“Good morning, you won the lottery.” This is what my wife and I jokingly say to each other every morning. It’s an acknowledgment of gratitude, of the unbelievable unlikeliness of being here, now, against astronomical odds.
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Humans are social beings. We need to be in the presence of others. We need community and we need to connect. Being together, physically, allows us to communicate in ways beyond the confines of the computer screen. There have been studies that indicate that somewhere between 70 to 93% of all communication is nonverbal. We notice everything: how physically close someone is to you while they speak; microexpressions (your words may be saying one thing but your face could be saying something else); posture; vocal tone. I’m speculating but I would assume how someone smells affects us as well – the unconscious mind may pick up the scent of stress. We are visual and tactile creatures and ultimately animals so we notice what is unsaid as much as what is stated.
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This is my last essay of 2020. A tumultuous and trying year, to say the least. We all know the issues. But the upside is that this year has allowed me to consider and reflect on what is truly important to me.
Yesterday, December 21st, was the winter solstice: the day with the longest night. Since prehistory, it has also been considered the symbolic death and rebirth of the sun. In addition, yesterday was the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
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Enter change. Things happen and we classify them as good or bad. But the things often don’t have much of a conscience to them. An earthquake. A flood. A fire. These things happen and we don’t have control. I can prepare for an unforeseen potential issue by doing what I can, for example, to thin the brush around my house, as I live in a fire-prone part of the country, but once I’ve done what I can, I don’t worry about it much more.
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Humans need community and it is often expressed through a form of tribalism which can be, and often is, expressed by conformity. We behave and dress to fit in. And the clear downside of this uniformity is that it can inadvertently diminish your true self.
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These are not normal times, we know this. Global pandemic. The country divided. Civil unrest. Working from home. However, humanity has endured plagues and social upheaval in the past. Our sense of scale, and what we consider “normal,” is often limited to what we’ve gone through in the duration of our lives. But this planet has dealt with worse than us.
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This seemingly never-ending pandemic and the political state of the nation, along with dealing with the balance of work and life has me, like pretty much everyone else I know, thinking about how to conduct oneself in these turbulent times.
For me, it seems to come down to two simple issues: courage and kindness.
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After a long day of Zoom and work, I spend my evenings painting large canvases as a practice that centers me while also being able to throw me completely into moments of uncertainty and anxiety. There’s no “command-Z” for analog work –– if you screw up, you either have to incorporate it into the work or you start over.
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There is every reason in the world not to do something creative and for yourself: you have to do the day job, you have to make money, you have to take care of the kids, you have to spend time with your spouse. All good and worthwhile things. And there will be more reasons not to allow yourself time to create.
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Let me tell you a secret: I’m terrible at taking my own advice. I’m usually in motion and rarely slow down. As time goes by, I feel an urgency to get things done. This has especially been aggravated by the times we are in. The way I’ve reacted to the on-going pandemic (and this week’s news that there’s already a second spike), the protests, the political divide in our country, and the early rise of fires in California, is to instinctively work harder on everything from my day job to my personal projects. Everything feels like a giant memento mori, reminding me that everything can, and often does, change in a moment.
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I’m writing this essay while feeling off. I’m not sure what it is – I woke up bone tired. I slept seven hours but feel like I’ve been up all night. Along with so many others (“Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?” – NY Times), I’ve been having intense, vivid dreams. Aside from not working out as I used to pre-COVID 19, I’m doing all the right things: meditating, creatively writing, drawing, painting, doing podcasts, eating healthy, and while focusing my worktime efforts on my day job, I take breaks to get outside and get some vitamin D.
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Our focus is fragmented. Our naked attention is destroyed by bite-sized piranhas of dopamine-producing social media and cortisol inducing news alerts. When we relax, we rarely just sit and do nothing (or meditate). We are looking for another distraction. Usually, that means a TV show or movie. But we can get our story fix through another medium, one in which our focus is sharpened: reading books.
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So here’s my advice: Whatever you choose to do, do it without concern for how it compares or will be received by the unseen masses. You know deep inside what is Quality for you. You know if something is any good or works. You have your own standards. And if the work isn’t up to your standards, don’t fret. Just keep going. Do another painting, another chapter, another song. No one has to read your first draft but you.
Think and plan. But then true learning comes from the doing. The messy process of lurching towards truth.
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We can’t control how we are born: our gender, our race, the country of our birth. However, we are highly influenced by societal and family influences as we grow up. Our creation myths are provided to us – this is your religion, this is your nationality, this is your sexuality, this is how we think about things because, well, it’s “always been that way.” Any supposed aberration from the established rules is considered a threat, which is why homophobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny tend to flourish in closed environments. Different = bad. It’s probably a biological survival leftover from our ancestors, wherein conformity to the tribe and its needs superseded the needs of the individual. A nonconformist could, in fact, be a threat to the health of the group. Any kind of questioning of the status quo was dangerous. Rebels were dangerous.
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