Reflections

We tend to think of design as something we do to objects and spaces. We shape, arrange, build and change them until our surroundings serve us better or look the way we want them to.

But the relationship works both ways.

We design our environments, and our environments, in turn, take part in shaping us.

A table invites us to gather. A bench creates an opportunity for conversation or rest. A kitchen can make it easy to cook healthy, nourishing food or to heat up something ready-made. It can help us make good use of the food we have and reduce waste or make both more difficult. Tools kept in sight can remind us to repair something instead of throwing it away. A chair in the right place can invite us to sit down, look out of the window and do nothing for a while.

Design, then, is not only about how things look. Design shapes the conditions for what we do and how we do it.

And that is where design becomes a force for change.

If we change the conditions around us, we can make different behaviours — different ways of being — easier and more likely. When behaviours are repeated, they can become habits. And our habits are not separate from who we are. They are part of how we live and how we show up in the world.

That makes the home an interesting place to begin exploring how we might change the world.

Start small

Sustainability is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and perhaps that is precisely why it can be so difficult to know how to respond.

Climate change, ecosystem decline, resource use and the transformation of economic systems are so vast and complex that it is easy for one person to feel small, even powerless, in the face of them. We know change is necessary, but it can be hard to see how we ourselves can become meaningful participants in that change.

Sustainability can then begin to feel like someone else's responsibility, with solutions being created somewhere else — at conferences, in policy documents, through technological innovation or in decisions made by governments and corporations.

Or sustainability reaches us as a list of all the things that need to be banned, reduced or given up.

Buy less. Drive less. Fly less. Use less.

All of this matters. But it is difficult to build a new world solely around the things we should stop doing.

We also need to be able to ask:

How do we want to live instead?

Home as a living laboratory

Home gives us a wonderful place to explore that question.

Much of everyday life happens there. We eat, rest, consume, create, accumulate things, discard them, repair them, nurture relationships, spend time alone and share our lives with others.

And at home, we often have more freedom to experiment than almost anywhere else.

What happens if we repair rather than replace?

Borrow rather than own?

Create a space that makes being together easier?

Grow something?

Make more room for nature?

Change what we already own instead of replacing it?

Or simply pause before buying the next thing and ask:

What is it that I actually need?

Perhaps it is not a new sofa but more connection. Not more storage but fewer things. Not a more beautiful home but more calm, play, creativity or a deeper sense of belonging — of being part of something.

At that point, the premise of design begins to change. We are no longer starting with what kind of sofa we want or which colour would look best in the living room. We are consciously using design to create the conditions for the life we want to live.

Let's experiment

An experiment does not have to succeed.

That is precisely the beauty of experimenting.

We can try something, notice what happens and decide whether to keep going, change it or try something entirely different.

In that process, we learn more than how we want our homes to be.

We learn to ask questions. We learn to see possibilities where something once seemed inevitable. We practise making, mending, sharing, growing, creating and thinking differently about what we need — and who we want to be.

We build skills. And perhaps just as importantly, we build the confidence that comes from discovering that we can change something.

These are tools we do not have to leave at home.

We can carry them into our neighbourhoods, our workplaces and our communities. Once we have learned to ask how we might create the conditions for greater connection at home, we can ask the same question about our neighbourhood. Once we have reconsidered what enough means around our own kitchen table, that question can follow us into the supermarket, into our work and life in general.

Large-scale systemic change will still be necessary.

But we do not have to be merely spectators to it.

We can practise participating in change and perhaps discover that what we do matters, both for our surroundings and for ourselves.

We can use the place we know most intimately to redesign aspects of our lives and ways of being, while creating a home that better supports our needs.

Isn’t that an exciting thought? Home can be more than the place where we live in the world as it is. It can be where we practise creating the world we want to live in.

About twenty years ago, I was standing at the stove at home, making dinner.

My younger son was sitting in his highchair by the kitchen table, and my older son was playing in the living room. It was an entirely ordinary afternoon in our lives. Nothing had happened. There was no visible danger.

And then, without warning, I was overcome by the absolute certainty that I was dying.

This was not a vague suspicion or a passing sense of unease. I knew I was dying. My body seemed to take over, and everything inside me said that something terrible was happening.

I called my mother and asked her to send an ambulance. I also asked her to send my father to my house immediately. The thought that seized me was that I did not want my sons to be left alone for a long time in the house with me lying dead on the kitchen floor.

A few minutes later, my father arrived.

