What is a Good Life? #159
Cultivating Interconnected Harmony with Cindy Forde
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project to help you realise you are enough, by noticing and inhabiting life more fully.
This week’s conversation with Cindy Forde asks: How do we live in harmony with each other and the natural world?
Cindy is an acclaimed author of Bright New World, founder of Planetari pioneering Earth-led education, and Associate Fellow at University of Cambridge Homerton College. We explore the role of spiritual practice in sustaining changemakers, the paradox of living in systems misaligned with our values, and why “cosmic time” might offer a more realistic perspective on transformation than human urgency.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
Late on Saturday evening, my friend and I were discussing the present plight of the world. Where do you start? Greenland, Iran, Venezuela, Minnesota. For him given his background, UK politics was also to the fore.
We had just watched the end of a football match after putting our kids to bed. Life seemed a mixture of the beautiful, sad, absurd, and bewildering.
We have recently started a tradition, when his wife is occasionally away, my daughter and I will spend the day and night at his place, with his son who is just a few months older.
The following morning we were in the kitchen, my friend is making us breakfast – quite a cook in fairness – and the two kids are on my lap as I am reading a story, slowly moving back and forth on a rocking chair.
I can’t help but point out to my friend, while all we discussed last night remains, this is also my present experience. A great friend of mine cooking breakfast for us, and two beautiful kids sat on my lap as I read them a story.
It would be a great shame as well as lamenting the world if I wasn’t here for this too.
In my various conversations with my friend that weekend, I referenced this week’s interview with Cindy several times. She embodied many aspects of wisdom that are needed and lacking in our culture.
Themes of coherence, spiritual practice, calling out what needs to be, and also an unwillingness to see hate as the final resting stop, were deeply inspiring to me, and continued to percolate. More than anything it was an appreciation that she was speaking from her lived experience of dedicating her life to ushering in and creating new systems.
At one point she mentions, “The only thing that you can really change is yourself. So when you work on yourself, the different energy that you put out around you to your partner, to your child, to the people that you work with does change and it does change things. But it’s probably the hardest thing to do.”
There is something really compelling to me in my own life about exuding the energy that others may be affected by. It allows this life to be an expression from my being. This is a continual practice of responsibility and coherence rather than a reason to stand back, disconnect, and continuously self-reflect.
Later on that same Sunday, my daughter and I went to a local pizza place that has just opened. We were the only ones there initially so the manager had time. He came around the counter to explain the opening offer they had.
You could tell he was clearly an open human being with his demeanour, but I had also seen him around the neighbourhood and he has brought a smile to my face many times – as he just belts out whatever he is listening to on his headphones as he walks down the streets.
We introduced ourselves and he told me where he was from and I told him I was from Ireland.
We went to sit at a table on a raised platform and I then heard The Pogues play as he professed to me his love for Irish music from across the restaurant. As someone living in Germany with a daughter who is bilingual but naturally is speaking more german, it just felt like a beautiful moment.
Tapping her wellies along to the beat, it felt like it stirred something meaningful for me.
When he played Sinead O’Connor and my daughter got up and danced and demanded I did too, it all felt a bit special. Van Morrison followed.
When we left we shared a nice moment with the manager.
He didn’t set out to create a special moment for me, he just did as an extension of who he is, not a grandiose intention of help.
In the face of all that is happening in the world it makes me want to double down on staying open to all the beauty that persists in my life. Not as a means of avoiding or denying what is here, but as fuel to face it even more.
Even within the micro experience of my life, there is real financial uncertainty I need to tend to and yet that is simply a part of my whole life. My whole experience of it.
The more people I interview around this question (300+), the more I see the significance of inner and outer coherence in experiencing a good life.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy, that the world will magically reward you for it, or that you won’t make mistakes. However, there is a deeper peace in our lives if we can cultivate this. It goes far beyond ideas of authentic expression and speaks to an alignment that, once experienced, feels jarring to exist outside of.
Not because anyone else knows, but from your own felt experience of life.
It is not that it makes me impervious to the external world, but it does help me meet both its challenges and joys. The present financial constraints with laughter of my daughter dancing.
The horrific news of war and geopolitical chaos with an appreciation for the warmth of someone thoughtfully playing some tunes for me in a restaurant.
Nothing gets cancelled out or nullifies the other.
It would be a great shame for me to stop noticing it all.
2. This Week’s Questions
What is it about living in our present system that makes you feel least connected to yourself?
What helps you stay connected to our humanity?
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Good Life Coaching — a space of presence for individuals navigating questions of direction, meaning, and what needs attention now.
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Cultivating Interconnected Harmony with Cindy Forde - What is a Good Life? #159
Listen to the full conversation with Cindy Forde below.
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own good life through one-on-one coaching contact me via email.