Hi friends, for those of you new to this newsletter, it’s part of a 2020 resolution to take more risks with my voice. Having navigated many forms of turbulent change over the last decade, I’ve gotten clear that a big part of my purpose right now is to support others in this journey. As I’m figuring out how to do this, I’d love your ideas on how this newsletter (or other forms yet to be born) could support us during these chaotic times! And if you know others who might enjoy this, I’d be grateful it if you shared it with them! Love, M.
Everything feels so existential these days. The Election. The Pandemic. And here in California, the wildfires and choking smoke. But where I’m finding hope is in 2020’s chaos.
Hear me out.
Photo by Issy Bailey on Unsplash
One of my little secrets is that I’m addicted to the news (and videos of cute animals which btw, is a science approved way to reduce stress). I compulsively check the news because I keep hoping to see signs of us getting “back to normal” — like the twinge of relief I felt after last week’s VP debate where the politicians mostly stuck to their scripts.
But when I get real, I realize I’m in denial.
The doors “back to normal” closed long ago when social media bubbles accelerated our polarization, and our collective ability to make sense of the world collapsed. Both sides genuinely believe the other is out of their minds:
The left believes if Biden wins, Trump is unlikely to cede without a fight. And if Trump wins, extremist groups will be emboldened, threatening law and order.
The right believes the election’s being rigged with mail-in ballots, and Trump is the last thing protecting the Republic from the break down of law and order.
Even though their worldviews are radically different, the one thing both sides agree on is that this election could devastate the nation.
It feels like we’re on a path to civil war.
Oof.
When I let this in, I go down rabbit holes:
“So if the government isn’t legitimate in the eyes of ~50% of Americans, will militias take things into their own hands? Do I need a gun?! …a bunker?!”
“If there’s no faith in the government, will the money system collapse? …along with the rest of the global financial system? …Should I hoard food while I can?!”
Yes, it’s all *very intense* to contemplate, and I hope my imagination is just overactive. I mean, as humans, we love basic stability. Our brains evolved toward what’s predictable.
BUT, what if fear of the unknown is what’s kept us stuck?
Photo by Joe Beck on Unsplash
It’s not like the status quo was really working for us as a collective. Was it ever really so great that justice often depends on the color of our skin? Or that our likelihood to die from coronavirus often depends on our wealth?
So might 2020’s great gift be that it’s breaking us out of a dysfunctional status quo?
This year has shown us — over and over — that our stories of “this is how the world works” have crumbled. Heck, even the Navy publicly acknowledged that UFOs are real. The impossible is now possible.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s terrifying to watch our familiar ways of life crumble. But what’s giving me hope is — what if breakthrough is on the other side of breakdown?
What if chaos is just nature’s way of unleashing and testing out new possibilities?
Molecules moving in space are *far* more dynamic than molecules locked in order.
Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash
I can’t claim to have lived through societal collapse. But my dad’s sudden death 7 years ago felt like the end of the world as I had known it.
My dad was a healthy and active 61 year old guy. He had no preexisting conditions that would have hinted that he’d collapse a few months before he was set to retire.
And then poof! He was gone… just. like. that.
Though he’d been as dependable as gravity, one of the most reliable constants in my life evaporated overnight. Without warning, the snow globe of my life had been violently shaken.
Being only 32 at the time, I’d never contemplated my own mortality. Now I wondered, could I die tomorrow? And if so, why did I bother spending so much time worrying about a fundamentally unknowable future?
Little did I realize in the middle of profound grief (which I’ve written about here), that the path was actually being cleared for growth in ways I NEVER could have imagined. Like Frodo leaving the Shire, the upheaval was setting me up to discover worlds and aspects of myself far beyond what I had known.
Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash
Humbled of all illusions of control, I felt naked before life. The armor of my identity and well-honed strategies to try to win his love — through external forms of success — were now utterly useless.
But freed from living up to expectations or my beliefs about how the world should be, it was now finally possible to open up to how life could actually be.
I was able to finally exercise a true imagination — unleashed from what I’d been socialized to believe. Rather than live out the story I had inherited from my immigrant family that “life is hard”, it opened up the possibility that life could be filled with ease, grace and joy. And it was a revelation that qualities I had been taught were my liabilities — gentleness, empathy and being so different — might actually be my superpowers.
Most of you reading this know about at least a few of the dramatic changes I made. And I won’t glamorize how excruciating it was — for example, to seemingly throw away a hard-won career at unicorn startups in Silicon Valley for a path that has far less prestige and few of the externally visible markers of “success”. Letting go of the old (whether it’s outdated beliefs or social structures) is not easy, and usually doesn’t happen without kicking and screaming.
Yet amidst all the turbulence, the hidden beauty of this period was that it gave me the opportunity to see the world through fresh eyes and consciously make choices based on the compass of what brings me alive.
This was my dad’s greatest, and final, gift to me. His death opened up new life.
And in this time of apocalypse, this is the great possibility we have collectively. In everything that’s falling apart, there’s the opening for something fundamentally new to happen. While it’s dizzying to see the number of cracks in the world, to borrow that old Leonard Cohen wisdom, “that’s how the light gets in”.
I’d love to hear in the comments what light you’re starting to see shine through the cracks.
In the spirit of hidden beauty, here’s what’s helping me navigate these turbulent times right now…
The Japanese practice of Kintsugi
The Japanese practice of kintsugi — repairing pottery that has broken with gold — honors how something broken can become more “refined”. By placing these pieces around the house, they’re meant to be daily reminders of how something once broken can become even more beautiful in its next incarnation. (H/t to Stephanie Wilger!)
The Tenants Who Evicted Their Landlord
In the NYT (34 min read)
Amidst a national evictions crisis, the NYT profiles how a group of low-income tenants in Minneapolis facing homelessness “dream” of a different way and band together to buy their 5 apartment buildings. Says one of the tenants-turned-owners:
“We had maybe a 4 percent chance of making this work, and we did. When people really come together and put faith in a different kind of system, it’s possible.”
Although converting a few apartment buildings to tenant ownership may seem insignificant, it can become a model for larger-scale adoption and big structural change. And more importantly:
When tenants strain to break free of a rental housing market that has brutalized them, they raise urgent questions about the depths and nature of that market’s brutality. Is our current system working? Should housing be a commodity? Should it be a human right? Can it ever be both?
And by binding their fates to their neighbors’ — seeing Jackson’s eviction notice as their problem, their responsibly, not hers alone — the tenants show us what real community can look like.
A Burning Testament
In Mountain Journal (6 min read)
Terry Tempest-Williams’ achingly beautiful obituary for the West is the elegy I didn’t realize I was craving after watching 5M acres burn over the last few months. And if you’re moved by this piece, you may also be moved by her recent book Erosion: Essays of Undoing.
I’d love to hear what’s been offering you inspiration in these times!
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