64 Comments

I've become so cynical and resigned, apropos of *everything (most of which you've mentioned). But it's not my true nature. I can't stay here if I want to be on this side of my recovery. Thanks for the bit about hope. xo

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I feel exactly the same.

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Well fucking said.

Now more than ever, (I believe ) we need people who build bridges from one place to another. (I use the word place on purpose bc lost IS indeed a place , one of the only places/spaces where intensely paying attention to surroundings, inner and outer, looking for a sign post, guidance, and deeply hoping to find a way out, takes place.)

Your article (to me) expresses where we are. I appreciate the honesty in pointing out biases and reading how you work through them to get to the other MF side. Invaluable and practical - very much building a bridge.

I also appreciate the comparison of climate change to finger pointing, blame, not listening to someone bc they said something that was not liked, etc. Moving beyond these ways of being is crossing the bridge- the one within.

A teacher of mine shared how creating new neural pathways was like building and then crossing a bridge. Collectively, maybe that’s what we are doing?

Either way, I love your writing and definitely want to hear more.

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This really sums it up for me: “In other words: Any large-scale, intractable issue of our time is not unsolvable because of a lack of emergent solutions or technology, but because we cannot overcome our differences or get over ourselves enough to work across discordant beliefs and values.”

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Thank you for this piece, for the excellent book recommendations, and for linking Lauren Groff’s fascinating writing practice.

I heard someone else’s Tucker-Carlson-tainted, anti-trans-fueled algorithm at the dog park a few weeks ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. This article inspired me to maybe turn these feelings into words.

We truly are living in such wild times. Love you always 🤘🏽

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turn those feelings to words!! Love you back.

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A thought: “getting along” is a practice we have to be kinda forced into. Schools try, but what about in adult life? I live in Norway off and on, and when you quit or are fired most people have three months notice. In my observation this has been wonderful for forcing people who no longer want to work together (whoever initiated it either employer or employee) forcing people to keep doing their work, keep polite with colleagues, even have a goodbye lunch. Its long enough that the disagreement has faded a bit, and people part more friendly.

That our workplaces in America don’t treat us with respect is like a model for not treating each other with respect. And it is this environment we should actually be forced to get along as good practice for a more peaceful society.

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This essay also got me thinking about the American workplace and how little room there is for vulnerability at any level. For upper managers to the least empowered workers, performance is measured by a perfection standard. To the extent that such performance that falls short of 100% (whatever that means), "deficiencies" are concealed (eg CEOs denying / ignoring employee grievances for fear it implicated their "leadership") or punished (eg warehouse workers scored, and disciplined, on the speed of their performance). Zero tolerance. Zero grace. Nothing to talk about and very few labor unions to force a conversation.

I'm not connecting the dots on my fuller thought yet but it has something to do with the need for more space in the American workplace for workers on all rungs of the ladder to be heard, which requires vulnerability on all rungs of the ladder, which starts with, as you note, authentic respect for one another as humans. Or something like that. This is a foreign concept to contemporary American workers (because we learn that we "serve" at the behest of our employers) so we have a lot of learn / relearn. I love to think about the possibility that vibrant labor organizing happening in the US right now moves us closer to this vulnerable, and transformative space but who knows?

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This footnote right here is my favorite part and reminds me of the History and Systems of Psychology class I took in grad school. Most things are a rebellion against the the thing or idea that immediately preceded it. (Which sadly apparently includes Gen Z praising Bin Laden 🙄)

“Think of how the enlightenment (rational, modernity) and individuality/meritocracy was a response to what came before, which was organized religion (rule-based, communal>self, theistic), or how deconstructionism was a response to Grand Narratives, or how Gen Z doesn’t drink alcohol because all their Gen X parents owned beer bongs. We swing in the opposite direction.“

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I AM SO GLAD YOU READ THE FOOTNOTES!

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Ahhh you replied to my comment 😁 I might be fangirling just a little! I found your work via Emily McDowell and the Quitted podcast. I enjoy your writing and always learn a lot from your POV. And I’m a nerd, so I almost always read the footnotes 🤣

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I usually try to!! 🥰

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Thank you for righting my initial bias against Hassan. I feel the need to catch myself more in these assumptions based on ridiculous clickbait headlines and my my own emotional knee-jerk reaction to anything The New Yorker puts out.

