just a quickie
I am leaving for Costa Rica this Saturday for a week long group trip with some fellow female travelers roughly my age1 and my darling mother who I also invited along. Upon arriving, I shall commence my beachy, jungle stay by promptly turning off my phone and heading straight to the shoreline where I will read poetry to the ocean. I’m going to give my gigantic grief and praise over to that big salty, watery mouth. Nom nom nom, won’t you swallow me into something delicious?
My goals for this trip are simple: take 0 pics, pretend as if instagram doesn’t exist, relax, unplug, be immersed in a new place.
I’m currently working on a few pieces filled to the brim with my little musings. These will be put on hold while away since I am not taking my laptop. I am excited to share them when they’re ready, and who knows when that will be? And so dear reader, in the meantime, I’m curious how you feel about what is happening in the world?
Not your opinions about what is happening, but how you feel about the real people—men, women, and children—being blown up and starved in Palestine? The real people of Sudan still facing displacement and famine and civil war? The deportations in the USA? The fact that our soil which grows our food is in dangerously poor health? That our glorious oceans are filthy with our waste? That the animal farming industry is nothing shy of hell and one that we designed? Or how the fascists are here—oh my!—meanwhile some say they always, already were?
Admittedly, sometimes a whole day or two can go by where I don’t think much or at length about any of it. My little world has plenty of distractions and also a bounty of goodness that can keep me preoccupied with little worry. I cannot say for sure if this is a blessing or a fault, but tonight as my wildly inspiring friend C and I caught up on the phone, as we gushed about all the things going our way, all the opportunities and meaning and good sex and what have you, C brought up the people of Palestine. The tone shifted. I grew a tad quiet, my eyes scanned the room looking for something in the shape of the right thing to say. “Sorry to bring down the mood.” she said. “Don’t be sorry.” I said. And I meant it. No one should be sorry for merely making mention of such atrocity, much less doing anything they can to stop it. All I could think to say was, “What should we do?”
“I don’t know.” she confessed. “At the very least keep speaking out against it.” I agreed and had no better ideas. But thanks to her mention of the Palestinian people, I’m going to make this a central question from now on. I want to begin and end my days with, “What is mine to do?”—but not for my life alone or even at all, rather as a life belonging to a collective of diverse lives. I’ve mentioned making this a practice before; my how swiftly our best intentions can be lost in the busyness of our lives. But now I remember the question and the dangling bait of devotion. I want to wear this question like a shroud, even if it is heavy like a brick on my head or trips me at my feet from being too long. Who knows, maybe one day we get used to it and barely notice it’s there.
I do not believe there is a simple, single sentence answer to anything and much less everything. And the answer to the question is not what I think we should seek in asking it. I’m not so convinced the answers to our problems can even be spoken. And I certainly don’t suspect there is only one answer or a purely right or wrong one. Our problems are vast and our head first solutions tend to make more of them. I don’t know exactly what to do, but somehow I do know what not to do or to do less.
Please know, I am not mentioning any of this to invoke shame or pity. I’m not interested in belittling or condemning you or me or anyone honestly. I don’t find it helpful to rub our noses in the worldly news like a dog who just peed on the carpet. I just think it’s wise to check in, to feel how we’re really feeling—especially if there is intensity—and to simply explore it. Not by dissection but with breath and nature and loved ones. Sure we can look at our phones all day long bearing witness to one tiny horror after the other, sandwiched between which shoes to buy and what outfit that person is wearing. Instagram is the digital version of Samsara itself, I swear. But when our friend takes the time to make mention of something horrible and real going on, it hits different. It feels genuine and connective. I’m lucky I have these friends.
So I am going to be a good friend and ask that we feel and be humble in the presence of scary and wrong acts.
That we hold questions without needing answers (right away).
To carry the burdensome questions together.
I dare us to stop abstracting and over-simplifying and making excuses and shrugging our shoulders.
And I hope if we are ever in a position such as those facing the unimaginable, there are people out there thinking of us wondering what is theirs to do in the face of it all.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, I shall be taking my grief and the weight of this world on my trip with me. This little vacation is in no way an escape, indeed it’s quite the opposite—a time to tune in to another rhythm.
Take good care of each other. Muah.