But there was no ambulance.

My mother is a nurse, and she had understood what was happening long before I did. I was having a panic attack.

I still went to see a doctor. He took my experience seriously and arranged a range of tests to make sure that there was no physical illness behind it. I had a brain scan and an electrocardiogram, and possible medical explanations were carefully investigated.

The conclusion was that I was exceptionally healthy.

And yet I had experienced myself as dying.

Since that afternoon, there have been more panic attacks. That day gave me a task for the future: learning to live with an anxiety disorder.

And much of the time, I have managed it well.

I now know that a panic attack is not dangerous. I recognise the symptoms and know that they will pass. For many years, my main way of dealing with anxiety was to use reason against it. I tried to think my way out of panic.

My heart is beating rapidly, but that does not mean I am having a heart attack.

My breathing has changed, it’s hard to swallow, but I am not suffocating.

I feel as though I am in mortal danger, but I am not in mortal danger.

This approach worked to a point. Anxiety became more manageable and has not had an overwhelming effect on my life. But it certainly takes energy. I have worked, raised my children, travelled, studied, taken on responsibilities and done countless things despite it.

But the anxiety never disappeared completely.

Gradually, I began to wonder whether part of the reason was that I was still giving thought, and especially rational thought, too much authority.

I had treated anxiety as a misunderstanding between mind and body that needed correcting. But what if my body was not misunderstanding anything? What if it was sometimes warning me that what my mind tried to reason away was not good for me?

I was often in circumstances that were not good for me. The pressure was too great. There were too many tasks and the working days were often long. Family responsibilities waited at home. Later, mould was discovered in the building where I worked. I was tired but kept going. My body sent signals, while my mind always found reasons to continue.

I had responsibilities.

The work mattered, and I loved it (still do).

Other people depended on me.

It would all work out.

I just needed to be more organised, more hardworking, more disciplined or stronger…

Somehow, I began wondering whether this persistent anxiety, this tenacious companion, was a sign that my body had simply had enough of these arguments.

At some level I knew those circumstances were not good for me. And I knew that a human being cannot indefinitely reason her way past exhaustion, sensory strain and excessive demands. But still I kept going.

Then I began to wonder whether anxiety might be an invitation to use my attention differently: to enter into a friendly conversation with my body instead of an argument.

Perhaps I needed to recognise signs that my nervous system was under too much strain. That my body needed something it was not getting. Rest. Safety. Movement. Nourishment. Nature. Quiet. Connection. Predictability. Or simply fewer demands.

This is where my experience of anxiety meets the philosophy of HomeBeing.

HomeBeing begins with the understanding that we are not detached minds travelling through the world inside bodies. We are embodied beings in constant relationship with our surroundings. The body reads light, noise, temperature, smell, air quality, spatial pressure, clutter, speed and the possibilities for rest and movement. It responds to workload, relationships, responsibility and the demands that both society and we ourselves place upon us.

Much of this happens before we can put the experience into words or form it into a thought.

We can therefore tell ourselves that everything is fine while the body is shouting that it is not.

This does not mean that anxiety is always a direct or reliable description of reality. Nor does it mean that an anxiety disorder can be cured simply by changing the environment. Anxiety is complex, and people may need therapy, medication, support and professional care. I know I do.

But I began experimenting with how to meet my body, rather than always treating it as an intruder to be silenced.

I began to wonder what it was trying to tell me, and to listen for answers.

How do I feel in this space?

What happens in my body when I enter my workplace or my home?

Where am I able to let down my guard?

Where do I feel tense?

Which conditions keep my nervous system constantly alert?

What am I trying to endure through rational thought alone?

We live in a culture that rewards us for ignoring the body. We admire people who work despite exhaustion, continue despite pain and meet every obligation even when their nervous systems have reached their limits.

We learn to interpret the body’s signals as weakness, discomfort or an obstacle to effort, productivity and advancement.

But the body is not an accessory that the mind must drag through life.

It is part of how we perceive, think and learn.

We do not always understand its language. It does not speak in fully formed sentences. It speaks through tension, exhaustion, heartbeat, restlessness, pain, breathlessness and the urge to escape.

We can misinterpret these messages. But we should not automatically ignore them.

HomeBeing emerged partly from the realisation that wellbeing does not arise solely in the mind: wellbeing is not a thought. It emerges through the interaction of body, mind, environment, other people and the conditions in which we live. We cannot simply think ourselves into or out of wellbeing.

