am reminded that in my childhood before I knew about the contentious politics around religion and all of those pieces, we would have this twilight sit-down to say prayers. And it was like, oh my God, I have to say my prayers thingy. But the nice part was that there were some beautiful songs.
And one of the songs where it had such beauty in it that I fell in love with the goddess for whom it was being sung, not that I understood the goddess or anything. And when I connect to that, the goddess was also there in my bathroom. Our bathroom door had broken and we didn't have the money to repair.
So my dad did the next best thing. There was a big frame of the goddess, so he took it and he nailed it to the bathroom. When I would be showering, I would be with the goddess and I would talk to her because it's the most intimate, quiet place where I could be with her. And she was there staring at me.
And there were spiders in the bathroom. And during certain seasons, they would come out and the female spider would be this big spider, she had this bigger body and she was darker in color and she had stripes on her legs. And the male would be a little more softer, more fragile, light body, brown in color. And when they both would appear, I knew that they were busy making babies and I was afraid I would do something and fall on them or splash on them. And they would come and hurt me and I shouldn't be hurt. And so I would tell her, Goddess protect me from them and let me not get in their way of doing what they are doing.
And I am sensing how that moment in that bathroom and the music outside, all of which brought in a certain affection for a form which isn't necessarily to be co-opted in the usual understanding of the conceptual categories of what this is or that is, but that it is an affection, it's just an affection.
And so what is to change, we do not know, but we are always in relationship with our landscape. It's shaping us. We're shaping them. I realize that now I am also a pilgrim.
Frank Spencer: It's just such a beautiful definition or explanation; however you want to put it, of transformation. Because Peter's always one step ahead of me. I was going to mention transformation as well, but he beat me to it. And then you speak of transformational transformation. Transformation by casting words realities as being about relational emergence and again, going back to this A piece that I read today from Bayo Akomolafe where he was saying, it's not mechanical, it's not linear, it's not something that we put our finger on, but the beauty of transformation is in this relational emergence.
I might not know what's coming next necessarily. It's, but it's not always about whether it's going to be a good or a bad thing. It's about me understanding, and I think this is where the agency somewhat comes in. And I would love for you to to expound on this. Is that agency coming in and knowing that it can be good, no matter how it changes, because I'm learning from Bhavana and I'm learning from Peter and I'm sitting here in America.
It would be very easy for me to be cloistered away in the South. South of America. But instead, I get the chance tonight to learn from an amazing gentleman sitting in Australia and an amazing doctor sitting in India tonight with lessons and stories and traditions that I would have never have known before.
But if I open myself up to that, then I have agency, so to speak, and directing that transformational relational emergence. It takes place. And that's what I hear in this amazing story of the goddess and the spider, which would have never entered into my, life experiences and category. And yet I completely understand.
And maybe it manifests some other way for me, but I see that in just a story about relational emergence, but in listening to the story, as you tell it, I'm learning, and that is giving me a future that I would not have had 60 seconds ago.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes, Frank. And that is so true. That's what happened to me when I was listening to the previous episodes.
I was like, wow, I'm not the same person after listening to the episode than what I was before. And as this, the stream flows I find myself that I have no clue, three or four episodes down, what else is going to emerge that that would unweave something what I am saying in this moment that I don't fully comprehend or understand, but it is there.
And it's just there in tiny ways.
Frank Spencer: It's in tiny ways, right? Because it's, and not to interrupt you, but we often think about the future, the unknown or transformation being these grand gestures. I think somebody had put this in your thing. It's not about grand gestures. It's these tiny ways. And we don't realize that in 5 p.m. in the afternoon or speaking on this, webinar and podcast with you, that the change is taking place, that transformation is taking place. We think of transformation as being this bold event that happened at the breaking of dawn on a certain week. And maybe that's the case, but transformation is an ongoing process.
And you mentioned Sophie Strand again, she says, all living things transform. If they're not transforming, at least at different stages or continually, then the death has set in. And it's a death state at that point.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes. And to that point, I realized, and I want to go to that point of agency that you mentioned.
