The next instalment in our Letters to the Future Series. Our guest is Maya van Leemput.

Interviewed by: Peter Hayward & Frank Spencer

Additions

Transcript

Rowena Morrow: So, we're in a conversational river. I've walked up the river, listening to the conversation and appreciating the reflection and insights from the future correspondent about what I might attend to and what I might hold onto as I step in. And I love Bhavana talking about the river. For me, it linked into the pilgrimage image that's come through. And the love connection theme that's also come through. And so as I was sitting with all of that, this story kept coming into my head and absolutely demands to be part of the conversation. So this is a story from Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimura,

The Way of the Three Sisters is a teaching, one of the oldest and most important lessons of our people. The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is not just accepted, it is cherished. Because in order for the whole to thrive, each of us must be strong in who we are. Each of us must carry our gifts with conviction so they can be shared. Among the sisters, we see what a community can become when its members understand their gifts and offer them freely. In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies

The Future Correspondent: I once stood before a garden where corn, beans and squash grew together, entwined yet distinct. The corn stood tall, the beans curled upward, the squash stretched across the ground, holding moisture in it's broad leaves. It was not competition but conversation, not control but reciprocity. I remember wondering then as I do now: What does it take to grow together without losing ourselves? And what might we become if we trusted the weave of interdependence more than the illusion of standing alone?

Frank Spencer: Peter, so good to be back with you again on another episode of Future Pod X. Always excited to enter the room here with you and see where the letter takes us. What does it wanna say? What are we saying to the future? How is it unfolding? Yeah,

Peter Hayward: I agree, Frank.

Frank Spencer: It's,

Peter Hayward: It's been a little while since our last one.

Peter Hayward: We've had a couple of delays and maybe the post hasn't been as reliable or our correspondent had some things happen in their lives, but that sometimes happened with messages. They don't always run to clockwork, do they?

Frank Spencer: It's interesting that you're saying that because it's like this was a part of the letter to the future too.

Frank Spencer: It doesn't work out perfectly. And I'm, I know that our guest on the journey today, was the only one so far that's gotten put off several times, but she's been so gracious to, to stay with it and this is a part of the future unfolding. It's just very uncertain and entering that foggy place, maybe it gave us more time.

Frank Spencer: The universe has a way,

Peter Hayward: yeah. I think it also, whenever you have health issues for people, it does remind you that our time is limited while we want, there's no great rush to end it. Whatever time we have together is unique sacred and short. So let's make the most of it. In keeping with that, do you wanna start us off, Frank, with the first letter?

Frank Spencer: I certainly would love to and I'm so excited for our guest today. We'll tell you who this is in just a moment, because the way that we do this, if you're used to listening to the first three or four episodes, I can't remember how many it's been so far, is that we read the letters and then we formally introduce.

Frank Spencer: I see that it's been four now, so I'm getting older. I lose track of these things but you might, if you might guess who it is by the letter. 'cause you're gonna hear the first name at least. So let me start with this first living eulogy. Maya carries the rare ability to make the unseen visible, not through grand proclamations, but by listening deeply.

Frank Spencer: Sensing where meaning wants to emerge. She moves through the world like an artist with an unfinished canvas, always willing to be surprised by what appears and the strokes of conversation. She was not bound by disciplines or titles. She was just as likely to be found in a museum as in a classroom, a policy room as a poetry reading, not opposing futures, but tending to them like a gardener, nurturing ideas that others might overlook.

Frank Spencer: She didn't seek to predict. She played with what was possible. She invited uncertainty, held space for contradictions, refused to let futures be flattened into a single narrative. Her work wasn't just about what's coming, but about what is already here waiting to be recognized. To know Maya was to experience features as something tactile, not just thought, but felt.

Frank Spencer: She reminds us that we don't prepare for the future by solving it, but by staying awake to it, by weaving ourselves into its unfolding. And when you step away from a conversation with Maya, you would find yourself looking at the world just a little differently, seeing patterns where there were none before, since in a future that suddenly felt more open and more possible.

Frank Spencer: That's beautiful.

Peter Hayward: Thanks, Frank. To have known Maya or to have known her mind that refused boundaries and a heart that wove futures with care, curiosity, and courage, she didn't predict. She'd listened, sensed, and co-created. Together perspectives that others might live isolated. I saw Maya as a gatherer of worlds moving effort, moving effortlessly between disciplines, geographies, and identities.

Peter Hayward: She turned futures into something tangible, lived and relational through a gen's future. The collaboration with Bram Goots, she showed that images of the future are not abstract. They are deeply human stories waiting to be heard. With Maya, space has opened up. In museums, on screens in cities and learning labs, she invited people to touch and feel and shared futures.

