I didn’t write any words for today.
No. That’s not all together true.
There are words written. A medley of questions, collected thoughts, words read of overheard, words with starting and ending points that don’t connect or at least not in a way that might make sense to anyone besides myself.
I have had in mind to share more thoughts in raw form, without rearranging, meticulous editing and weaving, but this kind of unvarnished sharing is hard, and by hard I mean discomforting, so I talk myself out of it.
So actually, this is reason enough to do it. Sometimes the words just need writing. No critiquing, no criticizing. No overthinking. Just heart to page.
I feel incredibly ill-equipped in the current climate, not having the language to fully express what I feel, and wondering if what I do have is meaningful enough to put forth…
Collected Thoughts 01/14/2024:
I wonder if all the feelers, the empaths, feel so much because we are feeling for all those who cannot, those who are inept, those depraved, those indifferent.
With multiple genocides happening around the world, all of which the west, colonialism and white supremacy has had a hand in either creating and/or exacerbating, it has become undeniable to me that the majority of “leaders” and citizens of the “free world” suffer from the same kind of neurosis, a soullessness, a deep lacking of conscience and consciousness. How depraved and deranged one must be to believe that any person, entity, organization, religious sect, has right to decide who is worthy of life, and/or to what degree they are allowed to live.
I was raised by a mother who refused, and still refuses, to allow her children to ignore or be ignorant of the tethering that exists between all life.
If “protecting my peace” means that I do not look, so that I do not see what is happening to me, in front of me, or around me, that is not the kind of peace I aspire to achieve.
What does it mean to be free? Is it responsibility? For whom? For what? Is it ease? Is it work? A labor of love?
The deep work of knowing ourselves is as unpopular a movement as love. This deep work is most often conflated with or confused with the surface work of reading a few books, or listening to a few podcasts, reading a few think pieces, or attending a few talks and/or community service days. The deep work, often masked by posturing, is unpopular because it is actual work. Hard and sometimes grueling, this work invites and requires sitting with and in front of ourselves, and others, looking critically at who we are versus who we say we are, think we are, or position ourselves to look like we are being. It is the work of not just looking at but decidedly choosing to see our ugly, understand where we are most loving, and caringly careful, and why, and where we are indifferent and unfeeling; it is noticing what or to whom we give, and even pledge our attention, and what or whom we disregard and ignore. It’s the deep work of familiarizing ourselves with our own moral compasses and consciences and understanding what, or who, they lead us towards, and what, or who, they position us against.
Does your heart speak to you? If you say, “yes”, I’m asking you to transcribe it. If you say, “no”, I’m asking you what voice then do you hear?
Does love have a sound? If yes, what is it?
Grief is silent, and deafeningly loud, all at once.
Quote:
“Is that how we lived, then? But we lived as usual. Everyone does, most of the time. Whatever is going on is as usual. Even this is as usual, now.
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ― Margaret Atwood, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
This was a powerful way to approach this topic.
I think the fact that it was not overly formal matched the topic unusually well. Thanks for posting.
Hello! I do think that empaths and feelers feel and sense what others cannot. I really believe it's energy just floating around that because we are "in tuned" or "aware" or whatever you want to call it, we can sense it and others can't.