Are you and The Void good to each other?

This newsletter is hard for me to write.

The red rock turned to city turned to mountains again turned to snow. On our 12-hour journey home from the desert, my husband drove (he prefers that for himself and I definitely don’t). I watched myself navigate the ‘free time.’ The girls were punching each other, playing cards, giggling so hard, asking for more oranges, counting license plates and, taking 20 minute intervals to watch funny animal videos. I listened to the whoosh of rolling wheels, listened to my mind tell me that I should take this opportunity to “get a lot done,” listened to the modern human (and to be fair: middle-aged parent, because I am realizing it’s a different kind of multi-tasking reality than other life stages) inside me who is conditioned to fill the void.

Then I opened my senses very wide.

Little birds. Big birds. Eagle. Windshield slap sound. Engine hum. Giggles from my beloved ones who are growing up, giggles that will never giggle in this exact way again. My fingernails longer than I like. Smell of citrus. Smell of dirt. Smell of bike chains. His salt and pepper hair. Bouncing on bouncy roads. Salt of meat stick, yum. Gas stations. People in other cars going somewhere.

It never bores me.

But it could easily if I let myself go there.

Why does that now register as ‘boring’ to most of us?

When my girls ask me why they can’t get onto an iPad for the whole drive or even a large portion it, I give them a simple answer that is probably inadequate and may end up being the wrong thing to do, but I don’t care. It comes from deep inside me. It is my truth, right now.

“I want to support you to become humans who notice and connect,” I say.

“We know Mom, we know,” the chorus responds. In softer moments, when they aren’t defending their rights with me, they come home from school or sleepovers and sneak in tiny whispered thank yous, small verbal acknowledgments that actually they like it best just like we are doing it. They like my eyes on them. They like that I require their eyes to be here, now. We shall see. It may all backfire.

I could unpack that sentence “humans who notice and connect.”

I don’t feel the need.

You know what I mean: humans who know they inhabit a physical body in a gorgeous and challenging and touchable world that involves the five senses (or six) as well as other living beings.

My grandmothers wouldn’t even know what to do with that statement.

It would confuse them.

That’s how quickly we humans have changed.

July friend midnight paddle two years ago, burning my grandmother's chair alongside my mom and brother, art of the fire and void that moved me deeply (I don't know where it came from or who made it, alas)

So, my question: How do you interact with the void?

Do you rush to fill it? I get that. Normal these days. We have a cultural pathology of needing to fill the empty space—chronic input. More podcasts. More information. More learning. More clicks. More likes. More to do. Then add the task-switching aspect of navigating this barrage in teeny hops and skips back and forth. A little bit of bill paying, switch to answer a question from a family member, oh now that dentist appointment, oh shit that email to a co-worker, ahhh the soup is burning, wait, what was I doing? Our brains are suffering.

My canary body cannot, could not ever.

I have resisted it. I have felt behind. I have felt like I’m doing something wrong.

Now I own it.

• I am pro-void as a sacred and necessary part of life.

• I am pro-cyclical living and containers of sacred time.

• I am pro-doing less so that I can be here on the planet more.

• I am pro-being under-podcasted and under-read and under-up-to-date on every little thing so that I can breathe into my own ribs.

• I am pro ‘input in sustainable doses’.

The irony. I struggle with this part of my job. I am emailing you. It’s hard for me to add to the content you receive every day. Those in my professional circles know how much I struggle with that part. But I have learned to trust that you will choose whether to read it or not, whether I’m for you or not—and I celebrate those discernment moments. I routinely hear people say they read all the way through on this newsletter. That helps.

In this world of status quo overwhelm, here’s a worthy exercise:

What inputs do you have in your life?

List them out. What is the quality of them? Do you want to scratch some out? No, don’t cull it down to only rainbows and nothing ‘hard’. I’m talking about substance. Deep dive. Focus. Pleasure in relating to and weaving with something or someone for longer than 3-5 seconds.

Onward from a mammal woman who is continually in this inquiry,