Carving Out Some Calm

It's so strange how this year feels like it's going by so fast, but at the same time sooooo slowly. We'll all look back on 2020 as this "lost year", where the normal progression of our lives were halted because of the virus...or maybe we'll look back on 2019 as the last year things WERE normal. I get the feeling that we won't walk out of this the same way we walked in, but I have no idea what the world looks like outside of this chrysalis.

I've hit a kind of burnout with the deluge of catastrophe we've been dealing with. After watching a Netflix documentary called "The Social Dilemma," I finally pulled the trigger on deleting my Facebook profile (which I never used anyway) and Instagram account. I've taken a giant step back from Twitter, removing that app from my phone and checking it only sporadically when I'm at a computer. In their place I've been trying to get my news from...well, actual news sources, though the places I'd think to do (like The Washington Post or the New York Times) is so riddled with ads, subscription paywalls and other garbage that some days it feels like I'm trading one frustration for another.

Still, it's an overall net positive. I think bathing in the pessimistic outrage of social media has been actually legitimately terrible for me, and getting out has made me feel almost capable of handling what the media is throwing at me. If you're extremely on Twitter, you get roped into the controversy of the day -- if it's not something national or part of the broad ideological war then there's a tempest in a teapot in your own backyard to tide you over. It gets really disheartening to see the flare of "unfollow person x for opinion y" posts, or to see us grabbing our pitchforks to mob after any old person with a bad take. Once I took a step back it all felt like a giant distraction, just a way to make it feel like I had been doing something when in reality I'm just feeding an addiction to self-righteousness.

I'm not saying that people don't need to be checked on their behavior, or that people aren't crossing lines that need to be preserved. I am saying that we've lost all sense of perspective on this, and we need to have the ability to distinguish between what's a relatively minor or unimportant thing and what really does need our bodies and voices out in the streets to protest. Right now, if you're looking at social media, every single infraction is a symptom of the same rotten core, so you HAVE to go after everything. To do anything less would be tolerating the intolerable.

But we've ended up focusing so much on improper behavior that I worry we're losing our idea of what a functioning society looks like. How DO we interact with each other when we disagree? Are some differences -- even within our own groups -- OK to just let be? What is an actually effective way of reaching the people who don't think like us? The last national poll still has the current President at 40%, and we can't just throw up our hands and declare those people hopeless. Even though it genuinely feels like they are.

I see the Left becoming just as intractible, uncompromising, and judgemental as a lot of folks on the Right. And while there really is no comparison to the beliefs each side hold and where those beliefs ultimately lead, I had hoped the Left would be...less prone to using a better system of morality as cover for being kind of terrible people.

Ultimately it feels like the human race is doomed no matter what we do. Barring some miracle, we can't even get ourselves to agree on an objective reality and our trust in the institutions we've built to level that playing field has corroded to the point I'm not sure we could get it back. No matter who's in the White House next year, a good 40% of the country will believe them to be the Devil incarnate. And there's a whole rage machine invested in keeping us within that headspace. Unless we actually step back and change our behavior, nothing gets better.

But I don't know if there's any space for that line of thinking in the public discourse. By and large, I've taken myself out of it in favor of just doing what I can to make the world better. Smaller, quieter, more thoughtful interactions and a renewed focus on spiritual growth and personal consistency is where I've put my energy for the last month. It's still a work in progress, but I feel better about where I'm focusing.

Meditation has been a bigger part of my life than ever before, and I'm learning a lot about myself and how my expression of Zen tends to manifest. I think a lot of fear and shame has been a part of my perspective for so long that I've let it color everything I do. It's impossible to enjoy things because I feel guilty for enjoying them, or I'm worried about what someone else will think it I'm honest about the way I feel or what I'm into. I've been doing my best to let that shit go, but when you've had a death grip on it for as long as I have it's not easy.

One of the most difficult things recently has been learning to let go of our dear rabbit Puckles. He's had two pretty big health scares over the last two months, with a persistent infection that's been making him sneeze relentlessly. Usually, he'll go downhill really fast and that leads to a day or so of panic hoping he'll bounce back if we hand-feed him and do a few other things. It's only worked so much.

He is extremely old, likely around 10 or 11, so we know that his remaining time with us is short. We spent a lot of time grieving during the last big scare, but another one that started this Thursday taught me I'm not as prepared as I thought I was. I'll really miss him, but my biggest concern right now is that he not suffer. It breaks my heart to think he's spending so much time in pain, feeling miserable, even though we're doing all we can.

We'll just have to keep doing our best here, like always. That's all any of us can do.