Allow the tattered shards of happiness
I'm pausing today to share wisdoms for living out these fragmented (end) times
I think I have this right.
A lot of us here are despairing about the world, and the way some of our fellow humans are responding to it. I’m feeling it. Or “smelling” it, more to the point1.
I’ve been posting quite a bit about my support for the Voice, which I also wrote about here last week2. It’s prompting heated reactions in, seemingly, everyone. Which is just such a crying shame and it has left me despairing. The Voice was envisaged as a device that would bring peace and coherence to Australia (and beyond). But it has not played out this way. I’m comfortable attributing responsibility here. The No campaign has turned things political. The misinformation they have consciously peddled has confused and inflamed. And when humans get confused and inflamed we go small, we can go into a denial state from which we defer to fear responses - we lash out, we go tribal, we grasp at theories that posit an enemy “out there”. Our ability to expand, to be compassionate, poetic, fully human(e) is quashed.
For anyone who has done “work” to move beyond their fear response when challenged, it can be so bloody hard to witness angry, cruel and patently wrong vitriol in others, especially in people we know.
So I’ve dug around this week to find some mindsets and spiritual approaches that can provide some insight or relief. We need it, I feel.
(PS It’s actually two years to the day since I started this Substack. I had written up a celebration post, with an announcement about a new project, but I’ve decided to save it until next week.)
We are not as unkind as we think
As a starting point, you might want to listen to my latest Wild interview with experimental psychologist Dr Adam Mastroianni.
Adam recently co-published (with happiness expert Daniel Gilbert) a paper that demonstrated how we all (literally) think the world is in moral decline, that we are less honest, less kind, and that we need to return to the golden days of yore. He makes the point that EVERYONE has ALWAYS thought this. And that ALL of us are wrong. Instead, a bunch of cognitive biases (and fear responses) are at play that lead us to think this way. A bunch of you have listened to the episode already and told me it was a relief to hear human “ugliness” put through a different, and more uplifting, lens.
Denial (in both senses of the word) is normal…
I’ve been deep-diving various texts and talks about how to cope during these wobbly times. The work of Rev. Michael Dowd is fascinating me. He talks about how denial has always been widespread during the hundreds of civilisational collapses throughout history, particularly among those benefiting from the existing order. There’s a well-known quote by US politician Upton Sinclair to this effect:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Dowd’s advice is to accept that denial is simply what a lot of humans do at such times. We can’t change this. Once we accept this inevitability, we can move forward progressively, perhaps influence others out of their denial with our calm acceptance, and focus on choosing the right kind of tribe to be with until the troubles pass.
As the world gets more complex, more uncertain and more unstable, denial (and the subsequent fear response and denying of kindness to others) will only dial up. So. The sooner we get cool with the truth of things, the better we will cope going forward. This wisdom has helped me out massively this week. I feel enlivened by the call to arms it presents.
A golden Charles Bukowski wisdom about finding joy in spite of things
Said it before, say it again… Reading another’s words regarding a mindset that we are aching for, or are ready for, can take us to that mindset. In mere pithy paragraphs.
In the considered placement of phrases of care by a good writer we can be drawn down into peace, stillness, mindfulness…and the “what matters-ness”.
This act of considered care from the writer makes us feel safe to do this and I’ve shared previously some of my favourite quotes for understanding and adoring life. (I encourage new subscribers here to go check it out, and to read the comments where the community chime in with - frankly, better - quotes.)
The poet Teju Cole discussed this on Krista Tippett’s podcast. The role of the artist is “to get people to concentrate more”. Cole continues:
“The artist raises a palm as if to say hush and listen and let’s be still.”
This considered line, too, takes us straight there, right?
I’m a big fan of Charles Bukowski’s tussles through his various tortures. I trust him. I trust his placement of pain on a page. Have a read of the below…I’ll see you again at the bottom.
“Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man, I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman…. I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind…. Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak and addled mind. But as I went on … it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn’t different from the others, I was the same… Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty….
“Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt…. I re-formulated. I don’t know when, date, time, all that but the change occurred. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful.
