I think there's a lot left unsaid about what it means to all have cell phones. Or, the things said are of a constant refrain. Hearing Drew Barrymore and Stephen Colbert talk about the 90s as the last time it was great to be famous has stuck with me. How much are we prone to being anxious by default because, unconsciously, we functionally can't fuck up anymore? How many people really want to go viral for losing their shit? How long have we been under the veil of "cancellation?" I think it's psychologically important to be able to not just have the room to fuck up, but cope and grieve with it in a way that isn't being scrutinized at the same time. In writing, I've clearly taken the opposite approach, but I recognized my need for accountability and sense that I had any remote control over what I was feeling or how I moved in the world. Most people ain't trying to write.
Our entire set of cultural narratives regarding redemption, forgiveness, or growth are knee-capped from the beginning. You're pre-scared of any bad thing you could do or what bad things you've done will say about you decades later. People have generally treated me as a poster child for what's to be shamed and erased, at least those with whom I perhaps had a more superficial relationship than I felt. What if I never learned to adapt and move on or incorporate? What if this passionately anxious bubble is squeezing every interaction and it's altogether impossible to orient after the path towards meaningful relationships has been obliterated?
How have we adapted? We've turned the arrested perpetual shame into fascism. We've decided to double-down on the bad bits and try to force them into something to be proud of. We've tried to distance ourselves from personal identities or cultural norms in service to brands and algorithmic destinies. The only currency left is attention, whether it takes the form of shame, grievance, or entertainment doesn't really matter. The point is to let yourself be hijacked or create the next hijacking thing. Can you spin or market instead of embody? Can you read the pre-approved script and do your time in negative attention jail? Rest assured, we're all waiting on the story of your comeback well-independent of what or whether you've learned or changed anything along the way.
You're not allowed on the path to "responsibility" or "accountability," not just because it wouldn't be recognized were it to still exist, but also no one is interested. Here, a fun irony to what I've pursued in writing. Practically, we're generally first-world poor, stressed, forcefully humbled by the world we've inherited, streaming, and doggedly trying to bolster that brand narrative that makes it fun to dance on Tik-Tok and talk depression. This is not to belittle the means in which people are trying to cope and connect, but doesn't it just feel way sadder, desperate, and misplaced than we're acknowledging? I'm imagining a judge do a hand dance as he explains why he's decided to grant the removal of your children. Simply calling that a terrible and uncomfortable statement of their judgment wouldn't begin to cover how we arrived at that display.
For many years I've been playing a game of ongoing reorientation and reassessment. I've been trying to figure out if the pieces in front of me could lead to the kind of world I imagine. I've been “hopeful” and getting myself worked up as my head turns over all of the potential things I could be or who we could be to each other. I've tried incredibly hard to “accept people where they are” and gotten dramatically more polished in how I speak to people. I've looked for ways to approach the most difficult situations that, obviously doesn't exhaustively cover how they might be understood, but allows for healthy doubt and a sense of progress. By default, that project is a “forgiving” one.
Forgiveness is a concept that has definitely evolved for me. I read or heard something recently that “the kingdom of heaven” is to be recognized here on Earth and within yourself when you exercise your capacity for forgiveness. I find the notion insightful and a considerably easier sell than all the metaphysical bullshit. To forgive used to mean that I just understood something well enough that I didn't have to obsessively think about it anymore. That's what put a barrier between corrosive thoughts about my mom and my otherwise better mental health as I learned more about generational trauma. Do I forgive her as a person? Nah, she'd need to discover and define accountability and responsibility alongside what might be explained by her upbringing, just like I try to.
There's a similar line I take with the “friends” I romanticized. I don't hold petty resentments about how often or not we talk. I watched the series of decisions to talk or not in deliberately shitty ways. I've watched in-group out-group and fear takeover. I've been an array of caricatures. I feel the silence. In my heart of hearts, I know what I wish for in terms of things being “better” or how I wish I didn't reflexively hang my concept of what could be better on anything requiring their input. But isn't that the rub and contradiction again? We don't have a shared path. We don't have articulated if remotely salient goals, let alone ones we share. I can't be your friend without you. Why I want anything less of a friend than what I'm prepared to be is my baggage to unpack.
Our community, our friendship, or what draws our attention cannot continue to exist rooted in this diffuse shame and fear. You can't be primed to fight or flee without wholly degrading your faculties needed to assess and feel embedded in the world. I know I need other people. I know I can only get so far, if you can call it “far” at all, by myself. I know I desire the understanding of what's happening to me, why I take courses of action, or what I choose to pursue. I know I've managed to understand, forgive, and incorporate the worst parts of myself independent of outside judgments. Are we capable of doing that on the whole? Will privacy, ambiguity, or what it means to really struggle and prevail instantiate as mockery and romantic tropes?
The ease of access and interconnections is always haunting. Don't you want to be reminded of your difficult past and follow the people who've left? They're right there, a click away. Haven't thought about them in months or years? We can fix that. Thought you were over it and moved on? Even if you have, let's suggest just intermittently enough that you haven't. Let's re-fire that drama you've otherwise incorporated or hashed a dozen times. For a brain like mine, I'm in a kind of eyes-stapled-open hell if I can't spit out what's vying to stay stuck on repeat. I even know it's going to get stuck and how I need to respond, and it doesn't make it any easier to feel my brain baste in those juices.
I try to build the kind of environments and maintain the kind of relationships that will better serve that mental propensity. Wherever I'm looking or whatever I'm working on, I want it to be something that adds, helps, or is relevant to one or hundred goals I'm pursuing in any moment. When you do that enough, you significantly weaken that which is lesser or distracting in it's power to overtake your attention and ongoing cognition. You're not reduced to a cliché or a meme or mindlessly reenacting the trauma patterns your brain may have trained on. Whether you write or just have the best people to talk to, I think we all need to up our effort in recognizing what we're paying attention to and why. We have to rebuild the path and consider that we may have yet to even bothered with traversing it.
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