Agency is such a tricky word, right? It is already so ensconced in difficult patterns, which are sometimes not helpful. And I want to take agency out into the piece that Marcus (M. Bassey in episode 1) had brought in “love as self organizing principle” and that agency is literally love in the moment, that it's love that is twirling around when we are coming together, listening to each other, like birds sitting on a branch of tree, being aware and chattering and listening and informing and signaling each other, there is something that is set in motion in that place.
And I am also sensing in this moment that one of the pieces that prevents that emergence to happen is also very personal suffering in a way that is keeping us at needing to just protect ourselves, needing to just protect what is. Because of whatever other patterns that is there, the mechanical rigid patterns that don't allow us to believe, that it is okay to trust, that it's okay to lean in, and to just blend, and to bring in the voices so that it joins in the weaving process and it joins in, and it's not cutting through.
Voices are not cutting through. We need our voices, our entire bodily gestures to lean in more. That I know Peter wants to…
Frank Spencer: and I'm sure he's thinking, but I wanted to ask while you were still on that thread. And I'm asking this sort of in a way I'm asking this in an opening myself up kind of way, like Frank doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, but that's exactly how I wanted to ask it.
Does that mean that the unweaving, the emergence, the transformation is collective, it's cooperative, or does it happen at the individual level? Or is it both? Or is it something else?
Bhavana Nissima: I am sensing that when Sonja brought in the piece of inner rewilding, I was struck that the inner rewilding, if there is this container, me, that is rewilded, it's always a discovery of the wild in between us. And for the discovery of the wild in between us, there is something else that itself has to come in to break the existing pattern of the agriculture, of the monocultural agricultural ways in which we approach each other. And which is why I found this podcast also to be magical in the sense that it's not episodic. It's not discrete pieces, but it's a stream that is carrying the histories of so much. And it's going to go in a direction that we don't know.
It changes the entire format into something else. And the entire aspect of the living eulogies also takes the usual structures into which we have learned to understand each other into a relational understanding that you, Frank, in wherever you are, and Peter, wherever you are, I am sensing you.
My voice is reaching out to you to make friends in a new way. When I heard Peter's voice, I was sensing a Mother's voice. And when I was hearing Frank's voice, I was sensing this bright garden of bursting sunflowers. And I was like, wow, I'm entering into this space. And wondering how I need to be present. Do I need to be like a water moving on around the sunflower? Do I need to hold the mother and let the mother continue? How do I show up with responsibility and this that I'm able to do has come after a lot of changes that has happened in so many forms, landscapes, people who came into my lives and taught such beautiful things. It's through people who without even knowing said things that changed the way I was perceiving life.
How do I tell a story when there is no story that is complete?
And I'm so eager to hear Peter's voice now… wondering what's going through him.
Peter Hayward: Yeah, what's going through Peter? That's a good question. Peter wonders too. I think where I'm caught, and I am caught because no one talks about agency more than Peter Hayward. The reality of agency as I see it, it's a double-edged sword in the sense that we can almost prefer my agency over our agency.
It's almost easier for me to transform myself, for me to notice my landscape. as it is to bring another in and then have to negotiate difference of ideas, difference of accents, difference of emphasis, difference of histories. And what this podcast is doing is we're bringing in people and yet it's no one's conversation anymore, every person who enters is to some extent negotiating with what parts of the past they want to bring in, and always with an eye to what the future will inject back.
But then, Bhavana, how do you see us practicing agency and transformation together?
Bhavana Nissima: I think it goes back to the piece that I was feeling in that it's not in the words, right? It's not in the words, meanings, in the abstractions that we have created, but it's in that whole body communication that we are doing. I sense my voice is also, right now-- there is something that's changed in the rhythm of my voice.
And I know that it is in that listening of you and that need to meet you, and the need to meet you without knowing what the purpose is in this meeting, that I have no clue what is to happen, but that this meeting is important, that it's not possible to have a plan or strategy of transformation or plan or strategy of how to do a collective agency.