Peter Hayward: She counciled students, spoke with poets, challenged institutions always asking, what are we not seeing? Who else belongs in this conversation? To know Maya was to be reminded that futures are not written alone. They are woven in the spaces where we listen, dream and imagine together. I am richer for the world's she helped bring to life, and I know many others who feel the same.

Peter Hayward: Welcome to Future Products, Maya Van Leemput. Thank you.

Maya van Leemput: Wow. What eloquent people have you asked write these eulogies. It's amazing how they express a lot of what really is important to me. Not sure I feel completely described it. It's more like it's, I have a description of what I will be striving for to do more of. So that's, it's I, I saw it coming because I did listen to for episodes before and, I thought maybe my feelings would be, I'd be curious who wrote it or I was just matching it to yeah. My own image of myself in the future, more than in the past actually. So that's also, I think with these eulogies, you have an amazingly good technique to to break people down a little bit before you start speaking with them, because it is it does really, touch on all the most vulnerable spots in your being right to hearsomething like that about yourself. So yes, thank you for more practice.

Wonderful but strange things. Yes.

Peter Hayward: Can I go there? May I just, 'cause I'm going to jump in 'cause you've touched on it and Yes. Frank and I are deliberately leaning on vulnerability. And we are deliberately leaning on your vulnerability and that of our guests. What is it that Frank and I are doing you think from your perspective, when we so deliberately start from a place of vulnerability?

Maya van Leemput: I think you in part it cancels out the way people answer automatically based on their expertise. It's been pointed out that they are a person with all these qualities that could be really wonderful. And it makes you want to fit that image as well, in my case. It makes you want to, say, oh, am I boundary breaking? Let's see if I'm going to be doing that in the next hour. Or also, are we weaving? Are we knitting or crocheting or felting or, which of these processes is it that we are really in? And it's…I think also that it, it reminds everybody involved in this conversation and that's not just the two of you and the four previous guests and the correspondent, but also everybody who is listening and with us, after we actually have this conversation and it's brought online, I think that it reminds all of us that we really need to be deeply human to be able to connect.

Maya van Leemput: And I think maybe that's one of the useful aspects of these eulogies that well somebody-and I'm blind to who that might be or who both of them might be- has actually really connected their thoughts to what they think is essential in me. And then that gives me my angle for this conversation. What this thing that these two people saw will give, gives me the perspective that I'll be bringing to the rest of this hour.

Frank Spencer: And Maya, thank you so much that you've been that it's obvious that you've touched lives. And one of the things that I've heard in both of these living eulogies is that you are able to make futures embodied for people. That they feel it. And it's not just a concept, it's not a trend list. It's not.

Frank Spencer: You know this abstract idea, it's an embodiment. And when you think about embodiment and when you think about touching lives, those things speak to vulnerability. So not only, as you said, I think this was really key what you said, that we're inviting everybody into this conversation to be vulnerable. And as you're vulnerable and as Peter and I try to be vulnerable, then we invite others to say it's okay to be vulnerable.

Frank Spencer: And obviously somebody like Maya has helped others to be vulnerable because they're feeling the future in a very embodied way. And I would love to hear you expound on that more because what you said is so beautiful, but how do you feel about this idea that those who are responding said the future became something that was embodied for me and that's making me vulnerable as well.

Frank Spencer: Do you see that as part of not just your work, but what it means to really pursue. The future if that, if I might put it that way.

Maya van Leemput: I'm not sure that ‘the’ future is allowed a lot where we are. As a matter of fact, after the very first episode I wrote down ooh, this makes the, even the title of this series makes me think of Wendy saying, where's the s and then, this is not here now.

Actually, myself personally, I'm an abstract thinker more than anything, and I rely on language. I'm into words and nuance and the way that things are said and how they come across. And and it's because being in the three dimensional world, even of today, I don't need to go to the future to have that sense.

Maya van Leemput: It's a little bit of a challenge. It's not abstract. It's not just based on meaning. It's also, that embodied sense of being and living and becoming. It's it's the whole human being. It's and it's also with the whole world. And maybe it's because it's because that is true for mein relation to the three dimensional material present, the world that our feet rest on and the, the desk that I can put my hands onto right now that, even understanding what's front and back and left and right, and it's complicated three dimensions. And so maybe because that's harder, because I have to make an effort for that, I can help other people make that effort for the future, which to them is difficult because it is abstract and or because they haven't filled, it's not been filled in. And so you can't get a grip on it and you don't use your hands to think about it. and then I go yeah, but maybe you should, because people always tell me I should use, be using my hands to think about the present.