Our surroundings, our home alone, cannot protect us from every pressure in life. But home can be a place where the body does not constantly have to perform or give way to the demands we place on ourselves. It can offer rest, movement, familiarity, beauty, play, nature and safety. A place where we can practise listening to the body instead of overpowering it with arguments.

I still use rational thought when anxiety appears. It helps me remember that I am not dying and that the panic will pass.

But now I also try to pay attention to my body and ask a different question.

Not only, “How can I think my way out of this?”

But also:

“What does my body know that I have not yet allowed myself to understand or accept?”

Designers have already become important allies in the struggle for sustainability. Sustainable materials, circular thinking, waste reduction, energy efficiency and reuse now shape many design disciplines. Designers are helping us imagine products, buildings and systems that use fewer resources and remain useful for longer.

But designers may not have been given the same opportunities to participate in the work for inclusion, equality and human rights. That is a serious omission, because designers shape far more than the appearance of the world. They shape our access to it.

They design the homes we live in, the streets and cities we move through, schools, workplaces, public spaces, shops, transport systems and digital services. They shape furniture, tools, signs, interfaces and visual information. Their decisions influence who can enter, understand, participate, rest, move safely and feel that they belong.

Too often, inclusion is treated as something to add at the end of the design process. But an environment designed from too narrow a perspective cannot become truly inclusive through a few final adjustments. Human diversity must be part of the project from the outset.

Please do not misunderstand me. I know designers follow the principles of universal design and make sincere efforts to create inclusive environments. But general guidance and sound design standards can never replace the understanding that comes from meeting people with diverse needs and abilities directly, listening to their experience and having meaningful conversations with them. Inclusion takes shape through relationships with those who will inhabit or use a space or design. Marginalised groups have limited opportunities for participation and visibility. That is a consequence of a social structure that creates marginalisation, rather than a fault of designers.

If designers are given the opportunity to work from the real needs of different people, I believe they’ll become better designers.

We are still waiting for governments and authorities to lead many of the changes needed for a more just world. Perhaps we should also invest much more energy and effort in design, design education and sustained conversation with designers. Designers can make possibilities visible before policy has caught up. Design is a powerful tool for change.

This is not about asking designers to solve political problems. It is about recognising that politics becomes concrete through doors, streets, forms, furniture, information systems and digital interfaces. Values are built into the things we use.

When lived experience is included at the beginning, accessibility no longer appears as a limitation on creativity. It becomes a source of knowledge and a catalyst for better ideas.

Perhaps designers are the most important allies of those working for human rights and equality. Perhaps what matters most is deepening our conversation with them about the world we dream of, and what its design might look like.

Designers are already allies in one of the great transformations of our time. It is time to invite them just as fully into the work for equality, inclusion and human rights.

The HomeBeing website is an experiment in creating a place to gather. It is a shared space where we can come together to think, wonder and question everything, with ideas still taking shape and answers still open.

This is a place for ideas in motion. We can test them, play with them and let them encounter other ideas.

We need somewhere it is all right not to know, and to ask anyway. Somewhere a question does not immediately have to be clever or useful, and doubt, even lack of knowledge, can be an opening.

HomeBeing can be a space to learn from one another, broaden our understanding and discover how different something familiar can look from another perspective.

HomeBeing can also be a place for everyday philosophy. We do not need to wait for a classroom or an academic book to ask what a good life is, how we belong to the living world, what our surroundings demand of us or what we need from them.

A gathering place matters. Gathering means more than being an audience. People bring their own experiences, questions and possible answers, contributing to the exploration as well as finding ideas here.

The aim is to make room for slow thought, unfinished ideas and fresh perspectives that can change our understanding of the familiar. It is not to keep people scrolling or turn their attention into a commodity.

Guest writers can broaden the conversation further. Home, the body and sustainability mean different things across different bodies, cultures, ages and circumstances. No single author can encompass all that diversity.

A living community of thought can begin very simply: one person offers a thought, another sees a connection and adds to it, and the frame stretches a little.

HomeBeing is an invitation to ask questions, be curious, experiment and explore together.

Páll Skúlason, my teacher and later Rector of the University of Iceland, once said that philosophy begins in wonder before the world: wonder that there is something rather than nothing. This had a profound effect on me.

Páll seemed to have made this thought part of his being. He had extraordinary warmth and presence. His interest in people and the world was sincere, and he told me that he thought about philosophy and his place in the world every single day.

