I want to talk about it all - yes, everything… but to talk about it all would be first to feel it all and then somehow work on translating these thoughts, instances, and gaps between them into words. So many of today’s themes are large, weighted, sprawling, and thus unmanageable. Instead, we writers and poets (recorders of any selected truth) take a small reading light to tiny sections of life each time, hoping to illuminate part of what is recessed, what lies dormant. When I read the works of others, it is thrilling to see which truths become visible in the moment - what flickers today suddenly alight with meaning. We live in a time where so much is shared, but now more than ever, we feel the vast obscurity, too. We live in a time where a few centres of the brain are dominant, overused, and lit up by content, culture or what is popular or relevant. How do you move focus to even more of the quiet things that are changing your life?
How do we switch them into view to become more active and more alive in our choices? I’m talking about these things because I, too, love the culture, or so I am telling myself. I like to hear what is being said about what and who thinks what about whom. In fact, when I get off a long flight or when I am brushing my hair and doing no makeup makeup, or when I have to get ready to go out to a thing that I would rather not, an excellent way to calm myself down is to listen to a good old entertainment podcast. It’s how I can be here and not here. But can I drop into my body this way? Does this work, or is this a mere distraction? Quite often, the practice of half-listening helps me to numb out - a sure type of avoidance. No one wants to be turning over life’s vast questions every minute of every day, but should I be giving my ears and brain and all of these vital, here once, never coming again minutes over to the internet? I love to learn, I say to anyone who sees my YouTube algorithm and is horrified at the extensive range of rabbit holes uncovered. I’m just curious! I shout into the void.
I know the truth, though. I’m often looking to be hidden and protected, swaddled in other people’s voices—familiar-sounding tones—people I think I know. Is there any real comfort in this common practice of the time? Is it a needed break from too much thinking for myself? Is this a hack for hearing someone familiar so I don’t have to bother a friend with an impromptu phone call (seemingly an offence these days.) Yet I’m sure that when the experts talk about self-regulation, they don’t mean numbing out on other people’s content for two hours and then going to bed. Listening to strangers in this way ceases to be active. It’s not the same as, say, listening to a friend.
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