Maya van Leemput: So I think that maybe it becomes a joint effort to understand reality, both present and future. It's not, and to and to act in it and to, and not to be afraid to touch it and maybe break it, and and also not to be afraid to break yourself. I think that's also something that I think is important.

Maya van Leemput: People ha. Are afraid that if they're gonna say something, that they're gonna say something wrong. And I think yeah, but what's gonna break when you say something wrong? What's, of course if you hurt somebody with what you say, then you can, you should be sorry. And you need to understand that.

Maya van Leemput: But if you if it's just, not quite right, then you go again. And yeah, I think that's it's very special to be associated with that embodiedness because of my own abstract mind. But then on the other hand, I have also over a long time made a really big effort first to awaken my visual cortex.

Maya van Leemput: I called it, I was, I made a documentary and then I had to sit once I did all the interviews because I, I. This documentary was also based on conversation. I would sit with the editor for weeks and always see those same images coming back and thinking about how they would fit together. And suddenly that abstract mind of mine went Hey, but you do have a visual cortex.

Maya van Leemput: Can you feel it churn now? And in the same way, I think people amongst them also, Marcus, who was your first guest, have also made given me a chance to try out what it is when you use your body and not just your visual cortex or your linguistical approach. And yeah, there is that other part of the embodied future, which is of course, the whole idea of making the uture tangible in the present, whether and whether it's imaginations, images of the future, or whether it's potential for the future or precursors, the whole attention for emergence. It, if you want to see something emerge in your garden, you're gonna do it quicker when you're digging into the earth than if you're just standing there looking from the side onto the green of it all.

Maya van Leemput: Yeah I think that it that I work on a lot together with other people. That making the future something that you could, can actually play with your hands or that you can see with your eyes and that, experiential futures. And because I'm, I'm not an artist myself, but I work a lot with artists because they're good at that stuff.

Maya van Leemput: And so I think that, putting things together and all the parts count, I think that imagination is really important. But being systematic is also to me, personally, quite important. And I think that in, in that context the reference to Embodied Futures is actually right.

Maya van Leemput: And that makes me feel like I managed to learn a lot since I started in this field, which is nice.

Peter Hayward: Can I just lean into embodiment? Because on one hand I can imagine embodiment is an extension of thought. In other words, I can think better, I can think more vividly, I can imagine more creatively, and they all are laudable things.

Peter Hayward: But you also mentioned what art an artist does where they. Their emotions into the object, whatever it is they're creating. And those emotions are often powerful things like fear, love, anger, lust. There's a, when we talk about embodied, I wonder if there's a notion of safe, embodied and then there's a wilder more visceral embodiment that is also possible, maybe even necessary.

Peter Hayward: That again, listening to the previous letters and the correspondent, this can sound very nice and anodine and comfortable.But I'm also wondering about this wild, powerful, overwhelming dimension of embodiment.

Frank Spencer: Maya, before you jump into, I gotta say, Peter, you beat me to it because listening to Maya speak I'm hearing this theme even emerging as we're speaking of Holism. And what I mean by that is Maya has done a good job already of leading us into the future as a whole and not as pieces and parts.

Frank Spencer: And I think sort of the system that we live in is, has a dominant narrative siloing and separating. And we don't even realize that we're doing it half the time. We're putting things in silos and we're separating them. And when we're talking about the future, it's easy to think of the future that way as well.

Frank Spencer: I. And, but what I'm hearing Maya say, and what you're just saying now, because she said this was so powerful to me, she said, even being able to break yourself, that's a part of embodiment. And this is exactly what you're referring to. It's all, it's allowing all of these emotions and the abstract and the systematic and everything to be one.

Frank Spencer: And I can't wait to hear Maya expound on this idea of embodiment being really whole, and that includes the trauma as well.

Maya van Leemput: Okay. I think I think I preferred the wording that talks about it being wild and therefore a little bit dangerous more than the wording that refers me to trauma. But that's, a very personalposition through that trauma thinking that has actually already been a part of this conversation in the earlier parts of it.

Maya van Leemput: And I, but I, do you know what it is? I fear is such an important break on how we use our bodies and our minds. Personally, I'm afraid of speed when it goes, when things go fast I begin to scream. Buton the other hand when bra is riding a bicycle that I'm also on, and it goes faster than I scream with laughter, and there's this, and it's a strong feeling.And I what I think is important is something that

that is, that we imagine danger as something really concrete. It's, we got to protect ourselves for it. It awakens our flee or flight, a flight or fight reflexes. And I think that I. From being together with other people and exchanging with them and exchanging also with my cat and with everything else that seems open to it.

