how to hurt our way through collapse (beautifully), part 1
fine-tuning an important conversation, drawing on sumud, Francis Weller and Alan Watts.
Right, so I want to continue the chat we started earlier in the week about the sadness and numbness that, it would appear, many of us here are swirling in1. And trying to feel into. But struggling to. Even though we know that the felt edge is where we need to be.
From the life-affirming comments section (which I really encourage you check out here if you haven’t already; the wisdoms and kindnesses abound), I sense that we are ripe for feeling fully…but that we’re somehow needing a portal, a psychological prod or navigating thesis, that can carry us over this strange, everything-shifting threshold.
Simply feeling into things (even though this really is the portal, per my argument) can be a bridge too far when you’ve lived your life in a rational, capitalist matrix that reduces feelings to yet another commodity. For many of us, just feeling things is so alien and very, very uncomfortable. So we need a guiding point for doing this radical (spiritual?) thing that we know we need - and want - to be doing. I know when I’m moving into these right-brained realms I often require a solid, left-brain-ish raison d’etre or raison de faire (reason for doing something) to assist me in taking the leap over that edge.
You the same?
Shall I propose such a raison that might help?
As it happens, a week or two ago I met up with my friend Aziz Abu Sarah, the Palestinian peace negotiator who has been a guest on my Wild podcast. We had breakfast together in Paris and we were quizzing each other on how (and if) we are, you know, coping. And what point or unifying raison de faire we were clinging to in these surreal times…
Aziz shared with me how when he was in high school the Israelis killed a classmate and, as an act of protest, he and his friends refused to go to school. The leader of the resistance group he belonged to called Aziz in, however, and told him, No! You must not pull out! The ultimate act of protest and resistance is to keep going to school, to keep showing up, to keep living.
Aziz then recited to me his favourite Mahmoud Darwish poem, “On This Earth”, which this leader had quoted to him at the time. This is it: