I don’t know how life keeps up leveling its overwhelming nature, but here we are, 8 months into what I keep feeling like is the actual upside down world.
This past week has been one of the worst. I’m learning too much about the far far far right (even beyond magat land). And there are things my mind can’t process… it’s all so ugly and demented.
It has started to feel like there are these forces we can do nothing about. And that’s partly true. Logic does not defeat psychoses and neither does empathy defeat these levels of hate that are combined with a stupidity that almost breaks my brain.
I can finally understand why some people have just shut it all off. But that’s still not the answer: that’s a level of privilege that is destructive in its own way.
Feeling powerless, well, that’s what “they” want. And it’s the feeling that led so many of these young men to the nihilism that is fueling their violence. Feeling powerless made them susceptible to voices that aim to take advantage of them by blaming others for their powerlessness.
So staying in that feeling of powerlessness is not an ethical choice.
And there I was stuck until I talked to some treesters, of course.
I am my main job
This will all connect, I promise.
A few weeks ago, it hit me that I am my main job.
During all these years of teaching somatic dance and other movement, I go through cycles where I forget myself in the process.
This particular cycle has lasted a long time. Probably since Peony left her fur suit (and the fourth anniversary of that is this coming Sunday).
Again, a few weeks ago, it hit me that I am my main job. That I can’t teach if I’m not constantly learning. That I can’t talk if I’m not walking that talk.
So I shifted my focus and all of my own practices now come first. Other things are still getting done, but my own practices come first.
My own strength and balance and creative work come first. (Metaphor alert!)
I am only as good a teacher as I am a student and a doer.
Which brings me back to feeling powerless
After my talk with my treesters today, it hit me that, as usual, what I was learning in my movement practices is also the key to living through this upside down world and not becoming upside down myself.
(And this also goes back to things I’ve been learning from tennis, especially about focus.)
I have power. It’s just not where I want it to be or more accurately, where I think it should be. When we experience early trauma, we often take on a savior complex. We go through life not just thinking we can save others but that we should, that it’s our responsibility, and if we don’t do this, we are nothing.
But when I dismiss my own actual powers in favor of idealized ones that “could save the world,” well, I’ve denuded my actual gifts that are meant to be used by me and for others. (This goes for each and every one of us, of course.)
I have power.
You have power.
It might not appear political but life is political.
It might not even seem or feel important to you, but I guarantee you that it is, because every piece of the puzzle that is building love and empathy and caretaking matters.
Focus on my main job is key
If I focus on my practices and my work and the gifts I have and not the ones I don’t, the specific role only I can fill will be filled.
Same for you.
This is not about bypassing.
Because you know what? I think I was already bypassing by allowing the world to paralyze me, by paying so much attention to what I couldn’t do that I forgot about what I can.