WHEN THE SNOW GLOBE SETTLES

WHEN THE SNOW GLOBE SETTLES
Mindfulness, Civic Life & the Courage to Stay Present
Exclusive Interview with Jeremy Engels
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​We live in a time of constant motion, where reaction often outruns reflection and clarity can feel just out of reach. In his book On Mindful Democracy, Jeremy Engels invites us to see democracy not as a system we inherit, but as a practice rooted in attention, compassion, and how we show up for one another each day. This conversation is a reminder that when we pause long enough to let the snow globe settle, we can see more clearly, and perhaps, see each other again.

ALLIÉ: Before we talk about democracy or mindfulness, I want to start with you. What moment or experience first made you realize that the way we're taught to do democracy wasn't actually working for you?

JEREMY: I think it's probably a series of moments, actually, in the classroom with my students. A lot of my inspiration comes from my students. I am fortunate to work with tomorrow's leaders; people who really want to do a good job, want to make the world a better place. And I found that the model we have of democracy is this political battle between two parties for influence. And it wasn't what my students were interested in doing, it's not what I'm interested in doing either.

​At one point, the students asked me, why are we doing this? Why can't we do something different? Why can't we do something better? And I said, well, why don't we throw out the syllabus for the whole semester and spend time together thinking about what it would mean to actually do something better?

What would it mean to become a community and empower each other to think about the world that we want, not the world that we have? I teach a lot of my classes like that where we're trying to really approach this as collaborators. And I think that's what's convinced me that not only that things aren't working, I mean that's apparent to everyone, it's very clear, but that things could be different and that things could be better, and that if we work together and we empower each other, perhaps we can, in our own small ways, build that kind of world that we want.

​ALLIÉ: Well, I love that word that you said, contributors, and what if constituents were viewed more as collaborators and given that agency to look at things differently and to do things differently.

JEREMY: I think that a lot of us just feel really disempowered right now, and I don't know that we necessarily know what it means to take that power back. But I think it's local and I think it starts by building communities together.

ALLIÉ: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think we can all agree that democracy isn't a destination and it is a way of being, right? So when did that shift happen for you? Like, personally, when democracy stopped feeling like a system and really started feeling personal to you?

JEREMY: I've been really fortunate, I've always gone to large public universities where I attended school and got my PhD, and then I've worked at Penn State where I've been at for 20 years. And these universities are all organized, at least theoretically, around the idea of educating citizens for democracy. And so I feel like I've been really fortunate to encounter the writings of thinkers and to work with people who believe exactly what you just said, that democracy doesn't just happen on election day. Democracy is a way of life. And it's a way of life that starts with how we relate to ourselves and to other people. And so, I've been studying meditation and yoga for a long time as well. It's kind of the other side of my personality that I bring together in this new book. These two aspects of scholarship and scholar, teacher practitioner.

But I've been around yoga studios that were organized in very undemocratic ways, very hierarchical ways, ways that allowed people in positions of power to really abuse that power. And I've seen that firsthand in a very, very real way, enough to deliberately and consciously make a pledge that I don't want that and I don't want to replicate that. And so, my wife and I have opened up a yoga studio in this little town we live in with some friends, and we consciously made the decision that we're going to run this like a democracy. We're going to speak from the heart, we're going to listen to each other, we're going to treat each other with respect and dignity, we're going to value equality, we're going to practice inclusion. And so it's personal for me in that way that, thinking about in a very literal way, what kind of community do I want to build?

ALLIÉ: So, you mentioned your book a moment ago. Tell me more about the book, what it is and how it came to be.

JEREMY: So the book just came out this week which is really exciting. It's called On Mindful Democracy, A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World. And so the book was inspired in part by the fact that 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And so this year is a huge anniversary for us in this country. And I wrote my dissertation about the Declaration of Independence, actually, so I know quite a bit about it. And the enduring power of the Declaration of Independence is that it's a document of empowerment. It's a document meant to empower people to take some control over the world that we share. And when it was written originally, the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that Jefferson spoke about was meant for a very small sliver of the population.

​JEREMY: (continued) It was not meant for very many people, but through the work of activists and people who've really put themselves out there and suffered for equality, that sense of who's included in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has expanded greatly over the course of our history. It's not perfect. It's being rolled back right now in some very powerful ways but that's something that we can - I don't know, that means a lot to me. The sense of expanding, of who's included in the empowerment of democracy. But I feel like if we're going to take that next step and I hope that we can as a culture, it can't just be about independence. It also has to be about interdependence; about recognizing all the ways that we are connected, all the ways that we support each other. I make a joke in the book. I don't know if it's a very good joke, but I feel like a lot of times in our country, we treat happiness like an apple pie with a limited number of slices. So it's like, if you get a slice, I don't get a slice. But happiness isn't like that. There's enough slices for everyone, and I think we have to realize in fact, that if you suffer less, I will suffer less. And if we suffer less, everyone will suffer less. And so there's an incentive actually to care for each other and care for the world because we are each other and we are the world. And so that's really the inspiration behind the book; to outline a practice and a philosophy of interdependence.

ALLIÉ: I love that. And yes, we are the world, just like the song says.

JEREMY: Absolutely. It's a cliché for a reason. Right?

