I've been waking grumpy all week. This is unusual for me. I am by nature a morning lark and by long cultivation a grateful and joyful person. I have seen a whole lot of sorrow in my living, but this season of my personal life is sweet. Still, in all our lives there is the weight of the polycrisis and the metacrisis.
There is power in naming, and these concepts are useful, so: the polycrisis is the numerous interconnected crises afoot in the world: environmental, political, economical, etc. I am gesturing broadly so as to avoid overwhelm; stay with me, darling! The polycrisis is the symptoms; the metacrisis is the disease, the illness of values which is leading to the polycrisis; it is a crisis of meaning, disconnection, exhaustion.
I am in general navigating this time with decent resilience, but I had a cold last week. This week I am not sick, but also not in full wellness: my energy is low, and this is just enough to make it a bit more work than usual to access my usual baseline of cherishing life. This is not a crisis. It's a small thing: I wake up cranky, and I'm a little surly in general. I'm choosing this small example to speak of because hearing it will not be heavy for you. It is a gentle place to point to in order to say a thing I'd like to say:
In my work, people speak to me about their suffering. People come to me for counsel, for help, for support. I hear of joys, sure, but sorrows and struggles tend to be what people want help with. Right now I'm hearing consistently from the communities I support that small things feel hard and hard things feel REALLY hard. We're all feeling the weight of the extra work of just being a person in this time.
It's been just about a year since I wrote here about hypernormalization, the process by which we acclimate to a terrible time so that it begins to feel normal.
It's incredible to see how much has taken place in the past year and yet how life keeps flowing onward. We all set our alarm clocks and get out of bed despite the raging inferno that is afoot.
A dear friend of mine is experiencing a particularly difficult version of this. She lives in Canada. She has a job, a family, a cat, and all the responsibilities that come with living. And this precious person's grandparents live in Beirut, which is being bombed. The disparity of her experience of safety and crisis is a terrible thing.
My beloved friend's situation is a more intimate and emergency aspect of the polycrisis than what a lot of folks are experiencing. I am grateful to her for permission to speak of this. The thing about the polycrisis is how broad it is; how many different kinds of danger and crisis are afoot. Also, since there is so much that is truly terrible happening, it can be hard for people to give themselves permission to honor their pain if their worries are less dire. No one, however, has to earn the right to feel feelings; we each and all get to feel whatever we feel. It is essential for each of us feel our feelings, in fact, because in order not to feel them we have to stop feeling. If we stop feeling, we stop fighting for the world we want to see, which hurts us all, and we stop feeling our living, which hurts us each. Feeling your feelings is a service to your living and to all that lives.
Each of us is experiencing our own version of the crisis of hypernormalization, and all of us are enduring it together. We are living through an emergency; also, we are carrying on. The effort it takes to do this is costly, even if the effort is, as it so often is, unconscious. This leaves us with less energy for everything else.
I try to take care with how much I name this here. We all only have so much capacity to look right at the thing that hurts, and I don't want you to turn away. I want to be a refuge for you, a place of sanctuary and nourishment. In doing that I perform a delicate dance. I cannot only be uplifting, which would be toxic, bypassing, denial. I strive to both acknowledge the grief and the hardship and also invite you to cleave to pleasure and rejoice in your connection to the life of the universe. Each of us has a unique balance of what we need there, and each of us will be in a different place in each moment. I'm doing my best to care for you kindly.
I've been doing my best to care for myself kindly, too. In addition to the steady bath of meditation, yoga, and healing touch that is my working everyday, there is the personal:
Recently my teaching schedule had a little shift that means I can pour myself into the convertible and vrooom over to the beach between two morning sessions on Thursday. I did it today for the first time since the schedule shift: drove with the top down in the sunshine, said hello to friends, walked into the very cold sea. I'm better for having done so.
The tree outside the kitchen window? Last week I said that it "began to bloom this morning and I said to them, 'Oh, this might be your most beautiful day of the year!' though I know that I may think this again tomorrow as we go deeper into blossom." Indeed, it has been more beautiful every day since; that's them in the photograph at the top of this missive. I wonder what is blooming at your house?
My daily resistance continues and it strengthens and bolsters me. I'll have some new suggestions below, as usual.
