The New Normal.

A dip into the substack pool.

It’s day 3 of the New Normal.

I’m trying not to spend too much time with the news, catching headlines but recognizing the click-bait cycles furiously in motion. I remind myself that this is a show, and it’s opening week: it’s theater just as much as it is harmful and dystopian and all the other takes. If we can remember this, we can take it less personal (even though it is personal) and let the tidal wave roll through until we’re grounded enough to do something about it, to build again.

I also find myself continually trying to make sense of how we got here. Now that we “got here” my brain wants to find logic in how it is that so many people want this version of reality. I think about all the people who abstained from the election, all the people who voted for him for reasons of wellness or crypto or rejection of the Dems. Are they happy with these executive orders? Or do they also recognize the theater, and simply ignore it or justify it as something that comes with the territory? How can you ignore it if you have trans friends or live near an immigrant community? How do you justify you own needs against the needs of others, are they acceptable collateral damage for you to pursue your wellness startup?

I don’t mean to get cynical on here. I want this space to be one where I can write about spirituality and liberatory ideas, philosophy and politics and social issues, personal stories and recognitions. To release my mind from figuring this moment out, I need to remind myself that the name of the game will be: how well can you hold contradiction? It will never all make sense, multiple things are true at the same time. The better I can hold contradiction, the less painful this will be.

Change is hard, living your values sometimes harder. Yesterday I watched some half-hearted lamentations come through a chat thread from owners of Teslas, a reaction to the behavior of Elon. Oh gosh, I might have to get rid of my Tesla… but I love my Tesla… what to do. The Tesla sticker is pretty much the most American solution, a viral meme phrase dismissing the driver from moral/ethical responsibility:

I Bought This Before…. We Knew Elon Was Crazy. Before He Was a Supervillain. Before We Knew.

Oops, I thought it was good and it’s bad.. but I’m comfortable.. so why change? This bumper sticker should fix it and excuse me out in public. This feels like the heart of our problem, a perfect example of how near-impossible it feels to extract ourselves from the systems that we have let own us. Oops is right.

But, change is also often slow, and this morning I acknowledged in my body that it’s going to feel this way for a while. This is the New Normal, the given reality, and if we fight it in every moment we will self-destruct. Coping mechanisms will get stronger, habits will flare, disassociation will become the preferred state.

So here I am: ready to try a few things differently, including writing here in a slightly more protected space than social platforms. Let’s see what comes.