Seeing the Water We’re In

Awareness, identity, and the quiet tension between what we believe and what we live

In my last piece, I wrote about movement, about those who leave and those who stay, and how geography quietly reshapes identity, permission, and possibility.

At the time, I was reflecting on how we carry our histories across places, how leaving does not fully separate us from what has shaped us, and how staying does not mean remaining unchanged.

Since then, I’ve found myself sitting with a related but different question.

Not just where we are… but what we are living inside.

In recent months, I have noticed a shift in how life feels in our world. This is not a political statement or a commentary, but a reflection drawn from my lived experience and my work as a leadership and organizational development practitioner.

This shift may not be everywhere or for everyone. But definitely in the spaces I inhabit, the conversations I am part of, and the work I do.

It is not always visible. There is no single headline that captures it.

But it is perceptible.

Conversations sometimes feel more careful. Decisions can carry more weight. At times, there is a kind of low, persistent fatigue that is difficult to tie to any one event.

Alongside that, there is also an increase in awareness of difference, of complexity, and of the gap that can exist between what we say we value and what we experience.

I offer this inquiry as an invitation to notice what we might each be sensing, in our own ways.

Over the last couple of months, I spent five weeks in Ireland and India on a sabbatical with my husband. It was a time to step away from the usual pace of work and responsibility, to explore, rest, and be in a different rhythm of life. It was a true privilege, after constant work, to reach this point since we both started our careers in 1999.

I want to be clear: this was not an experience of living in Ireland and India, or of navigating those systems in an everyday sense. It was just a temporary distance from the demands that often shape how we move through the world.

And still, the contrast it created was instructive. Nothing dramatic had changed in the external world.

But something in my internal experience had. My body felt different. There was a certain ease in how conversations unfolded. Time felt less compressed. Even brief interactions with strangers or in new contexts felt less effortful.

I just noticed it, then returned and felt the shift again.

Not as a judgment. Not as better or worse.

Just… different.

A quicker pace. A slightly heightened alertness. A sense, sometimes subtle, that something more is at stake. My body felt it before I had language for it.

A fish does not know it is in water because it is constant. And sometimes, it is not about leaving the water entirely, but about glimpsing it briefly from a different angle, a different depth.

In a similar way, the systems we live within are often not something we consciously see.

We feel them. We adapt to them. We normalize them.

Until we step outside, even briefly, and something becomes clearer. Not as an analysis. But as a somatic experience.

I asked, "What are we actually living inside right now?" And how is it living in us?

In my work, I often hold two lenses. Systems and what moves beneath them.

Because often, what we feel in our bodies is not just personal. It is contextual. There is a subtle, persistent tension many of us experience. Psychology calls it Cognitive Dissonance. It’s what we experience when what we believe and what we are living don’t quite match.

It’s like driving a car with slightly misaligned wheels. You can still move forward, but you are constantly correcting or like wearing something just a little too tight. You can function, but your body never fully relaxes.

I see this in everyday moments. A leader says, “We value open dialogue.” And people still choose their words carefully. No one names it. But everyone feels it. That gap is where dissonance lives.

And when it’s not acknowledged, it gets carried in the body, in conversations, in the system.

What I am observing is this: There is an increase in awareness, and a gap between that awareness and our ability to integrate it. Not because something is broken. But because something is trying to align. You might feel it as activation, fatigue, or a quiet question: how do I show up here?

These are not universal experiences, but they are not uncommon. I tend to notice them more in people who are working closely with complexity: leaders, practitioners, caregivers, and those navigating multiple identities or systems at once.

There is also something here about identity. For individuals who have historically had to navigate gaps between what is said and what is lived across race, gender, culture, or immigration experience, this awareness may not feel new, only more visible. What may feel like a new tension for some has, in different forms, been a lived reality for others. And at the same time, I see this awareness emerging in people who are just beginning to notice these gaps, often for the first time. Different entry points, different intensities, but a shared experience of trying to make sense of what is being seen and felt.

And if you’ve felt this tension, there is nothing wrong with you. This is what it can feel like when awareness has arrived, but integration has not.

And as integration deepens, something begins to settle, and how we respond can start to shift.

For me, stepping outside, even briefly, made something visible.

Not about Ireland.

Not about India.

But about the water I am swimming in. We don’t just think inside systems. We feel inside them. So, the question becomes:

What is my relationship to what I am inside?

Leadership, in this moment, is less about answers and more about presence. It is the ability to stay with what is not yet resolved. To notice without reacting. To create space for thinking and feeling.

If I had to name what I am noticing, it is this: There is more awareness, and that awareness is asking for integration.

That gap can feel like tension or fatigue, and it can also be a place of possibility.

Because even a moment of noticing of seeing the water we are in can begin to shift how we move within it.