It's interesting when signs and signals show up again and again. I often seek them out, but I'm realizing lately that when we actually need their wisdom, they'll practically smack us in the face.
I've been hearing, reading, and seeing a lot about letting go and learning to surrender. It seems that autumn is an opportune time to practice this, anyway - considering the season's natural states of slowing down, shedding, darkening and quieting. I tend to want to clean up my outdoor spaces and donate things I don't need or haven't used throughout the year. I want to tidy the house. I want to spend more time in solitude.
But in this particular season, this practice really doesn't feel like it's about me. The shedding process is alive for all of us, I would argue. Even since mid-summer, I've been feeling the urge to slowly back away from my own public-facing endeavors - not abandon them entirely, but instead take the time to reflect on how much energy I'm putting into, and getting out of them. I don't think most of us realize the amount of energy we take on when we consume content. It's too easy to fall into the cycle of mindless scrolling, going until we lose sensation in our bodies. Until the shock value numbs us entirely.
As I've partaken in the Instagram Reel scroll recently, I've been fed videos of people trying to remind me where I am. They ask if I can feel my feet. They ask me where my left hand is. How long it's been since I last had a sip of water. Every time I come across one of these videos, I come out of my trance, close the app, and stand up to move on to something else. I'm grateful to be seeing more content like this on my feed - like tiny particles in a miles-long dust storm - because what else is there to see? What are we actually hoping to find in all this time we waste online?
Whatever it is, we will certainly be interrupted by images of dead children in Palestine. We'll witness a house get swept away by flooding in Asheville. We'll watch a veteran meteorologist break down over the projection of the latest storm. We'll hear the most outrageous and hateful snippets of the most recent debate. We'll find people making jokes out of it. We'll receive the breaking news of yet another person of color killed, yet another Cop City breaking ground, yet another natural disaster in our wake, yet another reminder that our time in peace and comfort (if we even have it currently) is running out. These outlets won't let us forget that there is something to fear at every turn. The algorithm works best with anger and shock. But in all this time, it never quite feels wasted, because we're searching for something...
I don't know enough about the human psyche to confirm this, but it reminds me an awful lot of how we used to have to confront predators in order to hunt, eat, and survive. The only difference is that the modern predator is manmade.
I want to remind us of a few very practical things in this moment. First: it is only right to feel overwhelmed in this environment we've created. We are engaging with way more than our minds are able to handle - way too many emotions, people, places, and tragedies. It's information overload all the time, but the dopamine we receive from online engagement is too addictive for many of us to let go of. We will continue to put ourselves in harm's way in order to chase the rush,. because we are addicts. Plain and simple. We will continue to feel overwhelmed, nauseated, and utterly outraged by the stories we encounter, because it is written specifically to do that. The person who made it wants us to be enraged enough to engage.
But it's never a mutual benefit, and we'll never feel better. This predator is a lot stronger, a lot harder to kill than the ones our ancestors dealt with. It continues to get the best of us. We're going to lose its game. We also lose our peace of mind, our comfort, our rationality, and perhaps even our critical thinking. It depletes us.
So it's to be expected that so many of us are terrified, upset, dysregulated, and exhausted. As I heard a friend put it recently, it's the "kind of exhaustion that eight hours of sleep can't solve." Instead, we might feel like we need to cry for days on end. Hide under the covers in fetal position. Grieve at the altar. Bury our naïve visions of the world. I'll say it as many times as I have to: If this is how you feel right now, you're the sane one.
Second: We have a choice in how we allow the pain into our lives.
It's an intervention - the kind that any seasoned addict eventually comes to. And making this decision does not negate the fact that the endless list of world tragedies are happening. They are. We should absolutely still care. But how can we, when our bodies are constantly in a state of dysregulation? How can we, when our batteries are at 1% and we're still expected to carry on, go to work, care for our families and our friends and our homes while it feels more and more every day like society is going to collapse? To get ourselves out of this state, we have to step away and turn our gaze. We cannot be expected to engage all the time.
In the midst of this collective hardship, I've been cycling back to some of the lessons I received when I was in therapy for OCD. One of the major systems of this disorder is needing to know the outcome of a situation so desperately that it becomes an obsession. When I found myself in the throes of an obsession like this, I learned to gently remind myself that I simply cannot know. No one can, no matter how convincing an argument may be presented. Just as I could never know whether I'd eventually do something terrible to someone (a common fear in people with OCD), we can never know whether or not society is about to collapse. We can never know how the genocide in Palestine will end or what another Trump presidency will do to America. Mass media will never, ever give us the definitive answers we want.
Maybe it's time to stop searching in this way. It's not weak, immoral or bypass-y to stop engaging with so much pain.
Another great post I saw recently said the following: "[Let's] talk about how the rise of online activism gives the illusion of progress, while real systemic change is undermined by performative gestures. The algorithms favor sensationalism and 'clapbacks,' not meaningful dialogue or structural change; keeping people engaged in endless cycles...without actually challenging the institutions that perpetuate injustice." As this entire blog may suggest, this message struck something deep within me. It was a callout. Though I had been getting many signs and signals to surrender my position online - at least for a significant length of time - this was the one that helped me remember why.
There is a world out there - one being absolutely rocked by the karmic cycle of greed. We keep taking resources, and the planet is responding accordingly with larger storms and rising temperatures. The richest few keep hoarding wealth, and the most vulnerable populations are screaming for justice. Perhaps it's coincidence, but I don't believe so. I think it really is all connected.
I don't want to be numb to the pain anymore. I don't want to get used to it or continue on like everything is normal. I want the weight of it to penetrate me so deeply that it forces me to make a change in how I engage with it. I want the same for all of us, and I hope you can see that that isn't a threat. It would do us all some good.
So I'll leave you with this to think about: get off the internet. Feel the pain of the collective, if only for a few minutes. But allow yourself to feel it long enough to awaken the one in you who wants to see better for this world and its beings. We are trapped in a cycle of witnessing, perhaps living, nightmares, then running as fast as we can in the other direction. What would happen if we turned around and faced it?
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