James and I are leaning into creativity and connection. He spent last weekend honing his slingshot technique in order to get a 2lb lead weight over a specific branch on a specific tree 35 feet up amongst the many trees in the forest in order to run a pulley up in order to run an wire up to be part of the antenna for his ham radio. He did it! Last night he listened to someone in Lithuania and spoke to folks in Illinois. A friend is coming by to geek out on it tomorrow.
I spent last weekend scorching the cedar boxes I bought from a local carpenter for raised garden beds. I charred them with the propane torch, scrubbed them with a wire brush, then oiled them, twice. There are many steps still to go before planting and planting time is now, but I'm carrying along in good cheer; it'll come together in due time. I have many questions and that leads to many conversations, chances to learn from wise friends.
All of this is bolstering so that we can turn again to face the world, cope with with is afoot, and do our best to make it better.
I wonder is nourishing you?
Love
Dahlia
Resources are Love in Action
The Book of Time
The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit organization that encourages long-term thinking and responsibility, and it's the place where my husband works to better the world. This is aiming right at that metacrisis, an attempt to shift our thinking and values. Their latest project is Long Now Labs, "where long-term thinking becomes long-term practice." There are three new offerings there, and the one I find most exciting is The Book of Time, which "invites you to submit a concept for a new way of marking, experiencing, or making sense of time. This Lab is open to everyone, from precocious kindergarteners to prestigious watchmakers, from engineers to essayists to experimental artists. Reviewed by leading artists, philosophers, and technologists, the top 25 most compelling concepts will be included in a Long Now print book and digital anthology, added to the permanent collection of The Long Now Foundation library and archive. We will additionally select the top three concepts for follow-on investment and development into a working prototype."
What the Future Holds
I told you about this study last month but it is ringing me like a bell, so I am sharing it again to be sure it gets your attention. Becca Levy is a professor of epidemiology and psychology at the Yale School of Public Health. She told the Washington Post that, “I started thinking about these examples of people thriving in later life... How does that fit into this dominant belief that aging is a time of universal and inevitable decline? Are they exceptions, or are they actually kind of showing the potential of later life?” She and a co-author "looked at data from thousands of people over 65 and saw that improving with age wasn’t the exception. It was almost as common as decline." Specifically, the study says that "45.15% of persons improved in cognitive and/or physical function over this period, and positive age beliefs predicted these two types of improvement, both with and without adjusting for relevant covariates."
The thing that's really been catching my imagination here is that positive beliefs about aging are predictive of positive outcomes in aging. And since knowing the results of this study can give you hope for positive outcome in aging, knowing about this research can increase your wellness as you age. Given the extreme ageism in our society, I wonder how much better aging as a whole could be for people if we uprooted that ageism? I'm working on it as hard as I can within and around me.
Feeding Your Head
Another thing that correlates with healthy aging is hearing well. When the brain does not receive the auditory data that it expects to receive, this leads to decline and contributes to dementia. Johns Hopkins on hearing loss and dementia here. For a long time, money has been an issue here as hearing aids are quite expensive. AirPods in generation 2 and 3, however, have numerous functions that allow them to be used as an FDA approved hearing aid. Here's a quick inspiring Instagram video, a more thorough YouTube video from a doctor of audiology, and Apple's instructions.
In Heavy Rotation Here
What was blasting for me as I drove to and from the chilly beach today was Waxahatchee's Tigers Blood. Katie Crutchfield, who performs as Waxahatchee, is an exquisite songwriter.
Resistance is Love in Action
May Day Strong: Workers Over Billionaires
Tomorrow is May 1, May Day, which is both the traditional Celtic holy day of Beltane, the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, and International Workers' Day. I'll be out in the street in my dayglo gear being part of the Safety Team for my local demonstration. You can find one here.
GTFOICE
Gotta love this: GTOFOICE both stands for the pleasingly vulgar GTFO ICE and GET THE FACILITIES OUT, "a rapid response network to stop ICE detention centers before they start. Receive immediate alerts if a facility is planned for your community and help lead the local fight to stop it." Thanks to Charley
Cartoons for Democracy
Has a delicious project afoot with kits to support anyone, whether they speak Spanish or not, in writing to voters in California District 22 in Spanish. This district's population is 70% Hispanic, but those voters have disproportionately low turnout and the district is red. "Help Turn CA-22 Blue to Reflect its Constituents! / Ayuda a que el CA-22 represente mejor a su gente!"
I've got a doc for collecting resistance resources over time for ease of access. It's new, so there's a lot of room to grow. I'd love your suggestions for additions.
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