Greetings Fellow Mortals,
Welcome to our bi-weekly newsletter where I redefine the modern day existential crisis one newsletter at a time.
Have you been “doing the work”? Do you know what doing the work even is?
I can’t really tell you what the work is that you ought to be doing, I only know what mine is. This is a recent uncovery* in my evolution: I don’t actually know what is best for everyone else, but I do have a shot at knowing what is best for me. And honestly, the whole “we gotta do the work to make things better” tag line is getting tired. Or maybe it’s just making me tired. Is all of life really supposed to be work? Is the said purpose of our existence to fix and save and meddle and change everything we do not like?
*Uncovery (noun) - Like discovery, but something you find within yourself.
Thought Shift: What if this way of thinking is the very source of all of our woes? What if acceptance is the truly radical thing?
So I’ve been thinking and I’ve been digging in my psyche for quite some time, and it’s exhausting.
I’ve gone further and deeper than ever before, and yet I continue to give even more of my hard earned money to strangers so I can cry in front of them (therapy) - so they can tell me what to do in order to fix myself. And this is no bash on therapy or therapists, because the ritual truly has revealed myself to myself and advanced my life-coping skill set. But after all this digging I’ve reached a place where I’d like to just sit and take a break. I’d like to just, shut the fuck up about my childhood and my inner child. I mean, c’mon. Am I really letting the 7 year old version of me who got yelled at by her dad call the shots when I’m 32? Like, grow up. Move on.
You see, there will always be more room to dig because our minds are as vast as the Universe. We ourselves are each a tiny Universe, and there is no end point in digging. Which brings me to my next point…
Thought Shift: Maybe the real “work” isn’t in digging, but rather in sitting. And can we call it something other than work? - maybe; a way to kill the fucking time; a way to get to know and understand oneself.
Digging requires sitting and vice versa.
I’m realizing we will never quite find who we are by digging around in our psyche or the psyche of others, because life isn’t tucked away in the crevices of our skulls. It’s happening in real time, here and now, all around us - and to us.
How can we search for what isn’t yet known? We keep digging for answers only to find the ground getting deeper and more complex - full of more questions. Sitting is necessary in the process, it allows space for the digging to come clear(er). We are not artifacts after all - we aren’t hidden away, buried beneath our existence. We are an event ever unfolding! What if we stopped digging so much and started sitting more - started letting, more?
I am not broken. Nor was I ever. Not when I was in rehab at 17 for every drug under the sun, but especially meth. And not now that I don’t drink (or do meth). Everything we do here on Earth happens because it ought to happen. Because it can. Because it will. And we constantly shame ourselves and others for this, trapping ourselves in liminal nets of our own doing. You won’t get very far if you’re trying to find a solution in the past. Only this moment holds the promise of change, and change in the future.
You are not broken. You never were. You are human, and we are not good or bad, but complex. You have harmed and you have been harmed, and this will likely repeat. Move beyond the shame by sitting in your full humanity. We have strange desires, and it is not our fault. Nothing is really our fault, but it is our responsibility to confront what isn’t “working” and move forward.
We are not only witnessing reality - we are reality - able to bend and shift our external reality. We are magic, we are also maniacs. Sit in this. Relish. Enjoy - and a very happy reality bending to you.