Once he told me about trying to start a philosophical conversation with his family at a Christmas gathering. He laughed at their limited interest, though he was still a little surprised by it. This was one of the wonderful things about Páll. For him, philosophical thought belonged everywhere, including Christmas gatherings.

Páll also wrote about the relationship between humans and nature. He understood that we are part of the world we strive to understand.

Perhaps the most important thing Páll taught me was that remaining interested in thinking and understanding depends on never losing our capacity for wonder. Wonder gives us the inspiration to question what seems self-evident and see the world anew.

Páll's warmth was part of the lesson. Through who he was, I learned that thought can be a form of attention directed towards people and the world. No academic method can teach that.

Wonder gives this attention energy. It makes philosophy a way of connecting with the world, beyond an academic exercise.

When we nurture our capacity for wonder, we also reject the idea that there is nothing remarkable left to discover in the world.

During a course in my master's degree in philosophy, I was assigned a text by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. I had to read about a theory called deconstruction and present it to my fellow students. There was just one problem: I found the text so complex and inaccessible that I understood almost nothing. And if I could not understand it myself, I certainly could not explain it to anyone else.

Then I came across a book in my library called The Ethics of Deconstruction. As I began reading, something clicked. I understood Derrida, but not through reasoning alone. It is difficult to put into words: somehow, I understood with my being rather than my thoughts.

Deconstruction is more about being in a certain way than understanding a philosophical argument. To grasp it, we need to experience ourselves in the world in a certain way.

We need to think of ourselves in relationship: with language, culture, history, earlier thoughts, inherited assumptions and everything that has shaped our understanding and existence up to that moment. We understand with our whole existence, rather than as detached minds receiving meaning from outside.

What made this moment extraordinary was that the experience itself was what Derrida's theory was about. Meaning does not arise in isolation and must, to some extent, vary with the person interpreting it. It emerges in time and space, through history, context and relationships that may already exist before we begin to think.

I gave the presentation and managed to explain the material to my fellow students. I received an excellent grade. But that was not the main thing.

What mattered was that this insight changed me permanently. It changed how I understand myself and the world. It was a complete shift.

Until then, I had assumed that meaning and understanding were things the mind acquired by mastering an argument: something universal that everyone would understand in the same way if they thought hard enough. I now think, no, I know, that this is mistaken. This experience showed me that sometimes the most important understanding lies in understanding our relationship with the world.

The moment was academic, bodily and personal at once. That is why it stays with me. I had learned something about Derrida and encountered myself in a new way.

Perhaps one of the first ideas that led to HomeBeing appeared in that moment, when I understood that I never think alone, and never have.

When Star Trek first aired in 1966, much of the technology it showed was pure science fiction. Mobile communicators, talking computers, video calls, automatic doors and devices that translated between languages belonged to an imagined future.

Sixty years later, much of this technology is ordinary. We carry communication devices in our pockets, talk to computers, meet on screens and use tools that translate between languages in seconds.

Where was the magic? The series showed us a possible world that engineers, designers, scientists and entrepreneurs could see, discuss and consider.

Before we can begin making the impossible possible, the impossible must become thinkable. Imagination gives form to what does not yet exist and can turn an empty space into a goal.

This is why imagination is perhaps the most important force driving and changing reality. Every theory, structure, tool and way of life was imagined before it became real.

If we cannot imagine that society, home or our relationships with nature, our surroundings and other people could be different, we remain trapped within the assumptions of the present.

Science fiction often acts as a laboratory of possibilities. It gives ideas form, language and an image long before the necessary knowledge or engineering exists.

Once that image enters a culture as a possibility, people from different fields can work together to make it real. What began in a writer's imagination can become a hypothesis for scientists, designers and entrepreneurs: could this actually be done?

The same principle applies elsewhere. We also need images of inclusive communities, regenerative economies, caring cities, lives and homes. These can awaken our imagination and help us envisage alternatives to a reality that does not adequately serve life.

Imagination is a superpower because, without it, change never becomes a possibility. Imagining alone cannot change the world, but it makes a different world thinkable.

The first step towards another world may be as simple, and as difficult, as awakening the imagination.

When we discuss sustainability and climate change, we often produce a long list of things to give up to save the world: less consumption, fewer journeys, less economic growth, less burning of fossil fuels. The list can start to sound like a thoroughly dull future defined by bans, restrictions, loss and sacrifice.

