What to Do When Facing Collective Pain
There are strong surges of fear flowing through the collective right now.
Lately in my own body, it feels like I hate myself. I hate being. I hate every way I’m being with others, not while it’s happening, after it’s past. It doesn’t really have a lot of thoughts or story around it, just intense regret, uncertainty, insecurity that feels related to how I’m showing up with others.
Long ago I ordered my life so that it is full of aligned individuals who know how to meet this and all other life events with relational peace, as context for it. Long ago I stopped framing relational content as a potential source for this existential grief and stopped associating with others in this practice. I live practical patterns that are eternally respectful to my loved ones; I think this is the one and only reason I find this moment so quiet of thoughts.
There is no circumstance in my life that validates these persistent feelings. Something feels wrong while nothing actually is.
I’m hearing from others that this moment feels like relational turmoil, ongoing conflict, hard conversations that need to happen and yet don’t go well.
For me this is another crunch on a slog that’s lasted years, with Joy thin on the ground and Desire all but entirely absent; even her evil twin, Lack, isn’t around much.
It’s a life of discomfort and low-level dissatisfaction, not rising above gentle contentment but neither asking me to go to the depths of grief. It’s restless, aimless, helpless.
Once, my marketing of my work was all about delight and desire and joy, and still, I can map you there to anywhere it is for you. (I get to be not-a-self when I work so none of the despair I describe touches me there...)
But with how it feels in the collective, I can’t promise it like it’s a sure result.
My work leads to joy when joy is available, because my work is actually about peace, acceptance, exquisite attention.
But what I have developed, I developed precisely FOR slogs like this one, stretches of life where I am asked to meet infinite wells of grief and offered little refuge.
Indeed, this body of work was birthed from the death of my mother, and the months and years that followed wherein I rearranged my entire psyche and way of being in the world.
Such grief cannot be expected to heal, my way had to include it, and this moment in this world might not be reasonably expected to offer me joy, delight, bliss, desire. I go there as often as I can, I cultivate it, I center it, but I can’t expect it to stick around. I can’t diagnose its absence as a problem and also honor my chronic wholeness.
Attachment is attachment, and joy is yet another THING for attachment to grasp. My security is in my detachment, the fact that I will not make meaning out of this grief state or that joy state, and I will not cling to or chase or run from either one.
No end in sight, I keep coming into deeper relationship, with the simple heuristic “here’s what is, now what?”
What IS is a lot of dissatisfaction. Accountability doesn’t ask me to produce satisfaction, it asks that I account for dissatisfaction as I plan how I will move forward.
Accounting for dissatisfaction means that my plans don’t wait for satisfaction to arrive, and also that my plans nurture the conditions that cause satisfaction to arise.
My theme and framework these days is Audacious Austerity.
If I can’t count on liking life, what patterns and practices remain valuable?
Specifically, I’m showing up more to the housework. Cleaning and cooking more. Moving my body more. Consuming fiction. This is the audacious part, the austerity doesn’t limit luxury, the austerity is that I do it no matter how I feel.
I don’t have to want to read a book to read. I don’t have to want to take a walk to go. I don’t have to want to clean the floors to do them. I don’t need to wait for joy or desire in these matters, and I know that these actions produce the conditions that allow me to access the greatest quantity of the joy available.
The most audacious part is that I am also not forcing myself. I am asking myself to opt-in or opt-out without letting emotional metrics be part of that decision. It is a delicate and nuanced art to both honor feelings and factor out emotions in discernment this way.
Am I ready to do this now? Is this an action I can take my body through right now? What action is my body available for? Will the result be beneficial? Is there something better I can think to do with my time? What is next on my list? How do I want to go about this? When else would I do this, if not now? What does it mean to get ready to get ready to do this?
Not feeling super engaged with or responsive to my environment, it’s been very helpful to return to the structure of a schedule. I simply clean the floors every day, I don’t wait for me to notice they need to be done, introducing one more element of frustration into my day where the floor grime is sticking to my feet.
I know what time I need to get to the woods to take the walk that is right for me.
I know if I pop on the phone with a friend I’ll fold the laundry and put it away without even noticing.
Audacious Austerity is letting me strip my life down to the what what what right now. I’ve surrendered to the suck, I move slowly through the slog, I address the mess whether I want to or not, and unexpectedly, I do find a bit of joy hiding in the corner.
This month’s masterclass theme is Equalizing Empowerment, sign up for any of the live calls here.