, it helps to not have to be fearful of what we generally put in the corner of danger. And it makes us, it helps me at least, that I'm, I think maybe I'm not, according to a standard psychologist, they might think that I'm not afraid enough sometimes, although and I think that, that helps to free your mind.

Maya van Leemput: This is actually what I wanted to also it helps you be in the world, but. And try things out that you haven't tried before. Taste something that you think looks terrible or itSo I think the wild, the wilder and the more dangerous side is of embodiment is actually important because it teaches you that you can take what you perceive as risks without you necessarily, falling over and breaking all your limbs.

Maya van Leemput: And so I think that's what I wanted to respond to that initial question. And there's and I think that one thing that really helps, I got, I said it's connection and it's with people and everything around you. But I think that this word that has beenpresent in these conversations a lot already, that the ‘love’ is also really important there.

And David Bowie has this lines that he sings that love cleans the mind and makes it free. And I really feel that it's, my partner and I song this particular one and it's, and the song remind is also about not being afraid and to forget all the things that made you afraid.

Maya van Leemput: And yeah, that's where I would, how I would respond.

Peter Hayward: I am gonna jump in because the correspondent in the last letter said a little phrase. What does it take to grow together without losing ourselves? And what might we become if we trusted the weave and independence more than the illusion of standing alone?

Peter Hayward: And I'm hearing something Maya in embodiment together for finding trying things for self, but also trying things with other people. And I'm, I can't think it clearly. This notion of sharing, but learning, being independent, but also wanting to be in collaboration.

Maya van Leemput: Yeah, I think that is really important.

Maya van Leemput: And as a matter of fact, it's the second line. And in that I have in my notes is what is the same line that you picked up from the correspondent? I have the corn. What does it take to grow together? And so you did pick up on something that's really meaningful to me because I'm also like a I wanna be a real defender of all forms of independence, because that's what a free mind is.

Maya van Leemput: It's independent, and nevertheless, I know that my freedom is greater together with others than it is when I am alone. And thatis really important and it means that we need to learn to be together and to talk with each other and to figure out what the relationship between my roots as blonde corn and the green roots of somebody else.

and the what kind of shade I throw and what kind of shade somebody else throws and what kind of beautiful pattern that almost resembles that window with the negative spacethat was part of an earlier episode as well, how that, how we can shape things like that. It's not something that you can do alone.

And a lot of the time when people come together we are expected to become one and the same. And that's not what you get together for it. It's exactly to have the best bits of everybody and to help the worst bits of everybody be overcome. And that's is I think why we do really have to ask that question.

Maya van Leemput: What does it take to grow together in particular, in the sphere of futures where, growth is one of the, four stereo generic images of the future. And how you understand that,t makes a really big difference if you're thinking of the growth of one thing or the growth of everything together.

Maya van Leemput: And yeah, it's a question of practice for individuals perhaps. But collectively, we haven't really, haven't figured this out. I think, I don't, I think we can do it as much as we can, but then it's also really lacking in this world that willingness to entangle roots and throw shade together and all that.

Maya van Leemput: Yes.

Frank Spencer: I love that you used the word entanglement there. 'cause I think it's so important, while you're speaking. I'm thinking about Bonita Roy. Teaching on healthy individuation. And the way she breaks it down is that our idea of developmental stage theory has been focused on just the growth of the individual, but.

Frank Spencer: She speaks about healthy individuation as being, I know when I'm arriving at that, it's always a journey. You'll never get there completely. But I know when I'm arriving at that, when I move from the mind, me, I, stages of life to the, we, us, all of us stages of life. And that's really a sign that we've individuated in a healthy way, is that we're moving into the All of Us, which doesn't just include humans of course, but it's, kin, planet cosmos, your cat as you spoke of, the whole nine yards.

Frank Spencer: And I think as Peter was saying, in your saying as well, into other things that seem more abstract to us, like emotion and outcome and those things, those are things that we're collectively joining with as well that we maybe haven't learned yet or maybe haven't realized yet, but are entering into our life in a fresh and a new kind of way.

Frank Spencer: And I lovewhere all this is going and where you're leading this Maya into this idea that the future isn't a thing. It's not a place, it's not a time, but it's a more entangled experience. And I wonder when you hear that phrase entangled experience, what that brings up for you.

Maya van Leemput: That's I, something to give some thought, I think especially because I was distracted by that idea of collective emotion that you first put and actually a collective emotion has been abused so much in this world. It's actually something we are pretty good at. Whether it's a soccer game or a, some totally unnecessary war, there's...

