“Bitterness is how we know we’ve been poisoned,” my friend Sydette is fond of saying. I would say that more and more of us are recognizing our bitterness. It feels a lot like what happens when you update your vision prescription: the world looks drastically different, in a disorienting way. Folks are really seeing some things for the first time. I don’t pretend to know the direction in which we are collectively headed. That’s because I’m not the one in charge. We have this kind of collective stewardship thing taking shape. I should clarify that the shape has been more defined for some: those of us who’ve consistently been shut out, shut down, and shut up. There are some of us for whom this feels more bitter than sweet, because we began by talking and teaching about this exact unsustainable system, and are now exhausted by yelling/ begging/ building ways to get through it. So many have been blissfully unaware.
Because the world has always been ending for somebody somewhere, whether we know it or not. The events we understand as everyday tragedies are the upheaval and ending of someone’s world. A family whose home burns down, someone laid off or forced to retire early, every extrajudicial murder. Our worlds end, they carry on, and end, and carry on. We continue to be propelled forward through, the atmosphere made of cycles of loss and growth. We are always in the process of adapting: we reshape ourselves and our surroundings constantly. Humans are pack animals with opposable thumbs and a lot of opportunity to do better; this probably is the last big warning. No matter what any of us thinks or feels, this unsustainable way of living has to go, lest we collectively be plunged into a greater depth of suffering than before. My hope — my expectation, if I’m keeping it a buck — is that enough of us will reorient ourselves. That this time of preparing our new worlds to bear better, nourishing fruit will not be in vain. I want more than anything for this massive collective loss to result in a change that keeps us from ever again living in ways that create pandemics. A tall order, though not an impossible one. How do we use this slowdown to get better at being in the world? I suspect we can. We first have to agree to slow down, and to eventually stop moving altogether. There is so much to learn in stillness; do not let capitalism (and the rest of kyriarchy) turn you into one who explains their slowing down or stillness as “still productive.” You don’t owe anyone an explanation. Your pace will never satisfy that beast. Now is as good a time as any to stop trying to outrun a bullet.
Instead, prepare the ground beneath you for your feet. Find yourself growing into that ground because you’ve readied it for your nourishment. No living being is designed for struggle or suffering, least of all you. All this talk of flattening curves, but that’s so abstract. My interpretation is that we must decrease all suffering, lest we never make it out of this conflagration. Hosea 4:6 comes to mind — my mom said it to me a few weeks ago, regarding peoples’ unwillingness to practice social distancing. You know that thing I said about the world always ending anyway? Well, my interpretation of “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” is way less fire and brimstone than most. Too many humans lack knowledge of compassion, empathy, and a basic understanding of how illness spreads. Why imagine that anyone would perish in eternal hellfire, when we are out here torturing the shit out of ourselves and each other in the name of capitalism? The working poor sympathizing with billionaires? That sounds a lot like hell is here, and has been for a while.
I bet you heaven can be here too, to an extent. We have to actively build that, though.
Until we do, let’s take the most exquisite care of ourselves and one another, okay? Okay.
☺️☺️☺️ thank you!
this is a word and a half. love it.