Rather, it is, can I care in this moment and step into the waters that are already streaming in? And as I step in, what is emerging for me is a tree. I see trees and also the riverbed, that it is firm and it is steady and stable in its relentless generosity of meeting.
And I think, again, I am going back to …I often hear the discourse about the re-emergence of feminine or bringing up the feminine, and I have always thought that's just not the way to go. That it's not at all in thinking with those dichotomies, that the feminine and masculine are intrinsically with each other.
One without the other is impossible. And in that sense, if I considered masculine as the feminine, that stability as the ground, as something that is there, that is to be enforced, the preservation, the sustenance, the maintenance, the care is so utterly masculine, into which those liminal changes happen. The seasons, I know in India. The summer season will come thereabouts at a certain time and the intensity will be thereabouts in that form, but it's never that fixed sense of the summer, but there is a sense of the summer and its possible intensity, but that's it.
This experience of summer is shifting every season. This experience of summer is shifting both in time chronology, in the textures by which it is experienced, in the way it might be-- it might stop and then come back on. There is already a shift in that summer, but summer is there. I almost am feeling in this moment that there is a great need to, as much as we are wanting to be, we can't be open to the unknown unless we also know how to preserve and care for what is here.
And that is important.
Frank Spencer: I think that captures the future itself because in the field of future studies more formally, it's very popular to say it's not future, it's futures with an S on the end because there are unlimited possible futures. And then I think it was Sonja who said on a previous episode that future for her felt more like a verb.
Then a noun because it's something that we do, that we're engaged in as well. But when you think about it from the perspective that you've been sharing with us and this recurring theme that's happening among us of agency, which I'm so pleased happened in this episode, I didn't plan on it. I didn't know this was coming, but I'm so happy about it because I know that it's something that we struggle with greatly.
And in today's environment where organizations and governments and people and societies are wanting to find a way to have agency and certainty and be able to plan out the next thing. And it never seems to work out because that's not how the cosmos works for us to understand that the future is not just a verb, but it's plural in itself.
It doesn't need an S on the end. It already is plural. Future is a plural thing. It contains the summer, spring, winter, and fall. And when you put those all together, instead of siloing them, there's something more summer, fall, fall, plus winter, plus spring. It's, they don't equal 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 4 equals something more.
And can you silo the masculine away from the feminine? Feminine and that you take away that third place of something more. Yes. I'm not trying to say there is no such thing as a masculine or feminine. But what I hear you saying is that agency expands beyond the siloing, the decentralized. The segregated, the separated, and that when we understand that there is a, I hesitate to use the word safe, but there's a safe place and knowing that the unknown is this beautiful, oh wonder, yes, scary, but that's okay place for us to go into because that's where.all of the goodness is, and when we strip that out as Aaron Manning, the famous anthropologist says clear out this and that and the other, and that clearing rips away all of the weeds, what we call weeds that aren't weeds, they're plants, they're beautiful plants, but we call them weeds because we want our lawns to look sterile, and we strip out all that goodness.
And then we strip away. That plurality of the unknown wherein lies all of the agency, that collective and individual healthy individuation of agency, where the beauty lies and the awe and the wonder and the enchantment lies. And that's what I hear when I hear what you're saying.
I'm sure there's so much more, but that's how it resonates with me.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes so wonderfully said, Frank. This futures. And futures as a verb, really, that just makes it so utterly magical because there is no way you can hold it. There's no way you can hold it into that word. To know the weaving that is to open up through it. And I want to again bring in that piece on certainty.
That there are two kinds of certainty, I feel. There is a mechanical certainty. That comes because we have been trained into understanding. If I switch on the mobile phone then the thing will open up, and I'll be able to access the app, and the app should be working. That's a mechanical certainty.
