Taking A Moment
I forced myself to take ten minutes to think about difficult things, this morning.
On a typical day, I set aside twenty minutes for quiet, undistracted thinking. I let my mind wander and do nothing at all, usually staring at a wall or closing my eyes, occasionally turning on some kind of white noise or natural soundscape, but generally just working with whatever’s already in the aural environment.
The point of this habit, generally, is to allow my mind to untangle itself, to give underlying worries, concerns, ideas, and possibilities a chance to come to the surface; to acknowledge and brush aside the superficial stuff to make room for whatever else might be knocking around in there, obscured by static.
Today, though, I wanted to take this extra moment because I realized I’d been somewhat consciously, somewhat unconsciously, avoiding thinking about loss.
We’ve lost so much.
All of us.
Whether or not we’ve been directly, overtly impacted by this pandemic, by its many cascading consequences, or the geopolitical and economic circumstances that have allowed it to play out the way it has—we’ve still been effected.
As a species, we’ve been brutalized and we’ve been putting on a brave face and slogging through the pain, but it’s there and has been there for a long time now.
This isn’t pleasant to acknowledge, and that’s partly because it’s not over: the shared experience of pain and worry and loss continues, and will likely continue for quite a while.
I’ve written before about milestones, and how we needn’t be beholden to them—needn’t treat them with any specific meaning or reverence—but that we can utilize them if we choose, for whatever purpose we choose, because they sometimes serve as environmental landmarks that make reassessment and recalibration a little easier; they can provide us with a toehold for that kind of work.
The perspective-shift derived from flipping to a new page on the calendar, the revisitation of a familiar holiday within a new context, or the changing of the governmental guard needn’t mean anything to us. But all such moments can be catalysts for whatever meaningful motions, whatever adjustments, whatever mourning or celebratory acknowledgements we need to make.
Today I needed to mourn.
It felt like an important, absent component of the larger experience I’ve been having.
Consciously acknowledging the full, complex reality of our lived and empathized experiences can be energetically draining and emotionally expensive.
But allowing ourselves to acknowledge the uncomfortable roundness of a moment, whenever and however we choose to do so, tends to be worth the psychological sticker price.
—
If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
Projects
Brain Lenses: Multitasking & Hype
Let’s Know Things: Digital Services Act
Yesterday’s Newsletter: Madrid Storm, Union Strikes, 200 Million Subscribers
Curiosity Weekly: January 19, 2021
Other: I’m in the process (and have been for several months) of wrangling my many projects into a more unified whole; a process that’ll likely result in few practical changes in the immediate future, but which will allow me to more easily manage some of the infrastructural components underpinning the work I do, and potentially offer some more cohesive delivery and support options, in the future.
That also means I’ve been able to futz around with a bunch of new publishing platforms, broadcast tools, and designs for those projects. Which is always interesting.
Anyone have any experience using the Ghost publishing platform? Or a non-Wordpress alternative of theirs?
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things to click:
Slow Sailing Selma(relaxing boat video)
The Flying Gold of Arabuko(award-winning short documentary)
Recipe Search(impressive search-by-ingredient recipe search engine)
Guess the Price(interesting online game)
Victoria Rose Richards Aerial Embroidery(artist’s Instagram account)
Building of a Medieval Bridge(timelapse simulation of 45-year building process)
30 Abandoned Towns(informative photo series)
Outro
It’s fair to say that I was a little distracted this morning.
I think that’ll be the case for a lot of people—in the US in particular, as we just went through a fairly dramatic (on many levels) political pivot with significant cultural undertones. But also worldwide, as this shift has massive geopolitical ramifications, and takes place within the context of a far larger, very dispersed but direct collection of ongoing flux-inducing, cortisol-stimulating events.
Worth keeping in mind, today but also everyday, is that some people will be over the Moon with happiness right now, others will be experiencing incredibly sadness or disconcertion, and many people will be somewhere in between: nervous and anticipatory, uncertain and worried, perhaps a little optimistic but also pessimistic about both individual issues and global considerations.
In short: there’s a good bet that everyone you encounter today, and for the foreseeable future, will be going through something, whether consciously or not.
It’s prudent to keep that in mind as we deal with each other, lest we add to our collective emotional, psychological, and practical burdens.
That said, I’d love to hear what’s on your mind right now, if you wouldn’t mind sparing a moment to share with a stranger from the internet. I’m always keen to know more about the folks on the other end of this missive, but it’s particularly important to make connections with fellow human beings when things are especially weird.
If you would like to hello, tell me what’s up in your neck of the woods, and/or submit an awkward selfie, you can reach me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by responding to this email.
—
You can also communicate via the usual channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or tactical Wikipedia edit.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become a patron / Buy a book / Subscribe to Brain Lenses
You can also buy me a coffee if that’s simpler :)