What is a Good Life? #100
Living In Mutual Solidarity with Cormac Russell
On the 100th episode of What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Cormac Russell. Cormac is a social explorer, an author and a much sought-after speaker. He is the Founding Director of Nurture Development and a member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute, at DePaul University, Chicago. Over the last 25 years, Cormac’s work has demonstrated an enduring impact in 35 countries around the world. He has trained communities, agencies, NGOs and governments in ABCD and other community-based approaches in Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe and North America.
His most recent books are The Connected Community- Discovering the Health, Wealth, and Power of Neighborhoods (Coauthor John McKnight) and Rekindling Democracy – A Professional’s Guide to Working in Citizen Space. Cormac’s TEDx talk is really beautiful and can be viewed here.
In this glorious conversation, Cormac shares his journey into community development, marked by a focus on being over doing. We discuss the thresholds and limits of self-help, the problem with trying to fix others, and ways of making sense of the world. Cormac suggests that the world is not getting worse, but becoming clearer, and emphasises how to channel our emotions into meaningful action.
I found Cormac to be deeply insightful and rooted in his being. This conversation offers perspectives to help make sense of the world while encouraging us to reflect on our roles—not just in relation to humans, but as members of an interconnected, living, breathing Earth.
The weekly clip from the podcast (5 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (70 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
This memory just popped into my mind as I considered what to write for this reflection. A few months ago, my wife, baby girl and I were lying on our bed, our daughter between us while our foreheads and feet were in contact with one another.
My daughter’s feet were resting on my thigh, and my wife’s hand was resting on my shoulder. My daughter was making these stunningly sweet cooing sounds that were almost too much to fully hold, as my heart already felt completely full.
I don’t know whether it was the intensity of the feeling, but I had an incredibly strong sense that I didn’t know where I began or ended in that moment. It now makes me think of Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, where he suggests that not even a stone is a static thing, but an event. He argues that, rather than being composed of static objects or matter, reality is fundamentally made up of events—interactions and processes that unfold over time.
It was clear to me that I wouldn’t be the same person if they weren’t presently in the room. I wouldn’t even have been the same person had there been an absence of the cooing sounds. It was blatantly apparent to me in that moment, to use the Ubuntu expression that Cormac mentions in the clip above, that “I am because we are.”
This whole project feels a little like that too, in some ways. I sense I carry a bit of these conversations and the people I meet with me, or an element of them becomes part of me. I begin to forget where an idea or opinion I have has emerged from.
If you’ve been following this podcast and newsletter for a while, or all 100 episodes, I hope it’s clear that I’m not seeking finite answers to the questions but simply an exploration of them. If I’d like to demonstrate anything, it’s how meaningful and intimate conversations are within our grasp, even with people we’ve never met. And that there’s a way of communicating that’s not so focused on what’s mine or yours, but what’s ours. It’s our conversation I’m more focused on than clinging to or reducing it to “I am right” or defending or holding onto opinions.
When we start to feel and experience life more from this place of connection or the feeling of the collective, it’s amazing how much of the ways we predominantly perceived life or where we acted from falls away. I’m not saying it never rears its head again, but even when it does, it brings no satisfaction.
The “victory” feels like a doughnut with a void or hole in the middle of it, or the mental satisfaction comes with that all too familiar and sad loneliness that seems inherent within the modern public discourse. We continuously pit ourselves against each other, ignoring the vastness of what we agree on, and the world is then fully seen through the lens of our separateness.
In the clip above, Cormac points out the thresholds of self-help, how it can be useful to a point, but how often it turns into self-obsession if your attention doesn’t expand outwards as well. I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve seen it at various retreats and workshops, where many participants are so caught up in the 'I' and 'me' of it all that their capacity to notice our interdependence with each other—let alone with our surroundings—is whittled down to nothing.
If there’s one thing that’s become far clearer to me over the course of these 100 episodes, it’s that there will be little salvation for us in trying to analyse ourselves to death without noticing that connection. Not in some hollow new-age way of saying we are all one, but more, that you do not end at the end of your extremities; you are not merely some bag of skin holding your separateness together. And if your awareness continues to focus only on what’s occurring inside of that, you will continue to miss the connected whole that you are a part of.
And even in the most practical sense, someone else most likely cultivated the food you eat, built the house you live in, created the transport and infrastructure you use. I’m assuming you depend on oxygen and the sun’s existence as you did someone to carry you in a womb. Our modern notions or being self-made and independent are almost child-like if you step back far enough.
When we focus on our separation and perceive ourselves in isolation, we sell short what our lives could be. Self-reflection can be a wonderful thing if we carry that same attention out into the world. For me, it naturally reveals a connection, a rhythm, and a home that expands far beyond what I previously would have considered it to be.
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🙌 Thank you so much for joining me through these first 100 episodes, this project brings me such immense satisfaction that I suspect the next 100 may flow just as easily 🙌
3. Full Episode - Living In Mutual Solidarity with Cormac Russell - What is a Good Life? #100
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4. This week’s Questions
Can you think of how your intentions to help or fix another is hindering you both?
Do you consider yourself to be independent of other people and your surroundings?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 200 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 would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, take part in my weekly free silent conversations, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your teams, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
Congratulations on episode 100 Mark!