But then there is also a sacred certainty of life. There is a sacred certainty of that we will be connecting. The massive loneliness epidemic across the world is actually a call for connection. And it's the most potent form of activism to bring people together…the various ways in which we are connecting.
Coping and adapting is literally… there is an agency of life itself forming and shaping each other to create the other ways in which life can continue.
Peter Hayward: You mentioned certainty and of course in our world at the moment, as I say, the only certainties are death and taxes. I wonder if the pilgrim and the pilgrimage. is in part informed by the certainty of the pilgrim's death, that I will die, that my time on the landscape will go. And so the pilgrimage becomes more important because of the certainty of what I mightn't want to think about.
But it's the certainty of life, not just my life, all life.
Bhavana Nissima: This is just such a perfect piece that you brought in, Peter, because literally the film on Satish Kumar, The Radical Love, ends with a description of death of his mother. That his mother chose-- she realized that her body was decaying, dwindling, and there were pains and aches, and so while she could walk, she just walked to her neighbors, and she walked to her friends, and she said, “It's time for me to go and I'm going to start a fast, but before that I wanted to say my thanks and ask for my forgiveness if I've offended any of you in any form” and she goes back to her home and for 30 days she fasts. And then passes on. And in that period, people come and sing songs and celebrate. And Satish says, and yeah, when it's time for me, I will go. And it's that peace, because in that going is just the death of the form. is the death of the form, the death of that particular structure in which we have received.
It is an unweaving of a different kind. It's an unweaving of a particular story that we are holding in our embodiment and allowing other stories to emerge in that composting process. Yeah.
Peter Hayward: I just think, I think you described beautifully there, Bhavana, that by the action.acting on the certainty of her death. Everybody around her could then do their pilgrimage to her and in the pilgrimage to her they could just make their own peace with her, give her their own eulogy, receive and give their own love because she was acting from her space of agency.
Bhavana Nissima: Yes. And I am leaning into the notion of agency again this time.
And I'm sensing again, that is the difference between an agency that emerges from a mechanical understanding of our world in very linear reduced forms versus an agency when it is an alignment, with everything else. It's a relational agency that it's an alignment with the world around and just knowing that the world is, the earth-life is more important than my life.
And then it's time for me to return to the soil and nourish the earth in a different way is a very different kind of an understanding. And then that piece of moving from an ego-centered approach to an eco-centered approach, to an earth centered, life centered, love centered approach. That's a work, and that is a spiritual practice.
I'm just sensing in that rewilding is so sacred, just so sacred.
Frank Spencer: I can't tell you how powerful this piece is, and I sense that we're already nearing the end of our conversation here. This idea that you said and it's going to stick with me for a long time this phrase the agency of life You just said that a moment ago and Peter this came back around to is something you said on a previous episode Making that journey ourselves and knowing that we will die as well, but how does that open up an entire new process of futures unfolding for others and carrying that story forward?
And so one of the things that you've said to us during this time together with Bhavana is we do have what has come before. We do have that song and then we sing the song and now the song is in someone else that has passed on and is creating this agency of life itself. People that know me know that I love to use this word cosmos, which I think a lot of people get weirded out about a little bit because you don't hear that very often in organizational or social or research or academic settings.
Cosmos, who says that? But I think it's something that we should reintroduce back into our vocabulary more because really it's not just planetary, it's not universal, but it's this cosmic consciousness that we have to plug into. That yes, Helps us as individuals on that pilgrimage. Yes. And yes is embedded in us as individuals.
Healthy individuation as Bonita Roy would say, but then lends itself to understanding that the story as Sophie Strand again would say in this recent interview we did since we brought it up, that we, stories don't belong to us. We belong to stories. And that's where our agency is in belonging to the future, not the future belongs to us.
Bhavana Nissima: I was thinking of what I could leave as a gift for our next guest and as this beautiful piece comes together, I feel like moving from the sound to something that is visual and imagery. And I wanted to offer an imagery of a Jhali window in India, both in Mughal architecture as well as Rajasthani architectures.
