Yellow is on sabbatical
A while ago, one of our participants shared with us that she would love her kids to take part in Yellow if Yellow is still around then.
Of course, it was lovely to receive her implicit praise. But more interesting for us was the word "if." "If Yellow is still around then..."
Her words resonated with a hunch we'd had from the start. Yellow cannot, and will not, last forever. And it might not even last very long.
These sentiments can appear lazy and even heretical in a world where maximizing growth and life-expectancy are held as unquestioned goods. Success, we're told, means big outcomes and long-lasting legacies. Anything small, modest, and short-lived is considered to be a failure.
The question of "How big can we make Yellow?" has never interested us in the slightest. Rather, the questions that we find ourselves living (and the questions that seem to be living us) are more along the lines of "What do we feel called toward?" and "What does Yellow want to become?"
These inquiries require us to listen and sense more than push forward and expand. It's a process of listening to our feelings, our bodies, and our intuitions, and letting those responses inform us about what what moves to make next.
Listening isn't always easy. Sometimes you need to create what Iain McGilchrist calls "necessary distance" – enough distance to take a step back and get a new perspective, but close enough to stay in touch with whatever it is you're exploring.
So we've decided to create some necessary distance for a while. For the foreseeable future, we are on a sabbatical from Yellow. This means no groups and no events until at least the new year.
It's an opportune time for us at a personal level. One of us (Rob) is finishing the manuscript of a new book, and the other (Alex) is moving with his family to a new country. On all fronts, it's a season for harvesting and settling in, before knowing what seeds to plant next.
We're open to many possible Yellow futures. This might mean new formats and offerings. It might mean no future Yellow at all. Whatever is next, we're excited about the possibilities of what's to come.
So, for now, we'll let the silence speak.
The only question is if we can get out of the way enough to hear what it has to say.
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PS: One thing we do know is that the annual 3D Yellow event will happen in 2024 (if nothing else as a last hurrah). The dates are June 26-30, 2024. Reach out for more information.
