Chaos, Impermanence and Late Stage American Anguish

Hurricane seasons bleeding into one another in Gulfport, Florida.

For a lot of people the past year felt like being pushed to the brink of what we can humanly tolerate before we lose ourselves to a waking fever dream of doom-scroll themed despair. If we had hoped the new year would bring reprieve for our long-burdened nervous systems, we were let down.

Our brains simply didn’t evolve to process the sheer amount of information, relationships, stories, and domestic and global horrors, that currently take up space in the machine of the modern psyche. We all bear the unfortunate burden of running this contemporary software on archaic and maladapted hardware, not intended for the magnitude and scope currently being asked of it.

A distinctly human conflict arises when one is living a comparatively stable (though increasingly distressing and unaffordable) life while seeing deeply tragic events unfolding in real time via the machine naturalizing itself to the dominant hand. It’s a modern form of existential anguish that would make Sartre squirm.

We want to do something, but we’re struggling to navigate the complexity of the world we find ourselves in, a world we didn’t evolve alongside. Not even the same world we watched the adults in our younger lives navigate. Sometimes we want to help and we don’t know what to do, or we do something and it feels feeble. Yet doing nothing is a choice in itself. So we share our memes and we donate and we do what we can.

Sometimes we shut the news off. We throw the phone down. Slam the laptop shut. We need space to process the dizzying cacophony of it all. That’s not only fine, it’s much needed and sacred.  Just make sure to emerge again. Keep showing up for yourself, for your loved ones and for your community. Keep trying, and showing up in righteousness and generosity of spirit for the soul that bears the unique anguish of these decidedly chaotic and unprecedented times.

When I find myself pushing back against the weight of the impermanency of it all, there’s graciously usually some cushioned reminder that, yes, temporality is sort of the point here, and that you have to learn to be as comfortable as you can with that while making the most of the moments you have.

It was terribly sad, for example, the moment you realized your childhood was over and that you and your siblings had grown up and moved out of the nuclear family home, but it’s not something you regret happening. Time presses on. Circumstances change. We adapt. We grow. We accumulate experiences, love, and countless other big emotions that color our world and give it meaning. Cue Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game,” and raise a glass to the rosy-hued cast of transience, keeping you on your toes since the minute you were born.

I think it is a big ask, however, to be on good terms with both the chaos and impermanence of quotidian life while managing the constant stream of aforementioned domestic and global tragedies happening live in your palm, and constantly working your way back toward gratitude and putting your privilege to good use. I think many of us are struggling with this and I think that is precisely correct and distinctly human, a trait which we should all be holding on to as if our lives depend on it.

In light of that, know that you are living in times in which technology has created unprecedented moral implications to daily experiences that, relatively speaking, we have had very little time to adjust to as a species, and I think it’s natural for that to feel quite weary on a soul level from time to time. Allow yourself time and space to process that anguish in whatever ways are accessible to you, and feel right.

As we step into the year of the fire horse and shed the year of the snake, I’d like to invite you to be kind to yourself truly, and to give yourself time to just be in repose, if the fates allow. The past year has been a lot to process, and your strength is best stoked when it is lovingly tended.

Though the calendar year has turned, remember we are still in the dead of winter. Go easy on yourself. Spring will come and with it your energy will be refreshed. Be gentle with yourself and until next time, my friends, be well.