There are window screens that are intricately carved and through that light streams into the room, casting patterns on the floor as well as on the walls.
My gift is, as you sense your window screen, and the carvings that have happened through your journey, and the light streaming through it, what patterns are cast in the floors and walls of your world? What do you notice?
Peter Hayward: Wow, you've almost taken that notion of the pilgrimage to, what are the shadows that your life It's going to leave the shadow that is left by you in the beginning of the next part of the process. The pilgrim can't control what shadow they leave, the pilgrim can't control the filtering, but they can be very conscious of what they filter, what is allowed
Frank Spencer: Yes, absolutely amazing. I was writing a piece recently and hopefully I will be able to finish at some point about living out our shadow lights when we talk about the shadow life. We often think about that dark place within us. We don't realize that the shadow is so integral to the beauty and the awe and the wonder that we cast.
And this image, this rich image that you leave with us, Bhavana, is such an amazing gift to our next guest and to the future. Which shortly here will be responding to us with you're listening to this episode here in the future, respond back to the time that we've had together and Peter and what an amazing timethis has just been with both of you. And as I said on the last episode, and I'll probably say on the next episode, but it's true every time, this just seems to be growing and I can say that I'm learning so much in this process. I'm walking away and I'm walking away from each episode.
Learning more, sensing more, more feeling more liberated, feeling more hopeful, and, and just knowing that, it's all going to be, it's all going to be okay because this is the path into the future that we take and and if we're taking it together, then we're certainly in a strong place.
I thank you both.
Bhavana Nissima: Yeah, this is magic. This is magic. Thank you, Peter and Frank for holding this and stewarding the stream. Thank you.
Future Correspondent: Dear Bhavana, Frank, and Peter,
The wind here has shifted; it carries a scent of seaweed and sun-warmed stone. The kind of weather that seems both heavy with history and light with possibility. It reminds me of your words, Bhavana, as if the air itself holds stories yet untold.
Bhavana, your reflections on the pilgrim resonate deeply—not as a journey of mere travel but as a surrender to something larger, an embracing of the unknown as sacred. The way you describe landscapes shaping us, their rhythms altering the texture of our voices, feels like an echo of the streams that run through this project itself. Each conversation is a landscape, and here we are, weaving the waters, letting them shape us in ways we may not yet notice.
Frank, your reminder that stories don’t belong to us but that we belong to stories—this feels like a truth carried in the wind. It’s not just our agency in shaping futures but how futures shape us, unweaving and reweaving what we think we know. You said, “The future doesn’t belong to us; we belong to it.” Perhaps that is the thread of the pilgrim—the willingness to let ourselves be carried, even as we carry the song.
Peter, you asked of agency, of transformation together. Your words linger like the steady pulse of the earth beneath my feet. Agency, as you said, is a double-edged sword. It asks us not just to see our own paths but to sense the ripples we create in the waters others walk through. Bhavana, your invocation of agency as relational, as love in movement, reminds me that the edges of ourselves are not boundaries but invitations—an ever-extending act of connection.
There is a quiet brilliance in what emerged between you—the shadow lights Bhavana spoke of, the sacred certainty of change. It is not about erasing what has come before but about holding the light and the shadow, the known and the unknown, as companions. Perhaps this is the essence of weaving futures: not in separating strands but in letting their tensions hum in harmony.
Your imagery of the Jhali window stays with me, Bhavana. Through its intricate carvings, the light filters into the room, casting patterns that are both shadow and illumination. It reminds me that the spaces in between—the negative spaces—are just as vital as the light itself. What stories might they hold if we dared to listen?
With gratitude and quiet curiosity,
The Future Correspondent
PS:
Today’s postcard is the Jhali window. The air shifts as sunlight threads its way through the latticework, painting the floor with patterns that move and shimmer. It reminds me less of permanence and more of impermanence—the way light moves, the way patterns change. Perhaps this is the lesson of the window: that what remains is not the light nor the shadow, but the memory of their dance.