What we are to do about "the world today."
I don't attend protests, engage in social media rants, or, in recent years, spend much time constructing logical arguments against those whose momentum strongly opposes mine.
Maybe this will change. But through my current lens I notice that what often results from passionate opposition, especially (but not exclusively) if it's of the disrespectful variety, is an acceleration of momentum on both sides, whether a winner is ever declared or not. When two speeding cars—no matter from what noble persuasion—hurtle toward each other, each with a wish to battle back the other (the “evil”, the “wrong-thinking”, the “-ism”), the likelihood one of the drivers hears the other's "logical argument" over the din and clatter of engines, let alone invites it in to stew in the still inner sanctum where minds actually change, is slim.
Still, I'm an idealist. I want good things for the world. I know what sadness, frustration, and disconnection feel like in my body, and I also know the sublimity of peace, humility, learning, opportunity, and cooperation. I want to bring about more of the sublime, in the widest-reaching way my single life can muster.
But the situations I consider problems exist for a reason. There are people who are heavily invested in things continuing as is, for reasons that make perfect sense to them. Their job, as they see it, is to protect the established pattern.
When I was little and exposed to cartoons, I thought there existed objectively evil people who in fact believe they are evil, and who awake each day to rub their hands together and scrunch their snivelly noses, perhaps at an unflattering photo of me nailed up with a dart above their bathroom sink. But those are just cartoons, and believing in such caricatures is no good for progress. It leads us to believe there is an objective truth, with some on the side of good and some on the wrong side. If we buy into this sort of objectivity, we spin off into all kinds of “love wins”/”good will prevail”/righteousness stories. We excel at being judgmental, but we don’t know how to lay the groundwork for actual change.
“Good” and “bad” are subjective labels. They’re in the eye of the beholder, and regardless of what my midwestern mother seems to think, there’s no actual boss of the world, so no beholder actually gets more weight or value than another, except as doled out in my imagination, your imagination.
If we remove good/bad judgment, we come to normalize the reality that not everyone concludes the same thing when they put their attention on an issue. We come to expect this—not because some people are evil or dumb, but because we all have varying life experience that have led us to value things differently.
If I only have one 8 billionth of a say in world affairs, then, do I have a right to use my voice? Absolutely. But if I do this with respect for others’ frames of reference, I’m much more likely to be sowing and fertilizing seeds of change as I walk my path. I’m less likely to pollute the soil with corrosive agenda like defeating, winning, overpowering (do we really want to see positive change in the world, or are we more attached to winning the argument?).
At the end of the day, our preferences for existence are probably more similar than social media would have us believe, but not everyone believes it’s possible have what we want. Human hearts naturally prefer green trees over cement, health over sickness, thriving humans over desperate ones… but some people have come to believe in a certain scarcity, and are naturally apt to be afraid there won’t be enough good stuff to go around. Change cannot be asked of those who are not yet able to believe in the vision and whose job, therefore, is to protect the old. For positive change to occur for all, those in the fortunate position of believing in abundance must tune into their creativity, and build the change.
Something I love: the eloquent evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris explains in an elegant 90 seconds how the current "world crisis" is a natural stage of our human development, and what we are to do about it.
Diving Deep
I woke up knowing I had a couple of people waiting on me, to return emails. They had requested my time today for voiceover revisions. I'd seen the correspondence come in last night, but at 11pm or so, when I was in that mental state where I feel like I'm not on the clock--not accountable for retaining information that lives in the daytime.
But info with a daytime habitat can also live at night, under the right conditions, and it will do so in a sneakier, more subversive way.
I like to walk alone, first thing in the morning. It's a way of connecting with nature and my inner world, in an active way, before addressing the demands of others. I think I do this to remind myself, experientially and daily, where my life's mission control center is located. I follow most impulses; I touch leaves, crouch down to study how caterpillars move, stretch and dance, take off shoes and put them on, listen in big headphones (to signal my unavailability) to audiobooks, music, self-help videos, or to nothing. I zoom out to a big view of my life and circumstances. I find a hummingbird-like feeling and think about where I want to go next, spiritually, emotionally, physically, in my life. I tune in to what I want to. I enjoy. I channel, funnel, create, integrate, dream, and fully feel my freedom.
Today's walk was harder. It took longer to get into. I didn't do it first thing, so most of it felt less like a deep-dive and more like going thru the blocking of the motions. On my way home, after taking my usual route, I was just starting to zone in to a good process. I had the impulse to continue walking, to listen to this great audio performance of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, to rewind and re-listen in order to digest and contemplate the denser parts; to compare and contrast Pirsig's thoughts to my own. But I came home anyway, to return emails.
I learned something big today. It may seem obvious, but I suppose that's the way learning works: you learn something in your head, but don't really know it until that unsuspecting moment it sinks deeper for some reason, down to your gut. Then you know. Compromised as it was this morning, my walk gave me something: the realization that I'd allowed those emails to come in and live, at 11pm last night, like that sneaky head vampire in The Lost Boys.
Here's how it went down:
- (11pm) Checking of email
- Resistance of temptation to respond right away
- Good ego feeling ("ohhhhh I'm on to you, email - you think I'm going to jump on this... what if I were already asleep right now?")
- Self-deception ("I am totally not going to deal with this until tomorrow. It's like it never happened.")
- Feeling of intrusion
- Suppression of own impulses (I'd felt like editing some band video from a recent show--listening thoroughly for sections that particularly connected, creating new pieces of internet-friendly art from the initial capture - "But, you know, if I'm already gonna be at the computer working... I should probably return those emails so I stop thinking about them....but I don't want to get in the habit of responding to demands at 11pm. But maybe that'll get them out of my head? I'm tired ....Know what? i'm just gonna watch The Staircase on Netflix.")
- Low-grade malaise
- (2am) Sleep (after following The Staircase to its conclusion and eating half of a cauliflower pizza crust from Whole Foods)
- Unremembered dreams that might have included blood-spatter analysis from The Staircase vs. philosophical contemplation of artistic choices in video editing
- (Upon waking) Checking of email (usually relegated to after morning walk)
- Contemplation of whether to return last night's emails now or after walk
- (9:30) Returning of emails
- Walk that took a lot longer than usual to zone into
I'm not blaming the requestors. I'm happy to do what they're asking - I love voiceover. It is the most wonderful way I can think of to practice perspective-taking, empathy, and working with a studio microphone. But the ultimate payoff for my spirit is that I get to channel the practice of voiceover, and its resultant income, into the original work that I create as part of my own human growth and development. This is necessary for me to feel whole, alive, and engaged with my life. And that work takes a lot of deep, uninterrupted diving, and no vampires (even friendly ones) can be allowed to live in that workspace.
So, maybe this post could have been shortened to "Note to self: no more email checking at night." But then I would only know that in my head.