Give Yourself Grace

Give yourself grace in these hard days. There has never been this much information before. For a long time we stored it in libraries and schools, and a person could avoid finding out about the world, or anything. But now it's all out there and in here, for anyone and everyone with an internet connection to see, without any real control over how and where this information travels. Our lived experience is only seconds ahead of our real time history. We find ourselves within a reality show not of our choosing, trying to remain on the island, even as we see it sinking into the sea. 

There have never been this many people before. We are all descended from a tiny group of folks. There could have been as few as 700 of us, somewhere around 74,000 years ago when Mount Toba erupted and caused an ice age. Today the UN says there are 8,267,416,318 of us. We are all related. We are all 99% genetically identical. We routinely share blood and organs with one another. If medical science can deliver on recent discoveries in stem cell and organ printing who knows how long a person could live? Who knows how many of us could live together? Build together? Create together? If we don’t destroy one another instead?

There has never been this much information before, and there has never been this little time to process it. We are expected to hold the grief of the world in one hand and in the other still answer emails, raise children, and show up to work as if our nervous systems were designed for this scale of awareness. They were not. Our bodies evolved to track a herd, a season, a horizon we could see with our eyes. Now the horizon is infinite, and it screams at us in dangerous levels, with blue light in ever escalating definitions. If you feel tired, scattered, and defeated, if you feel like you are failing at a game you never agreed to play, that is not a personal flaw. That is a responsible reaction to an irrational period in history.

There has never been this much anger before. If you look at the amount individually, let alone as a part of the whole 8 billion of us, there have never been this many angry, sad, and hurting people before. There has never been this much trauma, pain, or struggle. We are in a constant state of catch up, trying to meet the evolving and emerging needs of ourselves and the next generation. The children we will have to explain all of this information to, at some point. For we should, rather than keeping them pig ignorant about the world and what is happening and why. There have never been this many pig ignorant people. In general, but specifically on the internet. 

Give yourself grace in the days ahead.

There has never been this much pressure or reason to argue. Silence is treated as guilt, uncertainty as weakness, curiosity as betrayal. We are pushed to declare who we are, what we believe, and who we oppose in neat, consumable comments, while the truth remains more complicated and elusive. Many of us are learning how to think while being watched, how to grieve while being broadcast, how to change our minds without being punished for what we used to believe. That is hard work. It is rare and invisible labor. Give yourself grace for needing time to understand what you believe before you share it.

There has never been this much loneliness, even while surrounded by so very many people. We are connected constantly and also forever separated, seen everywhere and heard nowhere. Community used to be built by proximity and necessity but now it is mediated by algorithms optimized for conflict as premium engagement. It is not strange that people retreat, delete, or lash out. It is not strange that kindness feels radical and rest feels like rebellion. If you cannot fix the world today, you can at least choose not to make things worse. You can still be gentle with the people right next to you. You can refuse to let the hate of the world find purchase in your words, your deeds, and your heart. It is hard uphill work in these dark days.

Give yourself grace when you fall short. Give it when you disengage for rest. Give it when you need to laugh at something stupid, or make art that no one sees, or love fiercely within the rubble of our collapsing societies. This is the hardest work we have ever faced. You are enough. If you are still here, you are enough. The universe does not operate without you in it. History does not move forward being held aloft by perfect people, it is dragged uphill by the exhausted few who keep going. Who preserve  the ideas of truth and justice. Who stand for things like freedom, liberty, and equality for all, even when the face is steep and the peak seems impossibly high. The fact that you are still here, still reading, still invested in something humane within this chaotic white noise, likely means you are already doing more than you realize.

Give yourself grace. Give yourself forgiveness. Give yourself care. Then, if you can, extend it to others.

Not even because we deserve it, but because we need not struggle alone.

1∞💓

JTSL