But what if sustainability is a joyful project? What if the transformations ahead hold opportunities to enrich our lives, strengthen communities and recover abilities that today's speed and consumer culture have pushed aside?

A slower pace could give us more attention. Less consumption could mean more creativity, cooperation and resourcefulness. Repairing and sharing could help bring skills, stories and relationships back into everyday life.

Homes and neighbourhoods designed around care could offer more connection, safety and wellbeing. Cities with fewer cars could give children more freedom, adults more movement, and everyone cleaner air and quieter streets.

Some of these changes could slow conventional economic growth; I would not claim otherwise. But would that necessarily be entirely bad? Why are we so preoccupied with growth, and so convinced that it measures prosperity and a good life? A society can score highly on production while many of us are exhausted, lonely and disconnected from the living systems that sustain us. Experience should have taught us that.

These thoughts are not an attempt to minimise the task ahead. I know it is complex and multifaceted. Major transformations usually are. But I allow myself to wonder what good, and what better possibilities, we could make of these changes.

Conventional ideas often measure prosperity by how quickly money, goods and resources move through the economy. HomeBeing asks whether life requires a different measure. A better one.

What if prosperity were measured in room to move, relationships and access to nature, clean air, healthy ecosystems, care for life and opportunities to participate in community?

Transformation can involve loss and difficulty while opening new possibilities. Joy does not diminish the seriousness of the task. It can give us strength and inspiration in difficult times.

Sustainability also concerns everything we might regain: time, attention, creativity, health, community and a living relationship with the world we belong to.

I think wonder is a precious way to restore our connection with the world and life itself. It has the power to make the familiar extraordinary.

That shift matters. When our understanding widens, life itself becomes visible again: incredibly complex, improbable and precious.

Our bodies are made of the life we observe. We breathe because plants breathe with us. We came into being through chains of relationships that began long before us and will continue after us. If that does not give us reason to marvel at the ingenuity of the world, I do not know what would.

When we wonder, we often feel part of something important and precious. For a moment, we see the world afresh and understand it differently. Wonder can awaken curiosity, humility and care.

That is why wonder is one of the foundations of HomeBeing. It reconnects home with the body, the body with nature and everyday life with the magnificent living world.

Comfort zones are useful, but they can also narrow perception. When experience continually confirms what we think we already know, the magnificence of the world and of life recedes into the background.

Wonder arises when that frame opens. Scale, beauty, diversity or an unexpected connection lifts us out of habit and calls us to pay attention again, to see something we had overlooked.

For a moment, the self becomes smaller and somehow larger at the same time, without losing its worth. In these precious moments, we experience ourselves as participants in, and part of, something larger than our own limited lives.

This magic is a firm foundation for care. Connection becomes lived experience, as well as an idea or an ethical position.

Choosing second-hand is more than an environmentally friendly or economical way to furnish a home or save money. It is a simple but powerful act of resistance against values that tell us new is always better, that an identity can be bought, that useful things lose value when fashions change and that a good life is a product for sale.

Those values no longer serve us. They encourage waste and a constant feeling that what we own is not good enough. They turn home into a consumption project that never becomes the sanctuary we need.

Used objects carry history, character and possibilities. A worn table, a lamp from a grandmother or a chair from a charity shop bears traces of another life, alongside the promise of presence and usefulness in the years ahead.

Choosing second-hand also asks us to use our imagination and encourages creativity. We notice possibilities instead of following a ready-made advertisement. We can repair, paint, combine and find new roles for things.

To my mind, this makes a home more personal than one bought new from an IKEA catalogue. We let home grow gradually around our actual lives, needs and dreams, rather than buying a ready-made identity.

Choosing second-hand is therefore closely connected to HomeBeing. It values continuity over novelty, resourcefulness over perfection and relationships over appearances.

The resistance in buying used things is quiet because it happens through everyday decisions. No manifesto is needed when we decide that an object need not lose its usefulness or value simply because it is old, imperfect or no longer fashionable.

When enough people choose second-hand, the foundations of a system built on an endless cycle of production, purchasing and disposal begin to shift. It keeps what already exists in use and reminds us that attention and care create value, too.

There is freedom in refusing the glossy image sold by advertising. It leaves more room for ourselves: for memories, humour and signs of how we change as life unfolds.

Choosing second-hand is both a practical and a philosophical decision. It invites us to see abundance where consumer culture sees scarcity and rubbish.

