Dueling With Duality

Coping with the weight of the world

Dear Reader,

One year ago, on the last day of February, I shut the olive green door of my first brick and mortar shop for the very last time. In a short three and a half months, I’d created a warm and welcoming space that people expressed pleasure in visiting, I actualized a long time dream and showed myself what I am capable of, and also, behind the scenes, had my boundaries repeatedly evaded by my building owner that I became so worn from building protective walls that I eventually called it quits.

During this past year, I have spent much time in my head and on paper honing the vision for my vocational life. I am still weaving together the threads on my list of things that light me up, and being a shop keeper again still feels like a calling. But in honesty, I struggle with the notion of selling goods while strongly supporting all of us to possess less. I believe in conscious consumerism and I believed in my role as a shop owner to provide better options to my small, rural island community, and yet, I feel a resistance to take up space in this way when other, bigger, life things deserve to be platformed and our collective capacity is already so limited.

Last night we went to the theater to see the new Dune. I hadn’t read the books, I’m not a sci-fi enthusiast, but was there for connection and a night out with my husband and our friends. While overall there was noticeably less gratuitous gore compared to other films of its kind, there were a few scenes that resembled something too similar to the current world news to not be hit with a pang of reality. I scanned the full dark theater in front of me. Illuminated by the bright screen of white sand were watchers lounged in plush seats, dinners, snacks, sodas and pitchers of beer on tray tables, bodies reclined, legs up on foot rests. What a privilege, I thought, what a devastating privilege.

As a shop keeper, as an artist, as a writer, as a fellow human, what is there to offer you during these times, when the weight of the world is so palpable? To feel overwhelm, to grieve, to feel small in the face of it all, to feel guilt for experiencing the joys that continue to exist in the sphere of your own life, to feel tired of waiting for the powers of the world to do the right thing — we’re carrying it all.

We’re living in an age where updates on global events can be consumed in real-time from our fingertips. Overwhelm is an inevitable side effect to this amazing tool. We have been gifted the ability to mobilize swiftly for the greater good, tasked with discerning the accuracy of the information we ingest, and cursed with having our hearts broken every day if we’re paying attention. Are we meant to know this much at once? Are we designed to process life at the volume? In every second in our great world exists the simultaneous omnipresence of immense pain and sorrow with absolute peace, joy and beauty. While one heart aches another bursts with love. Where war rages, somewhere else tranquility exists. Where there is divide, elsewhere connections are being made. Holding space for duality, to have our hearts regularly broken and lit up is the blessing and the curse of our human experience.

The duality of life asks us to continue to care and stay informed, to remain connected to our humanity, to mobilize and offer ourselves in service where and when we can, and also, to continue to make the art, to write the poems, to plant the garden, to hone the craft, to share our offerings with the world. This has always been what gets us through.

So, again, what is there to offer you during these times when the weight of the world is so palpable? For now, it feels like writing you a weekly love letter; it feels like giving a gentle nudge to remind you that beauty still exists in this hard world; it feels like sharing honestly from the heart, a metaphorical reaching out of a hand to say you’re not alone in your feelings; it feels like creating a container from which to inspire you, not to distract you from the work of creating the better world we envision, but to help make the hard stuff more processable, a moment of pause to catch your breath before going onward.