Walking Thoughts: Chapter 2
Borders of Being - Requesting a Relationship Check-In with the World
Location: Venice Beach, 33.9858388,-118.4777129
Thought: Borders of Being
What do a speeding world, a sibling squabble, and the year 2016 all have in common? (hint: the answer is the topic)
We’re speeding up
Since 2016, the earth started to noticeably accelerate, and is now spinning faster. The shortest recorded day ever was June 29th of this year, 1.59 milliseconds shorter than the average day. (Thanks The Shade Room, CBS News, and Leonid Zotov’s team.)A walk and talk with my brother
I’d been holding on to an issue for weeks, and before sun broke free from the muggy cloud cover at Kenneth Hahn, I brought it up with my brother. He rightfully defended the person he had been working so hard on, who was worthy of unconditional love, and who had done nothing wrong.
He reminded me: ”If you have an issue with someone, it has more to do with you than with the other person. The emotional disturbance is triggered by something that you perceive, and you have to figure out the root of that disturbance in order to find peace.” (in more or less words).
While I was right to speak my truth and bring up something that bothered me, he was right to bring up the dynamic between any two people that gives shape to a relationship. My issue with him existed in the space where we met — where my unique personhood smashed into his, and where assumptions roam like toxic wild boars if I don’t talk them through.The whole rest of the walk, I started to wonder where exactly the border lies between siblings ; in any conversation, where my experience ended and his began.
The line between self and other is hardest to see in familial bonds. However, this dilemma makes these relationships the best training grounds for every other relationship I hold in life. If:
1. familial relationships are the ones we understand best, and
2. the cause of anger is a lack in understanding, then
3. how many instances of anger are just misperceptions—and would we have none if we were able to speak over the space where one person ends and the other begins?I see our relationship with the world in a similar, familiar way. We were born into it; we take from it with every breath and react to it with every second. Our stories are enmeshed.
Now the world accelerates; now we accelerate. How much of that has to do with us? How much is part of the planet’s history that is none of our concern? I don’t know where the border in this relationship lies.
A Cyber-Psychology Fun Fact
A newly favorited “The Blindboy Podcast” 1 (so atmospherically pleasant from the accent as much as from the honesty) brought on a Cyber-Psychologist who studies online societal behavior. According to Dr. Nicola Fox Hamilton, distrust and malice towards one another rose significantly in 2016 with the presidential election of a certain Mr. Tronald Schlump. Since then, political discord has broken families apart ——including my own.
The fact that 2016 marks both a political schism and a global acceleration is too big of a coincidence and makes me wonder if a higher power is communicating to us our societal disease and warning us of the scarier-than-fiction future of what’s to come if we don’t heal together.
To me, this Big Work is integrally linked with the most foundational of human connection: communication in our relationships. Heal with each other, and we heal the planet. We save ourselves.
The Sun Still Sets
I sat on the beach and watched the sun set. I watched the tide— the same tide that scientists say is behind the world’s acceleration— bring the waves to the shore.
I put my toes in the cool sand, propped my knees up, and filmed a time-lapse. Immediately, people started doing shit. This was the most human activity I’ve captured onscreen to-date, and it gave me a detached fascination like I was observing bees in a hive.
A man caught a fish.
A couple kissed like they’d hired me to be their wedding photographer.
A surfer tried out twilight waves.
Two tourists screamed as ocean spray drenched them.
Dozens of people walked by with their, per unspoken LA law, extremely tiny dogs.
And all the while I thought, I want a relationship check-in with the world.
As takers, breakers, and mess-makers, have we damaged it with yet another symptom of climate change?
Is it okay?
Maybe not. Maybe it won’t be okay later, and it might not be okay now. Even with all the science combined, we don’t know for sure. We can’t communicate so clearly.
But one thing I knew for certain in that moment is that I sat and felt peace enjoying a beautiful sunset. No matter the trouble, the world models what magnificence is. I’m sure it knows all the answers. It loves us and teaches us if we’re willing to learn.
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Thanks, Jordan and Christina!