It's not normal
To be this tired, frustrated, and self-concerned
I read recently that over 1 billion people will be displaced due to climate change by 2050, and I felt numb. The natural human response to something like that is rage, grief, pure heartbreak. But my response was almost unnoticeable. I didn’t feel. I could have been reading anything.
You could call it “compassion fatigue.” But I think it’s worse than that.
Outside my office window today, there are hotel workers picketing. They are fighting for their dignity, disguised as increased minimum wage. This union has a lot less coverage than the one in Hollywood, and mostly no one cares. Because it’s not the arts, it’s service workers.
I found myself a bit annoyed at the blowing whistles, as I stepped into an ultra bougey ice bath. Luckily, I had a moment to check myself. Who the fuck do I think I am? I sat there for five minutes, freezing my ass off, staring at a dot on the wall as I thought hard about the way my mother raised me — to fucking care.
There is some part of me that’s still addicted to the comfort of the stories that were sold to me, and the incubated place in society that I hold. One that seeks out overpriced healthy foods, fitness classes, saunas, therapists, and travel experiences. One that justifies working on problems that are cosmetic. I deal with my shit, sure. But I’m well aware the flavor of my traumas and heartbreaks are table stakes in this society. I don’t like this part of me that sits on the sidelines.
So, you’re telling me — a billion people, who largely didn’t experience the economic benefits of increased carbon in the atmosphere — will be displaced from their homes in the next 30 years? Even if that data point is wrong by a few hundred million, how is that normal to just say? How the fuck is that something we are just “reporting on” before moving to the next bullshit thing?
There’s a conspiracist in me that believes it’s distraction by design. Overwhelm by design. Hopelessness by design. Whatever it is, it’s blocking us from accessing what really matters, sucked in by the deluge of information and juggling a bunch of unimportant bullshit. Most of us are out here trying to survive, and then there’s those of us that have gotten to have space in our lives to think, and we realize that this whole thing is just a total crock. Naturally, we do our very best to completely escape it all.
This escapism is a covert cocktail of nihilism and narcissism. We don’t actually believe that life has any inherent meaning, do we? Because, despite reading Krishnamurti, doing all the psychedelics, and studying Human Design, we are using these tools to escape this world to protect ourselves. We are leveraging the same consciousness — based in guilt, fear, and greed — and cloaking it in spirituality.
I was at the beach in LA yesterday, and frankly annoyed by the amount of people there. It felt like the purity of nature had been completely disrupted, and there was no peace and quiet. And then, I had this very thought — I want to be in this life with these people. I don’t want some quiet, incubated experience in the countryside where I’m ignorant to the human story, weaved together as it is with love and fear.
I want to be living inside that story, as one of the people. And I’d absolutely risk my fucking life for a chance that this human song continues. So, what do I have to complain about? Nothing. I’m not expected to write or conduct a whole symphony, but just to show up and play a few notes when I receive my cue. And I know, I can, at the very least, do that.
In one of my favorite books, When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanathi, a doctor-in-training actively dying of brain cancer, writes a story of another resident-friend at the hospital. She was prepping for a 10 hour surgery, which would be cancelled if they found “mets” (metastasized cancer) on the patient’s brain. She was exhausted, and so she silently prayed for mets so she could go home.
The surgeon opened up the patient’s skull, looked at his brain, and it was covered in cancer. A death sentence. Score.
Paul found his friend in the hallway just after this took place — absolutely inconsolable. She told him the story, and how disgusted she was with the fact that she’d inadvertently prayed for that patient to die. Obviously not thinking that on purpose, but in being so myopically focused on her own fatigue, had accidentally wished death on someone else.
I tell this story a lot because I think it characterizes something so uniquely human — something I feel in myself. We are the stewards of animal bodies — with real physical needs like water, food, rest, movement, touch, love, meaning, and stillness — and at the same time, have the capacity to love and care so fucking deeply that we will sacrifice our animal needs for that love and care. Even to our own demise.
There’s no winning at this sometimes, and these needs are often at odds. Like we are either sacrificing ourselves for the good of all or spending way too much time numbing ourselves with selfish pursuits — silly hobbies, success-chasing, trauma releasing, shooting up. We are either attached or avoidant, selfless or selfish. In our swinging the pendulum back and forth, we seem to have lost the plot. It’s not that we don’t care; it’s that we can’t find the energy to.
With all the problems in the world, it’s easy to just give up there. To not try and seek the balance point, and find a realistic path forward that embraces our animal needs and our big hearts.
It all reminds me of that famous E.B. White quote:
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
Most of us stop there, stuck at the level of the problem itself — a predicament as old as time. But E.B. continues:
“If we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.”
The only solution I can find is something to the effect that we must play our way to progress. Progress, not measured by increases in GDP or technological advancement, but by increases in basic human dignity, creativity, and connection. We must each cultivate our own inner sense of who we are and where we’re going, and invest our creative, social, and analytic capabilities in re-imagination of our culture and civics. We cannot simply focus on ourselves or the world; we must find a way to do both.
The task is impossible, and made more impossible by that fact that we’re all exhausted. We need to take care of ourselves, and we need to keep going. What Keats called “negative capability” — the skill of holding to contradictory ideas in your mind at one time, and operating from them. The solution is not either-or, it’s always and.
Ironically, this is what Adam Smith, the Father of Capitalism, advocated for in many of his seminal works. He did not believe we were yet capable of a shared global consciousness, or that we should cede everything to the invisible hand. He advocated for close social ties and deep care for others — on a near tribal level.
There’s no denying that humans are incredible, beautiful beings, and the way our lives intersect is often complicated. There is a zero sum nature to the way we’ve set up the world, and our actions impact each other in ways we cannot measure or always see.
And when we are tired, scared, or anxious, we drop to the level of a zero-sum survival game, and forget about the beauty. There’s almost nothing we won’t do to get some rest, some love, some money when we’re in this state. And the truth is, right now, we’re all pretty much in this state — tired, scared, and anxious. Some of us more than others. But all of us, nonetheless.
The hard truth is: the problems in front of us are going to require that we do ten hour surgeries when we’re exhausted. We will have to run back to back marathons when we’re scared. We will have to get out there and join the picket line, or spend extra hours at the office working on problems that seem impossible to solve when we’re anxious. We also need to get down and play with our kids, go on back country ski trips, and throw BBQs with the neighbors — after long days spent fighting the good fight — to remind ourselves that this is what we’re fighting for. We must not be heroes or hedonists, but totally and radically human.
The judgements and negative thoughts that I allow to slip into my mind are a byproduct of growing up in a society that believes certain ideas about human nature (that we are all dumb), and life (that it’s nasty, brutish, and short).
But these are not fundamental truths. And when I’m rested, connected, and feeling totally alive, I simply cannot find a way to believe in them anymore. At some level, that’s what a five minute ice bath does to me. It shakes me awake to reality, and gives me just enough space to hear the whistles blowing in a new way. They aren’t a background annoyance anymore, but a unique part of the human song. Calling me forward, to play my part.
I no longer believe it’s about finding the energy to fight the forces that be or even the judgements in our minds, but about focusing on love and, in that, accepting the fundamental contradictions inherent in the human condition. We might not be able to “save the world” but there are things we can do on a daily basis to check ourselves and our random frustrations and annoyances. To love our people, our planet, ourselves is simply to acknowledge what’s really here, and hope we can create something better from that truth.
If we can find the locus of that truth and love first, the strength, courage, and energy will follow. And if we can do that as individuals, and come together with all of our contradictions, concerns, and care, I believe more than anything, the cosmic score will take care of itself.