In public discussion, wellbeing is often presented as a personal project.

We are told to sleep enough, eat well, exercise, meditate, reduce stress and develop better habits. Wellbeing is supposed to follow. I know all of this matters, but I am not sure it is enough on its own to bring wellbeing about.

But this approach can also contain a very narrow idea of the human being: that wellbeing is created primarily within the individual and that each person is responsible for producing it.

When we do not feel well, we therefore tend to ask what is wrong with us and what we need to do differently.

But what happens if we broaden the perspective and examine the environment too?

HomeBeing begins with the idea that our wellbeing is not created within us alone. It is continuously shaped through our relationship with the environment.

The body is always reading the conditions around it. Light, sound, temperature, colour, smell, texture, space, clutter, possibilities for movement, signs of safety and the presence of other living beings are important examples.

Much of this perception happens without our conscious awareness. Yet it can influence the nervous system, energy, concentration, sleep, mood and our capacity to rest, move, create and connect with others.

A space can help the body settle or keep it in a state of alert.

It can invite movement or make movement less likely. It can support connection or reinforce isolation. It can help us concentrate or continually demand our attention.

The environment is more than a backdrop for someone creating wellbeing through diet, habits and sleep. It participates in creating it.

This is where wellbeing and HomeBeing meet.

HomeBeing does not ask only: What can I do to feel better?

It also asks: What is the environment doing? What messages is it sending to the body? What habits does it make easier? What activities does it invite? Which needs does it support, and which needs are being overlooked?

This does not mean that there is one perfect home that guarantees wellbeing. People are different. Bodies are different. Nervous systems are different, and our needs change from one day to another.

An environment that brings calm to one person may be too quiet for another. A space that creates joy for one person may cause sensory overload for someone else. Some of us need shelter and predictability. Others need colour, stimulation, movement and change.

The aim is therefore not to discover one correct recipe for wellbeing.

The aim is to become more attentive to the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings and to notice what supports life as we actually live it, or want to live it.

Wellbeing is not a permanent state that we achieve once and should then be able to maintain. It arises and changes through relationships between body, mind, other people, daily habits, nature, society and place.

When we understand wellbeing in this way, it stops being an entirely individual project.

It also becomes a design project, a social project and a question about the conditions we create for one another.

Perhaps the heart of the matter is simply this:

We do not merely live in our environments.

We are continually becoming in relationship with them.

What is the difference between advocating for inclusion, rights and opportunities to participate in society, on the one hand, and the philosophy of HomeBeing on the other?

At their core, perhaps there is no difference.

Perhaps these are two ways of saying the same thing: our surroundings need to accommodate people’s diverse needs. We should all be able to belong to our communities and participate in them, regardless of the characteristics or circumstances that become grounds for marginalisation and exclusion.

We often speak about exclusion as though the problem resides within the individual. A person does not fit in because of disability, age, origin, sexual orientation, neurodivergence or some other characteristic.

But what happens if we examine the environment instead?

The buildings, systems, customs and unwritten rules of society all rest on assumptions about what people are like. Who can climb stairs. Who can read complex information. Who can communicate in a particular way. Who can tolerate noise, speed and sensory stimulation. Who has the time, energy, money and support required to participate.

When these assumptions are too narrow, human diversity becomes a “problem”. But diversity is not the problem. The problem is an environment designed with only some of us in mind.

This is where inclusion and HomeBeing meet.

HomeBeing begins with the understanding that the environment is not a neutral stage set. It participates in shaping our lives, wellbeing, opportunities, possibilities and behaviour. A space can welcome us or push us away. A system can enable participation or make it almost impossible. A society can expect human diversity or demand that people adapt themselves to narrow norms.

Inclusion requires more than allowing more people into society as it currently exists. It asks us to consider whether society itself needs to change, and how.

We commonly associate sustainability with nature. We talk about living within the limits of the Earth, protecting ecosystems and cultivating a different relationship with the living world. That is an essential part of sustainability.

But sustainability also has a social foundation.

A society cannot be considered sustainable if it excludes some of the people who belong to it. Social sustainability includes rights, security, inclusion and genuine opportunities to participate. It requires us to create environments, institutions and social systems that recognise human diversity.

Living in harmony with nature and building a society where everyone belongs are connected tasks. Both ask us to recognise relationships, interdependence and the diversity of life.

Perhaps the heart of it is this: our task is to change society so that it makes room for all of us, rather than making everyone fit into it.