A theme has been rolling around in my head and heart in the last few months, and I have not had a “way in” to the topic that has felt fully honest. At least not honest enough to commit to paper. Consider this rambling below a pencil-weight commitment.
Broadly, the topic is about reactivity and the culture of opinions and polarization we live in today. Again and again, I find myself reading or listening to something on both sides of the cultural divide where I feel a strong shudder of big emotion — there is often some well-argued agenda that is persuasive but single-sided. I am very susceptible, I find, to arguments. And then these notions are reinforced through various AI-fed feedback loops led by constant tracking. I start believing everything. Take any idea on the internet. And I have been there.
I see this happening with me again and again — I venture into the shouty, emotional rooms of Instagram or even just do my daily scroll of news sites, and suddenly my nervous system is on high alert. And then I would like to tell you exactly what I am thinking. (Is this not happening to almost everyone on the Internet in America right now?)
My self-soothing today happens in a variety of ways such as engaging with the topics, disengaging with the topics, dialoguing with others about it, reading more, or tuning out. Recently, I have been finding I can’t even self-soothe my way out of the fast current of big news-driven emotions these days. I just end up buying some stupid tooth whitener to feel better and the result is still low-grade anxiety. I am trying to hang out more in the space of “Just because I do or don’t agree with XYZ doesn’t mean I am right.” (But I AM right!)
This feels about as close as I can get to equanimity these days.
If there’s a thesis to this post, it’s this: More inward and less outward.
In April, I went back to California to visit friends, and family and attend a beautiful yoga retreat in Boonville. The wet winter brought deep green and wildflowers. Each day we had hours to ourselves to hike, rest, read, or whatever. The only encouragement was to “not use the phone.” And I mostly followed the prompt. I had a single room to myself that included bunk beds. So I burrowed into a little cave in that lower bunk and went into a cozy retreat space. The quieter voice let me know that my move to Santa Fe was complete, and I could finally say a real goodbye to California.
From there, when I rejoined my device, I decided to cancel and unsubscribe from every news and event listing alert I had set for San Francisco Bay Area. Those daily updates from the Chronicle, KRON, Mission Local, and other outlets kept me connected in myriad ways. It is time.
Then like magic, my tenant on Shotwell Street emailed me last week to let me know she’s not going to renew the lease in July. This brings me the actual news of the day: I’ll be returning to the task of selling my apartment in the Mission this spring and summer.
Fingers crossed that it’s a smoother process leading to a final sale this time around. (Ok, one opinion if I may: The San Francisco Doom Loop is Fake News ;-)
Instead this would be a better news headline to click on: “New Owner to Move into Mission Victorian Loft.”