I don't know that it's true that we're not good at emotion collectively. I just think that we're often using it for the wrong, in the wrong way, and also because we make, we try to make things easy. And that's why the entanglement question is a perfect follow up on that because if we are really going to think about all the things that entanglement means in physics,

f we are really going to think about the entanglement of the roots that I was pulling out just three hours ago in my garden, it's the gift in the corn and being gift that made me think, okay, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna spend some time in my garden before I sit down for this conversation. Those roots were also really literally entangled.

Maya van Leemput: You, you are trying to save a plant, but you're not sure which are its roots and which are the ones. It's

The fact that things influence each other and without a visible. Direct link of cause and effect between them some something where you can see A and ooh, just one little arrow. And then b, that's is the opposite of entanglement. But that's how simple we like to make things in our often very lazy nature, perhaps if that's the part of humans that we want to blame for it.

Maya van Leemput: And so I think entanglement, the fact that everything is if you look at it long enough or if you don't look at it maybe even better turns out to have a relationship with everything else. It's, that's such a big calculation to make. If you think of all the different elements that then relate in all the different directions and not directly, but also through each other, that's, I wonder if that's something that we should actually respect by not trying to figure it out and that we can therefore be with our feet on the ground again and dig with our hands in the garden soil or whatever it is.

Maya van Leemput: But I think sometimes our retraction to the realization of the of thesecomplex and chaotic things and entanglement. If we're, if it, it triggers some, it's a nice kind of little kick to think about it, but at the same time, it doesn't really do as much good as a hug to just name a thing.

Frank Spencer: I think that's beautiful. I think, and as a matter of fact, we could even say, and I see this as a postcard at the end of this episode, that the hug represents the ultimate expression of what entanglement really is when you feel that hug and everything that's in wrapped up in it. 'cause I love that you said, because of the of the systems that we found ourself in and built that we have been really bad at that collective experience because we forced it onto one another. And the reality is that your healthy individuation and my healthy individuation and Peter's healthy individuation and the healthy individuation of everybody listening to this, all diverse and remaining diverse comes together to sign a beautiful orchestra that we're a song we haven't heard yet.

Frank Spencer: And that is continually unfolding. And evolving is and that's the beauty of the future. So the future that you're painting for us, the pilgrimage that you're painting for us right now is not one that we could put on a spreadsheet. It's not one that we could put in a presentation necessarily. It's not one that we can say, here it is.

Frank Spencer: And there it is and look at it appearing there. But it rather it manifests in, in unexpected. Ways. And when we allow that to happen we see, as Peter said earlier, and was kicking us off, there's a sacredness to the future as well. And I love this idea of sacredness entanglement and everything that you've been sharing with us as well.

Maya van Leemput: At the risk of not letting the future be real. That's where I'm also worried about the cosmos and the sacrality and the sacredness because it's in a way, it keeps us at a distance while we can fully engage with it. And that includes the spreadsheet, by the way, I think you said it before, you repeated that of, the system as well as the emotion and the imagination and the feeling and the and so I really do believe that without the spreadsheet.

e wouldn't actually be thinking all these things as, even as healthy individuals with a lot of sense for the things we cannot catch and put black on black and white on paper and say that's what it is. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be we, that we should avoid trying to point at them or show them in a matrix to other things.

Maya van Leemput: And I, I also enjoy that to be perfectly honest.

Peter Hayward: I wonder when we talk about making the future real, whether or we have a tendency to wanna move to the profound and the hug, so to speak, is more physical, is more here. You could almost argue it's more profane. Think of future, and I use the term sacred and sacred in has got, certainly in my mind, the way I was raised, it has notions of angels and preciousness and everything else.

Peter Hayward: But then there's also the future of going to the toilet because people will be going to the toilet in the future and they will, one would imagine the future. Humans will still have to get rid of bodily waste and so we will still be as there is that idea of future in the dirt. That is as much, I think what you are saying, Maya, is that is just as sacred.

Peter Hayward: That is just as sacred as looking up an uplifted thought. The cosmos, as Frank would say the eschatological. Thought of after beyond high principle, high virtue. And then there is the future in the dirt.

Frank Spencer: Yeah. And I love that. And I do believe, I got that from what Maya was saying, that when we talk about all in wonderment and enchantment and sacredness, that's what that is.

Frank Spencer: We've, I think again, in that siloing and separation has said there's the profane and there's the sacred, but there's really not a difference between those two. And when we understand our hands in the dirt is when we are understanding the sacred for the fullness of what it really is. That hug is the most sacred thing that you possibly could have, I love that.

