Are You Ready?
Let's build a world where we get tactile
Yesterday, a friend sent a Glennon podcast (“thought you’d appreciate”) my way—the one about social media. Of course. I have had deep feels about this topic since before platforms were alive. I haven’t listened to We Can Do Hard Things in ages. Nothing against it, but I orient to Glennon the same way I do to Taylor Swift. There are 5,000+ other incredible musicians or thinkers so why is so much of the population focused on idolizing this one person? I tend to turn the other direction.
Listening, I nodded my head to Glennon and her interviewee Amelia Hruby.
Yep, yes, FINALLY someone with a broad reach is saying the thing and questioning the impact of this status quo. I may have wanted to crawl through the phone to make additional points. Background: so much good work and connection happens on social media, I know this. It’s how we use it that is diminishing us, turning us into shells of what we can truly be and how we can be with each other. It affects our brains to the degree that our lived lives are polluted by the screen even when we aren’t on them.
Are you ready to hear that?
Glennon spoke to readiness. How she wasn’t ready to hear it for a long time, in the same way she wasn’t ready to hear that her drinking had become a problem (until she was ready), in the same way I’m still not ready to hear that eating delicious cheese really doesn’t work out for my gut health.
I’m invested in our individual and collective attention.
I even recently flirted with going back on Instagram to do a 6-month attention experiment with the intention of supporting others, and subverting (in a playful way) the general purpose of “getting” people as followers, which cements their own addictions to the scroll, which has always felt wrong to me. But I need to okay it with my bod first—are we going to do this, how can we do this so we don’t hurt ourselves?
Relational.
That’s been my barometer since I was a child.
If it’s relational, I’ll do it.
If it’s not, bye.
My guiding question: What consequences am I willing to bear? Consequences are part of any decision. Being off social media has consequences. I can handle those. I am not willing to taken on the consequences of being on it—they are too costly for me, and I believe for others.
Okay, back to the photo above. It does relate. Earlier this year, I reached out to a local photographer Blair Speed who had taken speaker portraits during TEDx in 2018. I was in a dire mental state then and her life force energy was a beacon. Years later, I got inspired to ask if she would do a photo shoot of me as a 45 year old on the other side of that decade of struggle. Context: I am very uncomfortable being photographed as it brings up other people’s expectations of me and I cannot take poses seriously at all which obviously says something about my own edges.
Then we sold The Land and I set a new intention with her.
My goodbye.
I could cry now just remembering it. She was so game for the process. I told her I didn’t want to pose. I simply wanted her to follow me along as I blessed the trees and the earth, could I show her my sacred places while I carried the birth stone and stick of my girls, could I tell her the story of my relationship with this land? Yes, yes. It was one of many goodbyes. I talked, stubbed my toe bloody, got sap and dirt all over my hands and we laughed and wept and crows flew over in a dramatic sudden burst. I forgot she was taking photos! It was deeply sacred and we both felt it.
Why share these?
Because there are opportunities for tactile relationship everywhere for everyone: with people, with plants, with the earth. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. It could be a dense city (trust me, I did some wild woo things in the parks of NYC in my 20’s). Follow your impulse. Experiment with NOT posting it to social media or telling people about it or even making an “identity” around it. I keep many rituals and experiences to myself. They require no audience other than my own self and spirit. I can remember being 4-years old and intentionally communing with the hibiscus plant in our tiny, all stones backyard in the Dominican Republic. It’s a human impulse.
Look down right now.
WHERE are you?
It’s a place. Somewhere nearby there is a patch of earth. Can you get there? Can you greet it, make yourself known, offer it something, a prayer, whatever feels right to you? Don’t make it empty. Make it mean something TO YOU!
You can also find your own tactile self alongside others. You can invest in that kind of community. In a week or so, I’m going to open the doors (it happens 1x a year) to The Loam. I will only mention it 2-3 times on Substack and the rest through my Mailchimp emails. A number of you have asked so I’m priming you. I will say more next week. But I can tell you this: it is focused on change-making, it’s also deeply relational, even with 120+ people, the kind of place where people write me long goodbye and thank you emails if they decide to leave at the end of the year. Whether with me or elsewhere, it’s an era for circling up. Circle, circle, circle up.
And, guess what?!
When the first snow fell, Chris discovered by gazing out our front window that we can see, with the naked eye, across the valley to the actual line of Doug Firs in the photos above. We can pick out The Wind Tree!! Can you believe it? We can see her. Oh my. We can send her messages on the wind. It’s beyond. It’s the actual prayer river she and the other trees told me about before we left. What are the plants and trees and rocks and ground around you saying to you. Are you listening?
Love,
