On seeing people inside and out, technically conscious states, and listening deeply enough to be changed
May 11, 2021; May 12, 2021
Dear Eva,
It is 6:30 AM on a Tuesday, and after 30 minutes awake, my human reboot has finally stabilized and I am starting to feel fully conscious. I have written these past two weeks about my new practice of early morning wakeups to carve out a bit of thinking and writing time in a quiet and sleepy house. Last week I wrote about how part of this experiment is about recognizing and honoring my energy levels. That statement is true, but not exactly in a straightforward way. Like today, it often takes me a good long while in these early morning hours to get the brain truly up and running. When the alarm went off today, it was as if someone shook me from a deep sleep, startling me into a technically-conscious state where I am awake enough to stumble into my office and wrap myself in a blanket and sit with my eyes open. It is mysterious to me why or how this situation trumps (god I have a very hard time using this word now) trying to write in the evenings, but it does. There is something about even this fuzzy half-awake brain in its powering-on phase that feels more full and ready to think than the brain that has begun pondering its rest. But enough about my brain; let’s write!
I was delighted to read last week about your desire to regularly unsettle your existing ways of understanding the world. This comes as no surprise; it is indeed one of many reasons that I love you and love our friendship! But it was really lovely to see curiosity framed this way. Make me think about something I thought I “knew,” and break whatever solid ground I thought I was standing on, so I can rebuild atop something stronger and likely more interesting. This notion makes me think about a phrase I came across recently which has lingered in my mind since I read the words, “Listen deeply enough to be changed.” I love the image of us humans continually changing each other, learning and growing and relaying our foundations after they have been good and jiggled by new thoughts and ideas. I think that is what we are doing in these letters, though here in these pages the jiggling foundations may happen in a more gradual but no less profound way than it does when you meet someone or experience something wholly new. But because you and I both are people who are open to change, open to receiving in the new with gusto, we are steadily transforming ourselves and each other at, I think, a slightly faster clip than most. I chuckle every time I recall your joke that perhaps we are moving toward an eventual mind meld. There are worse fates!
At the risk of sounding like an ass, I wish more people were like us. It can be challenging to be unsettled with new ways of understanding things we thought we already knew, but the fact of not resisting it changes everything. How many large and small conflicts would never have occurred if all of us were more open to this form of schadenfreude, as you call it? How much human torment could be avoided if there was no fear of the social consequences that are fundamentally about upholding the social order? I am thinking about a TedX talk I saw yesterday, where a man spoke of the great and self-destructive lengths he went through for 25 years of life in order to conceal his bisexuality. We contort, we agonize, all so the people around us do not have to experience any jiggling of their foundations.
I am not interested in people who will sacrifice even the wellbeing of their loved ones just to hold in place existing ways of understanding the or their worlds. And there are so many of these people. These are the folks who are enacting laws all over this country that make life more difficult for trans children. These are the folks who will shun their own child for choosing not to follow the family’s chosen religion. These are the folks who will never listen deeply enough to be changed, who are in fact doing everything in their power to avoid having to even hear the sounds of dissenting or differing voices.
I am simply not interested in these types of people. I choose not to spend any of my finite time and energy on getting to know them, hearing them out, trying to understand their need to push conformance to their version of “normal” at all costs. Considering where I live, in the middle of what has become solid Trump Country, this poses a challenge.
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a Tressie McMillam Cottom interview that was so packed with wisdom that I kept having to pause the podcast so I could write things down, stew on them awhile. One thing she talked about was the democratization of discomfort in the internet age, the way that broadening access to each other does not mean that we all enjoy the comfort of the privileged but instead that we are all uncomfortable. I think this ties back to the jiggling of foundations that comes with exposure to new ideas and ways of being. As Cottom put it, every new room (literal and figurative) we walk into reminds us that our foundation is completely precarious. It reminds us that the ground on which we stand is all just a product of our own minds and whatever small social orbits we typically inhabit. Our status is vulnerable. This has always been true but the internet makes it more visible, and creates exponentially more rooms for us to peek into.
There is a way in which the ideas I have put onto this page may appear incongruous. How I can claim to be deeply curious, open to being changed, and at the same time, opt to cut myself off from huge swaths of people? To that hypothetical critique, I say: I am just one. I can only listen to so many, and for so long. I will choose the people who have stories to tell, not stories to weaponize.
Thank you for unsettling me, today and always!
Yours,
Sarah
Friday May 14 2021
Dear Sarah,
It’s Friday afternoon and I’ve been considering the bad idea of holding off writing my letter to you until much later this evening, after a couple of friends visit (inside our house!). This waiting feels ill-advised but my head doesn’t quite feel in letter mode yet! But as you described in your letter last week, all time of the day is not created equal, and I know 9PM or later this evening isn’t going to feel like peak writing time.
The last week has been an unnaturally social one (unnatural in relation to pandemic living, anyway). Last Wednesday M and I went up to Grand Marais for a work trip (M) and a three-day wooden bowl turning workshop (me). I was in a class with people! Then we went to restaurants! Then we had drinks with the couple who had kindly invited us to stay in their guest house on Lake Superior! (Did you know that Lake Superior makes up about 10% of the earth’s fresh surface water? There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South America to a depth of 12 inches!) Then, this week I saw a few folks at an outdoor get-together on a glorious sunny day with the scent of a nearby lilac bush wafting into the yard. Then I took a block printing class with a friend, L, inside her home! And tonight M and I will have two friends over, also inside! This brave new world of covid vaccination seems similar to the world that I seem to recall unfolding in the pre-pandemic time… but it is a bit exhausting to get back into it now after so much time inside my own home and inside my own head. Yet it has been emotionally rejuvenating to see people in person, coupled with the spring weather casting sun on all our bodies and reminding us what it is to be human together. Sometimes I feel like I could talk for hours and sometimes I think I’ve gone into a stupor where the words are stuck inside my tired head. I’m also still getting used to remembering how to ask questions and follow-up questions, to make connections. My skills are rusty, the energy of being with people in person drawing from my limited reserves, and the connection-building aspect of being quick and deep in conversation, all synapses firing, takes a while to reboot.
Thinking about your letter from last week — I do remember the project we did where we wrote up summaries of the news stories (and perhaps non-news items?) we read! I think that project was a branching of the road for me in terms of how I think about the media I consume. Sometimes it feels overly righteous to insist that everything I take in during the day has meaning in some way (and still, I’m sure it never all does) but I will refer to other of your words that have been circulating this week — the important thing is to be intentional with what we do and consume. Consuming is fine if it is done with intention, eyes open and mind engaged in (or intentionally disengaged from) any task or entertainment or experience. Lately I’ve been keeping my library book stack and other recent book acquisitions closer at hand in the morning, and have been endeavoring to read a few poems or pages of something other than the news first thing, and it makes a big difference! It’s nice not to be looking at a screen — nice to look at a flat page with no light source of its own! — and it’s nice to be reading creative words, nourishing words instead of the sometimes more businesslike formulations of the news. Even when the news is well-written, it’s still there to keep you engaged in a communications product, newly generated every day both to inform you and to keep you reading and moving from story to story. Sometimes the stories are good, and sometimes they feel like they are there simply to make sure that there are new stories every time you hit refresh.
Here I shall say in writing: congratulations on your ten-year milestone at Creative Commons, and your move into a new part-time role that will make space for the new! I’m excited to see what you’ll find around the bend!
And guess what! I just wrote my letter! And it’s still the afternoon, not even close to 9PM! I hope you have a lovely weekend and can’t wait to read your words in just a few minutes!
Until soon,
Eva