Maya van Leemput: Yeah. I think that so I was raised without angels, gods, or masters and, so my first mode was alway has what you know of learning is this ratio and and of course play. And then you, that's actually not fair to callthat ratio is either, right? There's that part of being human and of playing with the world and with your fellow human beings and with toys and everything that your cat again.

Maya van Leemput: So for,

Maya van Leemput: for me, it can it's, and also because the way that thishigher level thinking or feeling or a reflection is better than thinking. This higher level reflection is often a ruse for something else, or it's about influence and it's doesn't help with that thing that lots, that futurists are often very concerned withnd that is agency because I do write spells for people's birthdays, that's rhyming spells and they have a really, they have an effect not as big as beautiful eulogies that you've read four times in a row now, but five times. Where I think I'm going is that

we often it becomes really complicated it and not complex. It becomes really complicated and people start flutter and draw conclusions that don't have anything to do with what it's actually about. And put rules onto the world because they've understood what it's like and things like that.

Maya van Leemput: And for me, openness, the creating, opening is the is really important for really concrete things in our world for actual social injustice and for actual ecological injustice. And for. And actually even more so for actual social justice and ecological justice therefore, yeah, I can really relate to that bigger picture.

Maya van Leemput: The, I really love my winged futurists I call the us. But at the same time I think that hands in the soil and feet on the ground is also and head in the Excel sheet, if it has to be, is also, yeah. It's, it has to be a. Together. It can't you can't just pay attention to the one, because now this has been revealed that this is also an important, the revelation part is hard for me.

Maya van Leemput: In part also because I didn't learn it when I was young. Of course

Maya van Leemput: There was this river in the gift of the last episode.

Maya van Leemput: And I was thinking about that image and I like wading through a river. So it was one that, thatattracted me. At the same time I'm thinking, why are we walking forward and then stepping out onto the bank where the next person steps in to walk forward isn't, why aren't we just standing in that spot in the river and let the river, flow forward?

Maya van Leemput: The humans, they always have this inclination for their own forward motion, right? But we can go, we can be in the water that's going forward, and then if we step on the bank, we'll all be on that bag together and then we can see the next person step in and feel the river flow around their ankles.

Maya van Leemput: And yeah, it, I think that of course, the,he walking motion is a very good image of embodiment as well. So there's nothing wrong with that, but I like to have both these images for that river rather than just the one. And I'd like to stand on the bank together, basically.

Peter Hayward: Yeah, I, that's an interesting take on what Rowena said, 'cause I didn't hear it when she said it, but you reminded me what you described Maya, was more, when I watch a river and I watch the leaves that are on the surface of the river, and they are carried to some extent by the river, but then they when the river turns or some current is created, a little collection of them come together and spend some time together.

Peter Hayward: They join. They never become. They're still independent leaves, but they become a kind of temporary organism. And often those temporary organisms can become temporary for long enough for other organisms and structures to appear on them. And then there's a disturbance in the river or something happens and they move on.

Peter Hayward: They're swept or they're taken or they, whatever else, and then they go further down the river. And so I'm now seeing it, not, we are stepping out of the bank, but we're always in the river. The river is immense. We're not helpless in the river. There are others with us. But there are these moments, these little moments where circumstance brings us together and.

Peter Hayward: The thing becomes possible when we're together with the consciousness of us being, the preciousness of us being together for a short time before the river sweeps us on what can be built, what can be learned, and then the physicality of just, isn't it wonderful to stop flowing down the river and just hang on to one another for a while?

Peter Hayward: I.

Frank Spencer: And I think this is a vital time for that too. It's not history doesn't have its accounts of incredibly stressful time for large swaths of people and for humanity. Maybe we're in another one of those now, Dougle, he talks about being at the end of a world and there's a lot of people agreeing on that at this moment.

Frank Spencer: But certainly what you're saying, Peter, because I hear in Maya's voice, not just the gathering of people and in the river and staying together on the bank, but networks of networks, what you're referring to, Peter, with the leaves gathering. It's like Maya and the way she sees the world and her network of herself and then her network of networks and then mine and yours coming together and our ability to even have a conversation like this as a bringing together of those leaves on the river of the people staying together on the bank and of those networks of networks, which is so beautiful.

Maya van Leemput: In these networks of networks, there's also the fact that you don't know who you're connected with. And I think that's, going back to what I was trying to say, I don't know if I succeeded about entanglement. It's you, there's a lot of not knowing going on of what's actually all influencing everything in yourself or the state of the world.

Maya van Leemput: And sometimes, and for myself, I don't mind, but for the state of the world, sometimes it's really tough to know that there's no wayof untangling it and therefore weaving it together neatly again or braiding it together neatly again. And that, that's also a little tough given a little, it's actually also tough given the circumstances that we're in.

