Theeo Thoughts № 012 | Fear

Two "assertions" of late have had me thinking (and smiling.) The first, my American-ism. The second, my insertions of the "signature of love" in the middle of business, culture, people, and strategy.

Guilty on both fronts. Albeit, my ferocity and passion show up a bit differently with each.

Let's begin with love.

The Opposite of Love

Indifference is the opposite of love. Love's opposite is not hate. Yet, hate easily becomes an eventual byproduct of indifference, as fear naturally runs in the background of indifference and does not stand still.

Love is our divine point.

Without its frequency, what would be the reason for all this? For propagating? For growing? For building? For raising? For becoming? For changing? For evolving? For appreciating? Seriously, think about it. What would be the damn point?

When we love ourselves enough, we are willing to change. When we love another enough, we are willing to grow. When we love what we're participating in, we're willing to evolve ourselves in its service. When we love the landscape and all the beings, we adapt to ensure we and they remain safe and cared for. When we love our freedom, we fight out of love rather than become embodiments of fear and indifference.

• We find our voice rather than being silenced.
• We give space for others' voices rather than resisting and denying.
• We mindfully conserve our energy to apply it in the direction of higher-order calls to action — to feed love, the higher frequency, and the more apt, worthy fight.

We don't bleed our energy by subjugating it to vampires and fear-mongering. The fear frequency is an intentional instrument used, and a predatory vibration desired. Systems and structures built to prey on fear, to keep one above another, to silence whether covertly or overtly, to divide, to conform, have all been intended to keep you out of the frequency of love. Their designs are architected to induce and maintain indifference. To germinate and root in fear (of shining, showing up, voicing, creating, contributing, offering, connecting, allowing, collaborating, etc.) To create separation. To maintain control over. To evacuate people of their fullness and truth. Ultimately, to enslave minds and hearts. To divide.

When we tap the love frequency, understanding its resonance as wholly other than indifference, we become unable to deny or defend anything short of it. Indifference becomes an impossibility. Why? Because the energy and frequency that is love, all that is, its experience and validation, is simply too worthy.

When I place love and its derivatives in the center of the team discussion or the system change grapple, I am not speaking of "schmaltz." Schmaltz is Hollywood manufactured, superficiality, a form of indifference. What I speak about is also not soundbites, perfect arcs, and unrealness. No. What I speak about is a system's soul, truth, potential, and awakeness. The higher forged path. The future.

Holding love as the frequency is a tall order. It asks you to put aside your fear, judgments, cynicism, reactivity, condescension, indecency, crudeness, apathy, and unkindness. It calls you to show up, be present, and work directly with the moment. Your courage activated to sit with what presents — with awareness, authority, an awakened set of eyes, and a more open heart — is how we do love as an action and be love as an embodiment. In business. On teams. With individuals. For change, innovation, disruption, and to build and advance the future.

To be very, very clear, discernment and strength are key facets of love and the higher frequencies. They are enablers to hold fear at bay, see and sense with clear eyes, and remain in your true truth.

Strength, not schmaltz.

Indifference in systems is the prerequisite to cultures of fear, lack of courage, greed, dumbness and numbness, dominance, delusion, and illusion. Creating illogical boundaries, lines, boxes, and unquestioned norms are on-ramps to indifference. Fear of crossing any of the above serves to root people and systems into the lower, fear-based frequencies. Fear will always breed bad, toxic, and inhumane systems. Bad systems build themselves on fear frequencies. And, these types of systems are outdated, collapsing, and future-irrelevant.

Take an inventory. Stare indifference down. Resist any part of you that "worries" or wants to "bypass" due to optics, reverb, money, reputation, rules, retaliation, shame, unwanted effort, embarrassment, resistance to conflict or whichever excuse you have come to narrate.

Like any lethal virus untreated, fear destroys systems. Fear will always bring about contraction. On the other hand, the signatures of love elevate and expand — always. They open worlds and invite in possibility. From love, creativity (e.g. ideating, innovating, iterating) breeds.

Fear fear, not love.

American-ism

An American, I am. My passport says so. While I have been country shopping for two decades, I remain with my one U.S. passport. All things label-related are tricky, including American-ism.

Having sat with the assertions around my American-ism, I share here a few simple reflections I thought about regarding the projection and why I can't take it on wholesale.