“Then- it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those…. I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness…. And finally I discovered real feelings of others, unheralded, like lately, like this morning, as I was leaving, for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there…. so still, I ached for her life, just being there under the covers. I kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. Feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.”
I love these lines:
“Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you.”
“Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times.”
“I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness”…
The specific words are telling. We allow peace and fulfilment to happen to us. But at the same time, it’s a choice. It’s a choice to allow the unfurling and to not fight for certain outcome.
It’s also a choice to re-formulate ordinariness as beautiful and fulfilling and to welcome the tattered shards of happiness. You could put it this way: if you lower the bar, you will likely meet your expectations of life. And once you know this (and we all do, right?), then it’s a matter of choosing to reformulate our lives in this way.
Where does this all fit into our current felt despair? Well, I was asked in an interview this week how I cope with it all (but specifically this idea of not having hope any more, but living to truth instead, as per this post). I replied that I hold a bunch of things in my being. I hold the despair. I hold the truth that denial is a common human response (and will only be dialling up). And I hold a joy for living in the meantime, amid the despair.
Challenging times often lower the bar for enjoyment. Witnessing angry denial all around us makes some of the stuff we normally do seem very meh. Like, what’s the point of that holiday in Bali when Jody next door is telling the world a Yes vote is racist! Far from being a limitation, I feel grim circumstances, when we fully accept them, actually bring us in closer to the things that do truly bring us joy. You know, all the stuff the studies tell us actually work (and that my regular question, “What is left if we lose it all?” tries to point to). For me, just now, this takes the form of connecting here with you lot, hearing how you’re grappling, and then providing (paltry) consolation where I can. It’s listening to the kids across the road in the childcare centre screaming their opinions and enthusiasms all day. Bless kids! It’s really living as though life could be very short and saying yes to all generously issued invites.
You?
Sarah xx
I often smell feelings around me. I’m sure there is a name for this kind of synthesising syndrome. Anyone?
I should flag, the despairing comments did not appear here, but on my Instagram and Facebook feeds. For some perspective, my posts about the Voice on Instagram have attracted huge engagements, but also led to more than 1000 people unfollowing me each time.
Reading another’s words regarding a mindset that we are aching for, or are ready for, can take us to that mindset. In mere pithy paragraphs.
In the considered placement of phrases of care by a good writer we can be drawn down into peace, stillness, mindfulness…and the “what matters-ness”.
YES to this! Currently the book that I feel that raised palm of the poet is “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Her words are the essence of the way forward that we all need, this beautiful blend of poetry and hard fact in an entrancing prose. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to feel swept away by soothing poetry while also staying grounded in a current non fiction space to learn and feel empowered/emboldened to go on!
Sarah, I sent a couple highlighted quotes to you on instagram when I first started reading it, as the themes just remind me of you time and time again. I would LOVE to hear you 2 in conversation on your podcast one day, if you’re ever looking for new humans to encounter.
Thank you for this post. It is exactly the affirmation of life I needed this morning. 💖
I’ve removed Instagram and FB apps from my phone and only look every now and then. I did see one of your posts on Instagram in support of the Voice and the huge number of responses, many angry, accusatory in tone. It reminded me why I deleted. In that excerpt from Bukowski, everybody nudging for advantage, trying to prove oneself. But the outcome is empty and reinforces that notion that other humans are awful.
Here on Substack, with fellow subscribers we’re more likely to be in agreement, also kind & curious. Yes, we might be limiting exposure to certain opinions as we’ve gravitated to a tribe we feel we belong to. Mind you there has been disagreement here, but it’s been much more expansive and respectful. It’s calmer, like Bukowski’s reformulating... and oh, do I need that!
The many headed beast of news media, social media, viral influencers, 24hr news, fake news, conspiracy theories can’t be wound back. For me trying to stay engaged usually leads to a feeling of desperation. Like when you’re in a noisy restaurant, you need to talk a bit louder to be heard, but you’re adding to the requirement to keep getting just a bit louder. It feels like a loss of control.
and that’s no mistake.
It’s by design - the chokepoint capitalism model. The Zuckerbergs, Musks, Murdochs, Bezos, Apple, Google... need I go on?!
Very hard to feel happiness in that tight space.