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Yes! Keep working. I find it fascinating that you included link to Loren Groff's work process, which (at the time) seems to mirror your own. Your first drafts of your first project put in a kind of banker's box somewhere (but not into the fire). This latest project possibly related to the remembered truths of the first or sprung fully formed from the ashes. Not sure which, yet--but yes, please, continue. Your work is so valuable and so true. We are breaking--and we are leaping. Into the fire or into love (or both). And occasionally falling back into fear, before we take that same leap, again and again, 'til some light, winged, holy thing rises and takes flight.

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Ooof. Thank you, so very much. That’s a lovely perspective and I appreciate it.

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It's as if you laid this offering at my feet saying - this, this is why you're feeling the way you do. XOxoxo

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Aww thank you so much Jessica.

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One of my favorite lyrics from Wicked is “People are so ill at ease with moral ambiguities.” We need to flex those muscles and your thoughts and writing are excellent personal trainers. It’s so easy to get discouraged and mentally and emotionally “give up” because we can’t make grand gestures. We go home because we can’t go big. But we can engage “cathedral thinking” and place one stone at a time, knowing we won’t live to see the cathedral finished. We do this by refusing to dehumanize those who hold different opinions, by using reusable grocery bags, by taking 10 minutes each day to appreciate a tree or squirrel. (Thanks to Linda Kohanov for the cathedral metaphor.) Discomfort will ensue and that’s good and non-fatal. And transformative. Rock on sister!

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YES.

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"We are breaking, which means we are leaping." Yes . Please, more on this. And thank you. Krista Tippet has been working with many of these ideas lately, would love to hear you and she in conversation.

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lol me too. I thought her podcast was over?

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Nope, she's back and seems to be honing in also on the difficulty of holding conflicting ideas and the possibilities for liberation that are emerging in spite of (or as a result of) all of the heartbreak and destruction.

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RE this: "but I’m curious about what you think, and if you’re even interested in it." Love it. More please.

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Thanks Larrold!

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I agree with all of this wholeheartedly, and find it both terrifying and exhilarating. Our current destruction of the status quo can only bring about a radical new future through some level of self-immolation. It reminds me of the fake squid alien in Watchmen uniting humanity, except in case of a single individual producing the catastrophe, we all manufacture it every day by prioritizing our differences with each other over our similarities.

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yes to this.

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Mind blown. I read all this and Monty Python comes to mind: “Run away, run away.” So many things, so much stuff, overwhelming. Pull back, simplify. I’m trying to uncomplicated my life, what’s really important. You only have so many fucks to give, as some people have said. Make ‘em count, you know. Love you Holly, so much

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Joe ♥️

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This is EXACTLY what I needed. Thank you.

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I feel on both a micro and macro level we are forced to confront our imperfections - not just of ourselves but the systems with which we have been encouraged to see as perfect. One example might be medicine (listen to Kate Kettrick describing this in a youtube video with Charles Eistenstein) .

Everywhere all of us are trying to hide those bulgy bits of ourselves and our lives that we see as undesirable and as a result shameful in order to feel good about ourselves. On a macro level the politicians and corporations marketing promises are attempting to hide the gruelling statistics indicating declining wellbeing, their inability to be able to resolve international disputes by talking without engaging arms and the massive gap between rich and poor.

I don't know about you but hitting rock bottom in myself, and therefore potentially in our local and global communities means there is no more energy left for hiding or public relations gloss both in them and the swallowing of that in us ... there is just too much of the shit is oozing out everywhere. Only then do I really accept the need for change - and it would seem to me that a big part of that change would be to acknowledge as you have done - sometimes we get things wrong, we make mistakes and as you have described we acknowledge the need to do things differently and we commit to that path because when we think back, the shudder we experience of the memory keeps us oriented towards something different.

It is tempting to think that those on the world stage are the ones that need to do this but all of us have the power to stop swallowing the bullshit story that we should be perfect and instead own up to the messiness of ourselves and our relationships with each other. When we do that, it is much easier to first spot and then challenge the glib storyline, the bullshit excuse or the improper actions of those who claim to represent us. In that way we all change the storyline we live by.

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