With only one cup of coffee in me and wanting to get outside before the heat set in, I re-read yesterday’s post and a few others, skipped reading the news, and was out of the apartment before 7:30am. It was an intense walk. I was thinking about a lot of different things, seemingly disjointed things. For much of my walk, my head was down and I was typing away on my phone. I suspect I walk a little faster when I’m in that mode – though, I wasn’t paying much attention to my pace. In these moments, on these types of walks, it feels like my mind is crawling all over the place seeking something to latch on to, a conversation in which it an be engaged. Admittedly, now that I say that out loud (or in writing) it sounds a little crazy…
Only briefly did I think about yesterday’s post and the email that I didn’t send. In a moment of pettiness, I thought that I’m not going to reach out to any of my friends here – I get tired of being the one to reach out. Then I became preoccupied with the sad state of world and national affairs. I was thinking about how we’ve been in this COVID limbo for months and any sacrifices that have been made seem to have been useless. Most other countries have strategized and figured out how to get some control over this virus. I imagined that they have their best and brightest scientists, advisors, and policy makers working nonstop on this issue. We have a president who spends his time and energy picking fights with celebrities and tweeting about the most inconsequential things. Instead of leading, he’s talking about his ratings and how unfairly he’s been treated.
This train of thought got me thinking about our current cultural situation. It feels like we are as divided as we’ve ever been. I’ve been meaning to read the letter in Harper’s about cancel culture and public discourse. I feel like we’ve been on a long slide away from honest and thoughtful discourse for a long time, and our gaslighter-in-chief seems to have made it a personal mission to make facts and journalism and accountability all subjective with his constant claims of fake news. This all makes me very very sad. It makes me want to drop out and hide.
For a significant part of my walk I thought about that – what does dropping out look like? Deleting Facebook? Twitter? How is it that we’ve given up our ability to authentically connect with people, ideas, friends and family in favor of these platforms. We’ve all become our own mini news outlets. Our own highly efficient, highly inaccurate echo chambers that seldom go deeper than 141 characters. I registered this website years ago in the shadow of, and in response to, Twitter and Facebook. I wanted something slower and more meaningful. It feels like we’ve gone in the opposite direction – and at warp speed. The efficiency of social media can’t be denied – you get the news you want delivered to you pretty much when you want it. You can broadcast what you want to whomever. You can shut out, or shout down dissenting voices – you can feel good doing it.
I haven’t deleted my connections that hold opposing views because I believe in hearing the other side. I seldom engage – I’m more of an observer… but, more and more, it’s getting hard to watch. I see things that just feel wrong. The other day a friend of mine shared a post that is making the rounds in his area. It was a screenshot of someone’s Facebook post which had a picture of them (some person, not my friend) kneeling on someone’s neck making fun of the George Floyd situation. The screenshot said – this is a business owner in our community, let’s make sure he goes out of business… The making fun of the George Floyd situation (The George Floyd Challenge) is awful. It is beyond bad taste. But the public ridicule and backlash isn’t great either. Is threatening ruin for stupidity the only way to encourage good behavior? It feels like these platforms have brought out the worst in us. It feels like they’ve allowed us to take righteous indignation to a new level – suddenly it’s a blood sport. Suddenly everyone with a cellphone has the power to be judge, jury, and executioner. And we’re all present for the spectacle. I want to quit. I want off the ride.
Quitting doesn’t feel right either. I kept walking and trying to understand what is it in us that makes us want to shame people? This isn’t new – Puritanical America was famous for the stocks in the town square. Hester Prynne wore her scarlet A. The Romans had the gladiators. public stoning has been around forever. With so many ways to treat our public spaces, why do we always build gallows instead of garden boxes? Perhaps it’s just social entropy? Given the natural state of things, will we always tend towards disorder? Building up is always harder than tearing down. So what can be done with an ugly public space? Especially if you believe, like I do, that ugliness is a necessary part of the world – it’s an important mirror for beauty.
These were heavy thoughts on my walk. I began to conclude that I can’t just quit. That maybe my job is to look at my own space first – build that out the way I would like it to be. Fight ugliness not by rooting it out but by planting more beauty. I want to believe that we are naturally good and kind. I have some friends on Facebook who always share thoughtful things (poems, pictures, quotes, articles). Quitting would mean losing some of those things. If anything, I should be writing to those friends and thanking them.
I stuck with this idea of balance and yin/yang for a bit. I’ve often played with the idea of a continuum of good and bad. Somewhere in this world exists the best person and somewhere exists the worst person – they have to exist. The rest of us fall somewhere in between. And of course, it’s not quite that linear, but I think of it in terms of a number line. Today I wondered what would happen if we were able to create such a thing? What would happen if everybody had to rank the five best people they know and the five worst people they know? And then all the results would be tallied and complex mathematical models would determine a score. How quickly would it devolve in to vendettas and favors? What might people do to enhance their own score? This concept of a goodness score is toyed with a bit in the TV show “The Good Place.”
The more I thought about these things the more I began to think I can only work on my small part… and by work I mean live and be – not so much as a model for others but in a way that feels honest and just and sincere to myself. Allow for ugliness to exist and try not to be a part of it. Seek, be, and do good things. Focus on enjoyment. Let go. I came up to a set of steps. There was a woman sitting at the base of the steps talking on the phone to who I’m assuming was her partner. She had caught him in a lie about staying out or something like that. She was saying he needs to stop trying to justify the lie or the action. Relationships are fraught with these types of complications. Two nights ago I went out for a walk and a drink with my friend Katherine. She told me all about the guy she’s been seeing on and off. It sounded really complicated. He wants more of her time and commitment. She’s not sure she has more to give and she kinda just wants to enjoy the time they have. Relationships are fraught with these types of complications too.
When I got home from my walk, I did the opposite of quitting. I checked Facebook. I saw a post for an outdoor, socially distanced, concert that I’d like to go to (it’s some North Mississippi Hill Country blues) down near Holly Springs. I got on the floor to do some sit-ups and push-ups. My immediate thought was I’d love my ex-fiancee to come with me to the concert. It was instinctual. It was as if I didn’t have an angry or hurt bone in my body. It was a pure-of-heart type of thought. It was a moment in which I wondered why did we care about any of the things we argued over? Why do people lie to each other, why do they fret over the smallest things, call each other names, position themselves for who is giving more or taking more? I felt so ready to enjoy life and not worry about any of those things. In the middle of sit-ups I felt surprisingly free (a little like I felt yesterday). It was distracting enough that I forgot how many sets I had done. I felt like I could love my ex in a different way. In a way that didn’t matter if it was ever given back. In a way that said I could enjoy a show with her just as I did before and then another show and a lifetime of experiences but without the tensions, without the high drama. And if she doesn’t want to (I’m pretty sure she doesn’t and I’m not about to ask), I might even be able to enjoy a show with someone new should we find each other. I felt like I was prepared to love differently, less selfishly, equally intense and yet less intensely, with more freedom and grace. I paused and grabbed my phone. I can’t invite my ex – though I’d like to. I’m happy to go on my own (I probably will), but it might be fun to have a friend there. I thought I should invite my friend Stacy. I paused again – “but I’m not reaching out to friends.” That type of thinking isn’t going to help me build the space I wish to inhabit, isn’t going to help me live a life of grace. I texted an invite to Stacy.