On Stepping Forward
Welcome to wherever we are
I have something to tell you. The most complex and complicated task I have discovered in half a lifetime of existence is to uncover who we truly are and then to find the courage to step forward and be—become—live moment to moment in that very way.
I’ve spent over two decades of my adult life engaged with stories—studying them, dissecting them, reconstructing, crafting, loving, and then shedding them. But what happens when the stories drop? What happens when we decide to speak—to let speak through us—whatever meaning matters and is asking to be heard? As I continue to wrestle with how to be visible without being performative, this is where I’m currently perched: a dizzying internal cliff overlooking a myriad of magnificent puzzles. Human ones, scientific ones, visual ones, poetic ones, machine ones, atomic ones; all of them stemming from the same source, yet each of them discrete and fascinating on its own.
Here are seven questions I am turning over:
What are we supposed to be doing? Other than surviving and possibly procreating, is there another orientation—toward care and beauty and creativity—that becomes an obvious destination?
Why do we experience so much friction? Despite the information we have and often because of it, why are we struggling so much at a time when our understanding and its accompanying practical applications can give us sufficient warmth, food, shelter, medicine, and ways of navigating our lives? Isn’t all the accumulated wisdom enough? Is there something else that is lacking?
How do we build amazing things in intentional ways, with momentum, skill, and accountability, without setting up the dynamics for burnout?
What does good enough even look like? How do we inch to the edges of our satiation without spilling over or falling prey to hedonic adaptation?
Are eudaemonia and creative joy the same thing? Is this personality dependent, and if so, can we nudge ourselves into the spaces where they overlap?
How can we learn to experience the depth and breadth of joy while fully accepting its finitude?
Things being what they are, now what?
That last one is probably the most pervasive question for this year. It is a little-big question, at once pragmatic (given what there is in the fridge, what should we have for dinner?) and terrifyingly esoteric (given the accelerating rate by which reality distortion is reshaping our mental landscapes, what is there to hold on to?)
I am trying to hold all of these contradictions. To wrap my arms around them and not just contain them but embrace them, dance with them, envelop them and allow them to envelop me. It has gotten easier. Not easy per se, but gentle and welcome in a way that stretching becomes after the initial stiffness wears off. I suspect that is what the world is asking of us these days—to stretch farther than we thought possible, to contain more suffering without looking away and more love without grasping for it to stay.
So why am I telling you all of this? Mostly because I want to set the proverbial table and invite you over and then paint myself into a corner that pushes me to wrestle with these little big puzzles openly, here in this space, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. I’m sure we’re all thinking many things. We’re all tossing around ideas and struggling and also hoping that others feel and think as we do. But it is scary to say them out loud, particularly these days when the public square feels frothy and loud and baring sharp teeth.
But I remember finding the internet as a teen—almost thirty years ago—I remember skipping classes so I could use the computer in the library and shift through webrings of one vampire site after another, one Star Trek board after the next. I remember Entropy8 and The Bronze and then later Television Without Pitty, and feeling like inspiration was everywhere. These were my people. And yes, I am old.
We don’t get to go back, nor do we step into the same river twice, but I find myself longing for the kind of serendipity that thinking out loud (and being overheard) can afford. So, I am going to share some of the things I have been puzzling over during the past few years (How Do Humans Human?), and then I will puzzle over the things that are alive and kicking for me right now (How Do We Better Human With One Another?). And then, I have a feeling that in the process of tackling these little puzzles, we might just trip into some even bigger ones.
But first, I have a book I want to share with you…
(Stay tuned tomorrow ;)