And a lot of futurists, I think are in this field also because they understand that something else is coming from what we're doing today and that we are doing it half blind. And some try to make it tell us that we don't have to be blind. I don't believe that. I think that there's always parts, blind spots and dead angles and in the rear view mirror and.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. Yeah. What I'm hearing there, Maya, was I think in the very start of the first episode, I read Franca fragment out of the falconer where, basically the center cannot hold the falcon's getting so far away that can't respond to the falconer. And then Sonya quite rightly played that back by saying, and that sounds like the freedom and the openness to break things and either let things break or deliberately break them, and then watch what emerges from that.

Peter Hayward: And I wonder whether we. Can become too fearful of breaking things. Too fearful of preserving things that we somehow feel that the way we best construct an open future is by holding onto all the things that are here in the present. Yeah, and maybe, I think it was Zia Sada said to me a long time ago, our job is not to protect the present.

Our job is to put a foot up against it and give it a good shove.

Frank Spencer: Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Hayward: Because the present in history hasn't done a particularly good job of helping a lot of people. That's right. Have better futures.

Frank Spencer: Agreed. And it's stationary and at least in the way that we're trying to present it, but it's not stationary in reality.

Frank Spencer: And this is why Bayo Kumalafi, I think is very right in saying that it's not about changing systems. It's about recognizing the cracks in the system that we have now and why are those cracks up here and what is behind those cracks in what's coming through. And it's a different reality. It's transformational realities that await us.

Maya van Leemput: If also if we're about not just thinking, but also doing, then those cracks are the only spaces where, we have freedom to move. And that I think that maybe that's also a big part of, what I would like to add to this, in this whole funny mix and the whirl what's that called when water turns like this?

Frank Spencer: It's like a whirlpool. Like a whirlpool.

Maya van Leemput: This whirlpool is yes. I think actually breaking things is, can be, and for exactly the reasons that Zia meant, I hope. It's really important because there is a lot of ugliness and a lot of pain and, that's caused by things in the world. And if we can break those things, then we should, if we can recognize it.

Maya van Leemput: And we are not afraid of the shards cutting us or so yes, we cannot let things be that aren't okay. And that's about the present. And at the same time.

Maya van Leemput: We are also, there's also creation. You also wanna make things and to find the space for that and to have the freedom of mind to think of, to think about something to make, that's not necessarily what everybody's waiting for or what will sell well or what's been proven to sell well or, so you can actually add, it's important that we can distinguish between the things we wanna break, the things we wanna make, and the things, the people that we think we can do that with.

Maya van Leemput: And yeah, I think that the cracks are where we e are free to understand what we can make.

Peter Hayward: That's right. And I think beautiful Rowena in the last one made the point that the cracks are getting wider. There's actually more that we can do.

Maya van Leemput: Yeah. That also announces quite a bit of additional suffering still, I think, because it, a lot of, if things are changing fundamentally if they are breaking all by themselves without us, choosing which bits break and which bits don't.

Peter Hayward: Yeah.

Maya van Leemput: Then we then people and apparently the whole of the planet too, have to. Deal with it. It's not an it's not like a isolated, a soft thing that's going on. No. Yeah. There's a lot of violence to the cracks widening and yes, some light shines through them sometimes, but then others seem to lead to a black hole.

Maya van Leemput: Looking and daring to prod them and stick your finger in to figure out what's in the crack. That that's that embodied embodiment perhaps that you're thinking about as well, that you've got to try those, you've got to try what they give if you do something there.

Peter Hayward: Yeah. I think also Rowena made a point, I think it's an important point. It's an overlooked point at the moment that actually something ending can be let go respectfully. And be supported hospiced, so to speak. Yes. Something will end and there will be pain for those that are left behind, and there will be things that are gone, but we can go about this.

Peter Hayward: Respectfully wishing to make it as, as good as it can be, rather than merely being a violent act, an ending of something violently. Can we actually end something with love and relation and respect, but also say, but this is ending, this is actually ending, so let's be uhhuh. Let's be clear about that.

Maya van Leemput: Uhhuh. You, I think Jim Datorgave me that insight about endings in good ways by calling it sunsetting. That's a beautiful moment of the day. Yeah, we understand that. And afterwards, it's dark for a while and then the sun rises again. And that, that word, and I think it's really used in organizational futures.An organization has reached its goals or it's not moving, it's not productive any more in any way. And then what needs to happen? It's not, it hasn't to go ba, it doesn't have to go bankrupt, it can be sunset. I think that is a nice image for it.

