If you’re reading this, I’m impressed, honored even.
The past few days have been consumed by a flood of information, as the U.S. grapples with the new society it’s become. When the supreme court ruling came out Friday morning, my plans with an old friend shifted from catching up at my house to meeting at a crowded rally. In moments of upheaval, I need to expel the energy building in my body. We walked almost 7 miles in a boisterous crowd, at one point trekking down a long stretch of the highway with cars crawling behind us. I fell asleep with a clear head, believing that tomorrow I’d be ready for anything.
I woke up the next morning with an overwhelming ache running through my legs and feet. All the feelings I walked off came back through the day, sneaking up on me in the produce aisle, walking joey, folding laundry. Every few minutes I plucked my phone from the kitchen counter, scanning for something new to digest. I was far away, unwilling to come to this planet.
The last time I felt this unconscious in my body was in February at the beginning of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Back then I was in Barcelona, untethered from most familiarities. Overnight, my phone transformed from a home line to an international crisis info line. I felt helpless but part of me wondered if I could actually be helpful, since I was on the same continent as the war. I calculated travel to Germany, cost of car rental and how long it would take to join the convoy bringing people out of Ukraine.
It took a while for reality to hit, but gradually I recognized that throwing myself into unknown international territory with zero language skills would just make me a liability. I had to accept that I was only able to bear witness, like everyone else. Eventually I put my phone away, went off instagram and felt more at peace feeling lonely in Spain (my boyfriend was working on set, often 18 hours a day) than in a constant state of grasping shock.
Now I’m at home, facing a situation we all saw coming, but I’m still looking for answers. Right after the ruling, I was hit with an inexplicable desire to know more, but what I’m really looking for can’t be found. No redemption will be found in the current situation. Thumbing through new york times opinion pieces, wading through threads on twitter or checking one more person’s ig story won’t lead me to an alternate reality.
We are where we are on the cycle.
As soon as I recognized what I was looking for, I could accept I wasn’t going to find it at this time. If anything, these moments provide a magnifying glass around our attention tendencies. I put my phone away around 5pm on Saturday. Every so often my mind would flicker towards the hope of discovering something different if I could check twitter one more time. It became an exercise in observation, an audit on my distribution of attention.
Attention is our biggest asset, strongest tool and most potent magic.
Rather than feed the bottomless pit of despair, I’m turning towards tactile practices. The itch to do something usually means plummeting towards the endless internet parade. Instead, I’ve found more perspective on a walk while checking out the new blooms on the giant cactus on my block. More amusement in the three-foot pile of gravel that disappears slowly as the days go on. More peace in moving my body with intention. More joy in making cobbler with super ripe fruit and checking up on friends.
When faced with this sort of wide reaching grief, I’ve mistaken acceptance for complacency. But I’ve gotten it all wrong. Buddhist teachings point to pain as a part of being human. Everything in the natural world experiences pain.
As humans, we have a magical quality of skirting our pain while wishing for a different state. That creates suffering. The cycle of suffering begins when we cannot look directly at our pain.
We can lose ourselves in suffering for so long that it becomes our only familiar reality. Pain is unavoidable. But when we accept its presence as part of our existence, we stop fighting the tide. Buddha refers to this as the middle way. By embracing the wholeness of our life experience, we see pain and joy often appear in tandem.
It doesn’t mean we just sit and watch the world burn. The clarity of this acceptance allows us to find new ways forward. Nothing of lasting substance is borne from a state of frenzy.
With time, paths forged from the middle way have the power to change the course of our lives and those around us.
Thank you for lending your attention to this space, especially now.
xx
James
“We are where we are in the cycle” brought tears to my eyes.
Thank you for this wonderful email service, I am so grateful that I can learn from you.