MEMO: We are living
As this world marches closer and closer to the threshold between its very possible demise and its potential renewal, we have to keep living.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we’re living at the end of the world as we know it.
Ok, Cherise, … and?
And I want to focus on the beginning clause of that statement. We’re living. We are navigating our personal lives. Budgeting in a time of rapid inflation. Dealing with the ups and downs of each day in the mundane. Negotiating relationship dynamics, family dynamics, work life, school life, career goals and individual aspirations, friendships, deaths, births. We are living. In each present moment, whether we’re present in the moment or not, we are living. And we are, as all humans who ever existed, those who had the privilege of existing beyond collective crisis and those who had the misfortune of surviving in the midst of collective crisis, we still have to show up each day for the parts of our lives that make us smile and the parts that make us want to curl up in a ball and cry. As this world marches closer and closer to the threshold between its very possible demise and its potential renewal, we have to keep living. That’s what makes it difficult, that’s what, at times, makes it all seem so impossible. It’s one thing to have deal with the mental, emotional and spiritual strain of mass death in the collective. It’s another to have to do so while, also being called to move through the mental, emotional and spiritual stressors of our own lives, of our work, of our families, of our relationships. It’s one thing to commit to moving through collective crisis and moving through it in the direction of collective liberation. It’s another thing to have to make and sustain that commitment while having to show up for and move through the ins and outs, highs and lows of your own personal crises and trying to move through them with grace, compassion, love and care for yourself and for the others impacted and involved.
Like all of us, personal crisis tears through my life from time to time. I deal with certain frustrations around my professional life, certain impasses in my personal relationships, certain difficulties as a parent, certain hardships in my individual and intergeneration healing journeys. And I deal with these certain grievances, while also have to deal with the massive cloud of uncertainty lingering above our collective woes. That shit gets hard. There were times when I couldn’t stand up to the pressures our my own personal problems mounting at the same time as those of our shared collective challenges. Feeling an inescapable lack of control in the realm of my personal life and, at the same time, in the collective sphere was crushing. Felt like the easiest and most practical thing to do was to give up on both struggles, to lay in my bed under a blanket of culminating depressions and to stay there until I physically could not any longer. I get that. Sometimes it feels like that, and sometimes we need moments of that, too. But more recently, as the scales of my life have once again tipped in the favor of crisis and as the needle of the collective pendulum as inched closer to the edge of chaos, I’ve realized the importance of my first statement. We are living at the the end of the world as we know it. And it’s scary, and depressing, and hopeful and uncertain all at once. But what’s most important to remember is we are living. Even as we find some peace in the inevitably of us lacking control in both our personal and collective issues, we must always hold firm to the fact that we are living. Even if and certainly when we’re not living the most ideal versions of our lives, we are still living. And to be living means that, even if and certainly when we don’t have control, we still have agency and we still have power in both realms of our existences. We can’t change any situation overnight, or in the course of a few days or weeks, even the most the most powerful conjurers will tell you that. We can’t take control most of the time and maybe that’s not what we’re after in this life at all. But we can always claim our agency and we can also seize our power to keep showing up event if and certainly when it’s most difficult, and do that always with as much grace, compassion, love and care as we can muster for ourselves and for the others impacted and involved. And that’s what makes even the impossible seem manageable.
MEDICINE: an affirmation for trying times
“I am living. And as long as I’m living and long after I’m not, I am not only witness to the divine, I am a piece of it. I am living. And as long as I’m living and long after I’m not, I commit to show up for myself and for others with as much grace, compassion, love and care as I can. I am living. And as long as I’m living and long after I’m not, I still have agency and power, even when I lack control. I am living. And as long as I’m living and long after I’m not, I have the will and ability to make change happen.”