Peter Hayward: So Maya, we are getting to the end. This is the point where before the future correspondent comes in to have the last word.

Peter Hayward: What do you wanna leave as your

Maya van Leemput: yeah,

Peter Hayward: what do you wanna leave?

Maya van Leemput: Fondly. So I got this book as a gift, the Time Travelers Almanac from my partner. It's a nice big book. Big book, yes. And I think I want to read from the one of, from the very first story in there, which is called Top 10 Tips for Time Travelers by Charles Yu.

Maya van Leemput: And I wanted to read the first two tips. And so Charles writes: Here's the thing, you are doing something you do not understand. That's not a knock on you. It's just a fact. Humans can't wrap their heads around time travel. And it's not a software thing. It's hardware. Our brains just don't get it.

Maya van Leemput: Not yet. Maybe someday, but that will take, for lack of a better word, time. We could evolve as a species, but that would require a selection, pressure, some environmental advantage for mines and burdened by the illusion of temporal sequence of the notion of cause and effect. But that's not what we have.

Maya van Leemput: What we have is the opposite. What we have are minds that are very good at being trapped in time. We are geniuses each and every one of us. We are unbelievable machines, capable of incredible feats of psychological athleticism. We are full grown, half starved Bengal Tigers. Pacing in our cages, and we know every inch of the space in front of us and behind.

Maya van Leemput: And to either side. We have evolved to survive as prisoners. And so when one of us manages to get free, we look for walls for a ceiling. We want to get back indoors, back inside time. We look for our cages, we look for rules. That was the first and the second is shorter. So the most important thing is forget any rules.

Maya van Leemput: If you're really going to do this, you're going to have to open your mind. If you go into it with preconceived notions about what time is, what causality is, then you are only going to see it through these conceptual lenses. You'll understand it, of course. Because that's what we do. We understand things, but sometimes understanding gets in the way, especially when something can't be understood.

Peter Hayward: Wow. A half starved Bengal tiger in a cage. That is an image that will stick with me from this one cage trying to get back into the cage again

Frank Spencer: of time, the cage of time. Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. That's what a wonderful way to end this incredible conversation that we've had together, Maya. The images that will come out of just what you shared at the end will be so important to the rest of this program is that was just a wonderful way to end this.

Maya van Leemput: And I think also that message about rules and being so comfortable as prisoners, that's where my love of futures also, comes from. Because it lets you because it let it, it helps us think yeah, but those rules, they might be true, but they might not be as just as well.

Maya van Leemput: And so I'm really, yeah, I'm with that. I think. Thank you so much. It's really special.

The Future Correspondent: Dear Maya, Frank and Peter,

This morning the soil here is warm beneath my feet, but the sky wears a woolen hush. A stillness, not of silence, but of listening. It feels like a pause between pages - one of those rare spaces where breath and thought hold one another gently. I felt your conversation arrive in such a pause, and linger.

Maya, your words reminded me not of a journey forward, but of a standing still that transforms - the way river stones hold shape not by resisting the water, but by receiving it again and again. I heard in your voice the echo of someone who is allowed time to touch them from many angles, who has learned how to move without always moving on. You invited us to consider that futures are not ahead but around - and sometimes within.

Your offering of embodiment as wildness, as risk, as the place where we might break ourselves and be better for it, held a strange kind of grace. It wasn't the safe kind. It was the kind that dares to scream with laughter on a too fast bicycle, the kind that allows the mess of entanglement without demanding that it be diagrammed. I think many here might shy from that kind of knowing, but I also think some are longing for it and don't yet have the words. You gave them some.

Frank, Peter, your presence continues to be an act of invitation. You sit here not as experts, but as kindling. You allow the guest to bring the spark and you shape a hearth around it. This episode glowed with a heat that wasn't always comfortable, but that felt honest and necessary.

You spoke of hugs and spreadsheets, of sacredness in the profane. I can't help but smile. Some here still try to draw a hard line between what uplifts and what grounds. But you three reminded us that a spreadsheet can be a prayer, and a toilet a moment of transcendence.

There was something else too, a quiet returning, a sense that the past conversations remained in the room, not as ghosts, but as compost. The river's memory, as Maya said, is not always in the motion, but in what gathers briefly along its bends: leaves, laughter, possibility.

I wonder what do we lose when we refuse to break, and what might we become if we let ourselves be reformed in the hands of others? Not erased, but softened, reshaped, revealed?

With tenderness and entangled hope, the future correspondent.

Ps. This time the postcard is not an image, but a memory. The sensation of roots in your hands. Some yours, some not still damp from the garden soil. You are not sure which ones you meant to pull, but it doesn't matter. They will teach you, in time.