In celebration of the unmeasurable
or, why are we so obsessed with metrics?
Have you seen The Change? Let’s start there. I’m not the biggest Bridget Christie fan, and honestly a comedy-drama on the theme of menopause didn’t massively appeal to me - probably because I’m never keen on relaxing to things a bit too close to the bone 😆. Anyone else?
Needless to say, I’m a bit hooked and also - simultaneously - discomfited.
But let’s come back to that and switch momentarily to another Bridget. (Not quite…)
“This is very serious I think. This is what we’re talking about, the things that motivate us, the really important things - things that you can’t measure. Men are obsessed with things they can measure with data sets and extreme facts.”
—Sally Phillips
Sally Phillips. What a fucking goddess. National treasure doesn’t cut it. She’s my new heroine. I’ve always loved her work but hearing her in absolute-unfiltered honesty is just life altering. If you haven’t yet, go and listen to this episode of Elizabeth Day’s magnificent How to Fail podcast - and sign up for the bonus material because it’s just going to radically uplift your whole perspective on life, especially as a creative.
Side note: did you know Sally auditioned for the part of Bridget Jones? My god, she would have been brilliant! If you’re not convinced, go and add Austin on BBC iPlayer to your watchlist!
And now back to Bridget C on The Change…
Bridget’s character plays a menopausal woman obsessed with meticulously noting down every single minute spent on unseen/unacknowledged/unappraised household tasks - it becomes infamously known as “Linda’s Ledger”.
And I’ll wholeheartedly confess, until I started really thinking about this post on the intangible1, this whole notion of a woman’s ledger rankled with me.
Because women don’t do that - men do2.
But that’s the point of course.
Linda lives in a man’s world, feeling unseen, unacknowledged, unappraised and overlooked. The only way she can feel value is to give it back to herself in the most patriarchal way possible.
The whole series covers Linda’s adventures as she reclaims her lost hours and minutes from doing the tasks nobody ever thanked her for (and worse, never even noticed or dismissed as inconsequential).
Which brings me to the second thing about this story which thoroughly rankled… Linda only ever accounts for household tasks or - as she says later on - “anything which feels like a chore”. We don’t see the ledger entries, but it’s clear they are largely practical (physically demanding), occasionally emotionally so.
Why does it rankle? Because these things are all inherently measurable. Yes, even the emotional instances. For example, Linda doesn’t try accounting for the intense emotional load of trying to balance her own freaked-out uncertainty over what the hell is suddenly happening to her entire body/ mind/ spirit with the manchild-ish, obliviousness-fuelled neglect of her husband. Because you can’t count that. You just can’t.
Which again, is of course, the point.
Let’s go back to lovely Sally.
“So the family history didn’t include me… it’s like there’s the men commentating on the men, not noticing the women. And you know, it’s important to talk about how we deal with the process of living and what the meaning of life is. These things are not trivial.”
—Sally Phillips
Do you see where I’m going yet? I mean, can I even begin to name the ultimately nameless, exponential void that covers the multitude of things not covered by what is merely countable?
Trying to tie-down the intangible is like trying to look at the faintest stars in the night sky - you have to look at them out of your most peripheral vision, and it only works when the sky is absolutely clear and the ambient lighting is nil.
Which is another thing our culture has very little patience or reverence for (unless we get those big manly telescopes out).
Wait, here’s Sally again…
“It’s this thing of reducing us to data sets…We are so much more than that. And this really strikes me when I think about Olly [her son with Down’s Syndrome], because Olly on all these charts scores zero… but part of what he brings is through the things he can’t do, because he creates a bond. So people come in to help him and he releases generosity and sweetness and kindness, and skills in other people.”
—Sally Phillips
This is such an important and noteworthy statement, especially in the fluorescent glare of the recent UK Disability Benefits debacle. It makes it blindingly clear what is seen to be of value - and only of value - within our society, and that is measurable bums on seats earning a measurable wage and paying measurable taxes through measurable employers.
All the other stuff? Not valuable.
And this is where so many women - like dear Linda in The Change - find themselves, very suddenly.
All that they gave to their husbands, their children, their families, their homes - all those years of nourishment and support, both physical and emotional (we’ll get to the rest in a bit!) - it all just smacks into a wall one day when they realise they’ve given so much of themselves, and very little of it was even acknowledged or understood.
And now, in perimenopause, they are on society’s shelf. Past it.
But even more than that, their brain is changing radically alongside their body and hormonal landscape. What feels like a major cognitive decline (forgetting whereabouts of keys, important meetings and words for everything) is actually a complete restructuring of the brain, similar to puberty. Except that for this third act, the brain is rewiring itself to be the compassionate, infinitely wise elder of the tribe - the matriarchal grandmother.
Oh, but we don’t honour the matriarchal. Or our elders…
Do you see the chasm yet? The immeasurable, gaping black hole which so effortlessly swallows up all that is truly, intangibly, meaningful in our lives?
Honestly, Sally says it best:
“My friend Annie… had a son, Ethan, who very sadly passed away last year. And she said to me, ‘We thought that we supported Ethan, and when he’d gone, we realised that he was the hub of the family. He was the one who was sort of supporting us’… Very hard to explain in data sets how that worked… But I know it did. Ethan’s calm, loving presence… was an immeasurable yet very tangible thing.”
—Sally Phillips
In my philosophy and work (and when I’m not on my soap box), I actually don’t see this as a black hole. Sometimes I call it a portal, but more often these days it is a landscape. An energy landscape.
When we put intention, and love, and pure, focussed energy into something which comes from our heart, gut and soul… it becomes the mycelial network to our entire lived experience, including every single person we are in contact with. It supports, nourishes and protects us, fostering growth, unity and resilience for all.
Do you see? It’s not just a pretty prop or even a backdrop to a scene. The intangible (immeasurable3) plays the very air we breathe on a daily basis. We can’t see it, but without that air - we die.
And on the flip side…
Nurturing this beautiful, vast, incomprehensible and thoroughly unmeasurable energy landscape with all the perfect ingredients creates for us a space in which to really thrive. To be the most of ourselves. Not to be reduced to data sets and mere bums on seats, but actually fully-alive, holistically-functioning, awe-inducing, magical-creating beings of sheer luminous brilliance.
And that brilliance is matriarchal - it radiates (it is not a trickle-down economy).
So that, my loves, is what I have to say about energy landscapes (and the intangible, unmeasurable, immeasurable…) today, and why they are so very, tantalisingly-tricky to define, to adequately describe.
Yet also why they are so profoundly impactful.
Here’s to the immeasurable, the neurodiverse, the disabled and the grandmothers - Cheers! 🥂🎉🎇
”Intangible” is a word I use frequently in relation to my own work and most of the metaphysical-spiritual-beingness I love to ponder on at all times. I chose to replace it here with “unmeasurable” precisely because it is more specific and, well, tangible - ironically 😅.
I’m the very last being to want to get caught up in gender stereotypes of any kind. But also, let’s not dismiss certain patterns and tendencies which have arisen, largely due to the prevailing patriarchal culture and conditioning of centuries.
Play with these words as you wish, but here I use “unmeasurable” to mean something we can’t count, and “immeasurable” to mean something beyond measurement entirely.