A Trip to Vegas.

A few weeks ago, when I was visiting California for some research and to catch up with colleagues/ friends, I ended up taking an impromptu visit to Las Vegas.

I had originally planned to visit Yosemite National Park for a couple of days to get some time out in the wild but climate change had other plans and, with the park covered in 15 feet of snow, I headed south instead to see friends in Death Valley.

Death Valley itself was an incredible place.

In the end, it felt meant to be that I spent time there because it put me in touch with the desert places of myself I had been ignoring. The places that feel barren, grieving, scorched.

In Death Valley I met those places in powerful ways, and maybe I will take some time to share in a future post.

What surprised me though, was that I felt an increasing tug to drive the extra few hours in my car to visit Vegas.

Vegas.

For this nature loving, capitalism-sceptic, I could not for the life of me understand why my intuition was tugging me in that direction.

Nevertheless, I decided to put aside one evening and $20 for Vegas— and nothing more.

Driving through the desert for several hours in pitch black, it was a surreal experience to round the corner and see the sky glowing on the horizon with Vegas below, as if magically dropped out of the sky.

I’d never stepped foot in a casino before but after a couple of hours of dazed blind luck and the help of strangers, I decided to quit whilst I was ahead and walk away with an overall profit of $5.

Five whole dollars! Maybe I had beaten Vegas?!

And I have to admit, I actually really enjoyed myself!

But it wasn’t until this week that I began to realise why it had been important for me to go.

I’m currently going through a particular moment of frustration with the oppressive systems/ cultures so many of us are caught up in (and how they leave us feeling that there is something wrong with us for finding them so!)

I tend to find I go in cycles with grieving/ rage/ acceptance of how dominant ways of being are make their marks across the world.

Following on from that thread, I was thinking about the examples held up to us of what it means to successfully navigate these systems; those who we are told are ‘winning.’

At school that might have been those with top grades, or those who had the most friends.

At work it might be the top earners, or the ones with the most awards/ most impressive portfolios.

At home it might be those who manage to do it all- the kids, the job, the house, the holidays, the car- all whilst looking perfectly put together.

(There will no doubt be variations in how we interpret ‘winning’ by dominant standards, so please insert your own examples here!)

Sometimes in life we’ll find we’re playing the role of the winners (and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that), and sometimes we’re playing a different role (and, crucially, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong in that either).

What’s not so great is when our self-worth and how we are treated by others gets all tied up in these as identities. It’s when it becomes our story, and then it starts to generate momentum, dictating how our lives continue to unfold.

It’s when we are left feeling that we are stupid/ lazy/ unworthy, or equally that we are somehow at our core better than others (which can a surprisingly isolating and unhappy experience considering how sought after it is).

Reflecting on my experience in Vegas I realised that ‘winning or losing’ in life (by dominant standards) was about as in my control as whether I won or lost at Vegas.

Sure, I could control some factors as to how my Vegas experience went; I set a limit of how much time and money I was willing to spend, for example, and I bothered to learn the rules of the game. But really, whether I won or lost my $20 fortune, was mostly down to luck. Vegas decides who wins and loses, and that’s about it.

And aren’t there at least some parallels that we could draw with how these dominant systems work their way out in our lives? That our lot is defined by so many factors beyond our control, and that yet somehow we are left feeling that if we haven’t made it to the top, we are in some way less, and perhaps that if we have, we are in some way more.

But whether things turn out ‘successful’ as defined by a particular system or culture, or not, is not an evaluation on who we are as people. In fact, it’s more of an evaluation on how well the system itself is working.

And if more and more and more of us are finding that that this system doesn’t work, why then would we continue to believe that it is us, not the system that needs to change?

But what about other standards of success beyond whether I won or lost money at Vegas? Like… that I had fun or that being in such a radically different setting from my norm was an opportunity to reflect?

These factors were more in my control, and that’s where my experience at Vegas has been a source of reflection for me.

Building something new and healthy and regenerative isn’t necessarily about refusing to engage with what currently exists or trying to create an alternate reality (although these can be important parts of the process). Instead, building something new is about deciding to place certain values at the heart of ourselves, and letting our experience flow from there.

I value time with people I love, for example.

I value time in nature.

I value opportunities to play, rest, experiment, adventure, create, and make mistakes.

Sure, I’d love to win a million dollars (who wouldn’t? Even if it give it away to people who could really do something wonderful with it), but is winning money really a value that matters to me?

When we center what really matters to us most, rather than on success or winning, we’re building something far more regenerative and radical than it might at first seem.

We are neither stuck endlessly trying to keep making the system work for us, nor in trying to build something that is reacting to that system by always trying to do the opposite (because that way of being is just as controlled by the system).

Instead, we are exersizing agency where we have it and choosing, wherever we can, how we want to respond to the processes we am a part of.

That choosing is a minute by minute practice and it can have moments of being just as all consuming and exhausting, but it’s absolutely worth it!

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