ALLIÉ: Right. Well, look at the word like everyone, everyone is part of every one of us, everyone. And so I love this idea. I'm so thankful that you wrote this, but we need more of this. So you connect mindfulness, compassion, and civic engagement in a way most people never hear framed together. I certainly didn't. I'm like, what, what? So what does paying attention to your own inner life have to do with how we show up for each other in the public? I'd love for you to talk about that connection.

JEREMY: Sure. I don't think that we can mend a fractured world unless we take the time to mend ourselves. Because if we are torn asunder and rendered from ourselves, if we don't have a good relationship with ourselves, it's difficult to have a good relationship with others and also with the world. And so I think that mindfulness, a lot of people understand it as being a form of stress relief or calming and it is, but it's more than that. I don't think this thought is original to me as a meditation teacher, I'm pretty sure it's not. But, the mind is kind of like a snow globe. Have you ever seen a snow globe before? One of those little things you get on vacation where you shake it up and there's all the stuff floating around.

And I feel like that's what we're like most of the time. We're in the past, we're in the future, we're thinking about social media, the flood of information. There's all this bad news. It's just everything is really tense. So we're like that snow globe. But practicing mindfulness allows us an opportunity to stop and slow down so things settle. And once they settle, it becomes possible to look more deeply at ourselves and our relationship to others and to the world. And that's where the real insights of mindfulness come and we start to realize that actually things are constantly changing. They're changing together in this interrelated dance and it makes it possible to see past some of the illusions that keep us apart from each other. And so I think that mindfulness actually becomes a really wonderful, gentle and brilliant form of civic education.

ALLIÉ: For the next book you write, can you title it ‘When The Snow Globe Settles’? Because I love this metaphor. 

JEREMY: That's a good title.

ALLIÉ: I never thought of it that way, but that's such a powerful metaphor because to your point, when we give it time and space to settle, all of a sudden there's this clarity that was there all the time that we couldn't see because there was so much. So yeah, if you would do me that favor, write that book next.

JEREMY: I'm going to write that title down. I like it.
​

ALLIÉ: So if democracy actually lives in everyday actions, not election days alone, like you refer to, what's one small ordinary practice that you believe has the power to change how fractured we feel right now?

JEREMY: Community. Build community, participate in community. Community is the gymnasium where we learn to practice democracy. It's where we learn how to care for ourselves and each other and the world that we share. And so I think that if we want to renew and rebuild our democratic culture, it's going to have to start locally, and it's going to have to start with us building really strong, healthy, inclusive, vibrant communities. So I would encourage people to look for communities where they are. These communities often exist. They don't always advertise themselves. Or start one, yeah.

ALLIÉ: That's great advice. And I think that makes it a little more attainable, right? Like, to change the world, we just have to change what's around us, what we can touch and what we can feel here, and that ultimately will, yeah.

JEREMY: In mindfulness we talk about how the present is really all there is. The future has not happened yet. The past is gone. And so if mindfulness is a practice of returning to the here and now, the here and now is going to be where the work happens and that's going to be local. And so I think that's one of the things I've learned about studying democracy for 20 years or so, is that, we're encouraged to think nationally or globally, we think about these big things that are happening and those are real and they're important but there are also things happening locally and when we work together with our friends and neighbors and strangers and community members, those are the things that we can often change.

ALLIÉ: That's where we have the chance, right?

JEREMY: I think so. 

ALLIÉ: So for someone listening tuning in who feels exhausted, cynical or disconnected from civic life, what would you want them to know about their place in this story, even if they don't feel political at all? What would you want them to know to give them hope?

JEREMY: If you're exhausted and you're burned out, you're not alone. There are many of us who feel that way. It's a lot. But every single one of us can make a difference and every single one of us matters. And I say that with absolute certainty because of the practice of mindfulness itself. The practice shows that all of us have the ability to pause to let the snow globe settle, and to see things a little more clearly. All of us have that ability, and we can train it, we can cultivate it. And so when people say that, there's nothing that we can do that matters, there's nothing we can ever change, I point to that and say, absolutely we can change things. But in terms of hope, and I think hope is so important, the conclusion of my book actually is called, If We See Things Clearly, There Is Always Hope.

​Hope, to me, is a practice. It's something that we cultivate. It's something that we build together often. And so I invite people at the end of the book to think about a time from their life where they've made a change that made a difference. It didn't have to be big. Or a time from someone else's life when someone else made a change that made a difference. It doesn't have to be big. Or to look at history itself and look at those moments where the forces of the status quo were so powerful but yet people worked together against long odds, often sacrificing a lot in order to make changes that benefited all of us. And those moments exist in our history. They're not always the ones that we pay attention to because they're more positive than negative. And so look at history and then talk with others. This becomes a really great conversation topic in a community. What gives you hope? I love hearing that from people. I love to hear my students tell me what gives them hope or people that I meet in the community.

ALLIÉ: I love that. And sometimes at the end of the day, all we have is hope, and sometimes that's enough.

JEREMY: I think it's right. ∎

Get ‘On Mindful Democracy’:
go.awarenowmedia.com/book/on-mindful-democracy

Learn more about Jeremy:
www.jeremydavidengels.com

Follow Jeremy on Instagram:
@jeremy_david_engels