• Over the years, I've lived in New York, Maine, Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. One state truly has nothing to do with the other (imho) in terms of lifestyle, culture, food, accents, industry, and weather. Sure, they are woven together by a federal American government, the English language, and taxes. When you either visit or live in them, you come to understand how we share in our differences as a country more than our similarities. In each beyond New York, I have been accused of being a foreigner and a visitor, not a native!
• In the late 90s and early 2000s, I lived in Portland, Or. I worked in policy and program administration across an education system and state government. In the program I directed, delivering out-of-the-box programs serving policy-based workforce initiatives, I took on the hardest to serve. The hardest to serve in this case were 99.9% young women, usually single moms who were some combination of addict, in recovery, high school dropouts, survivors, ex- or current dancers, and mostly from generational poverty. Did we all look the same? Yes. Was our shared nationality American? Yes. Did we learn together? Yes. Did our American upbringings, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences resemble anything to do with one another? Not exactly.
• Born into a New York Irish American family, each of the 9 units had ~3-7 children, making all holiday gatherings akin to a sporting event. 40-50 people was never unusual. Multiple tables set was a prerequisite. Cigar smoke and celebratory drinks flowed. Roasts and fine cooking were a measurement. The fireplaces were always lit. Kids competing in games, building things, or creating theatre performances was pure chaos and more often than not, joyful. Grace was regularly said. Grown men breaking into Irish ballads late night wasn't unheard of. Joking and laughter were love languages. An understanding of our cultural heritage was an emphasis — and the point. My third and fourth generation Irish in America had not yet been released from the consciousness that came with the passage across the Atlantic. The fleeing from persecution and starvation, the opportunity and humility for working to build a new, better, and free life. Understanding the gifts and trials that great- and great-great-grandparents had bestowed and accepted in exchange for this life, in America, had not yet faded. Did my school friends' families look the same? Were their rituals, experiences, and practices "American" similar? Not even close.

This place is very large, complex, dynamic, diverse, complicated, and colorful. Very difficult to summarise, while also still immature, in its short 250-year story. We remain a country of immigrants, regardless of the current voodoo and propaganda.

Identity

Democracy and freedom have historically been our shared, imperfect, and challenged ideological baseline. It is what coheres most of us because our cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds are so vastly different. What makes the place what it is or has been until now is that we are not one people by culture, religion, ethnicity, education, politics, etc. We never have been. We have historically been knitted by a "nationalism" that espoused freedom, opportunity, and democratic values.

Identity has always been fraught and complex in America (and many places), hence the incomplete sense of shared identity, experience, and sameness beyond the blue passport book. The country effectively began through ethnic cleansing, and was then propped up by a system of slavery. To be clear, this moment doesn't change that truth.

Our proclamation of and for freedom has deep and abiding ironies, perhaps part of which is being brought forward right now for a more honest, shared consciousness. We are a land where nobody is without an origin story, a place where many far-flung families have (disproportionately) benefited from the ideological roots upon which American-ism was founded.

Today, we reckon with all the accusations, meaning, purpose, and (ever so slight voting public majority who put us on this) path ahead. Nothing is accidental, even the painful and disruptive. Today, what America means as an identity is an especially fraught exercise — in whole new ways, both here and globally.

We are walking the path in real time to sense make, resist, and confront. In the meantime, if anyone wants to cast an identity onto me, I'm cool with "too New York." That tracks a bit better in my heart.

Links

Leadership

As designers of and leaders in systems, we have come to another choice point. If using the demonic, cruel, and proclamatory actions by the U.S. government teach anyone anything right now, let it be to see distortion and darkness for what it is. Leadership (the higher order kind) is not and never has been about the individual, self-service, and (delusional) "winning" at all cost.

Leadership is not posture and performative. Leadership is not possessive. Leadership is about doing the hard thing, saying the harder, more high-vibe, albeit honest thing to say, being the courageous and authentic path rather than the indifferent, manipulative, or consumptive path. Leadership is confrontative. It is also participatory and collaborative, discerning and powerful. Love and strength are leadership signatures.

The times we are entering into, the disruptions everyone feels, are an elevation —catalysing inner and outer revolutions. The U.S. "Founders" got signal from above or beyond when they wrote those words down and signed on. What was articulated certainly was not the easy path. It was the correct path. The path to live into a higher frequency. One that stared fear in the face and asked people to draw on their highest, most creative potential, strength, and inner knowing. The call to strive well beyond who we ever believed ourselves to be and go beyond the capabilities we may forget we have access to.

In the U.S. Constitution, they gave us a target. It has always been our job to continuously design and live into the objectives and outcomes, iteratively and responsively — remembering that the energy, source, and creative potential to do so must come exclusively from within us as a collectively focused body. Not from without. Not from anyone posing leadership and proclamating to us what will be "our American (or any other metaphorical) experience." These folks are mere charlatans, put on our path to teach and remind us to get back inside, trust our own highest frequency of love and strength, not the base, reptilian one of fear that the charlatans are actively attempting to activate, take advantage of to divide, conquer, and keep you controlled.

Through the Looking Glass

We have just come through a mighty remarkable first four months of 2025.

• If you wonder what the hell just happened?, you aren't alone.
• If time hardly tracks any longer, you aren't alone.
• If you feel like you have to operate at different levels or energetic bands with different people, you aren't alone.
• If you feel new aches and physical phenomena, you aren't alone.
• If you can feel the intangible, untouchable but evident atmospheric pressure, you aren't alone.

Whether in the U.S. or all the other places on the globe, you are likely being touched by the extraordinary energetics in one form or another. They are moving fast, and if you are tapped in, you recognise we are all changing and evolving in real time.

Get outside. Breathe air. Notice the sky. Allow the synchronicities to speak to you. Write. Draw. Dance. Use sound to re-center and ground.

It's not meant to be easy, but ...

You’ve got this. x 

Kathryn
Head of Theeo