The Swing (1767), Jean-Honoré Fragonard
We didn’t welcome the wisdom of our ancestors. We were too busy optimizing our communication styles. We didn’t listen to the spirits in the trees. We were too busy firming up our boundaries, saying no to everything we didn’t want until we didn’t know what we wanted anymore.
We weren’t aligned with the collective unconscious because we refused the archaic remnants of cavemen and imperialists alike, so ignorant of the toils of emotional labor, so skilled at narcissistic gaslighting. We didn’t attune ourselves to primordial vibes because they didn’t resonate with us, they weren’t generative or impactful, they struck us as performative, ego-driven, regressive, and delineated by false dichotomies inherited from Judeo-Christian delusions centered on keeping power in the hands of ecclesiastical patriarchs. We were digging on the primal horde as long as it sounded like a wild day at Coachella recreated inside our nervous systems, but then The Shadow arrived with a VIP pass and a corporate sponsorship and we felt sad and small in our fringed rockabilly tops and snakeskin boots. The desert inside us is actually an ocean and we’re sinking into the depths without a lifeboat, without a buoy, without a map of the bottom of the sea.
We might’ve stayed open to enlightenment if it had a more efficient delivery system, but after a few days of meditating we realized that true presence couldn’t make our teeth 8 shades whiter in 10 days. We wanted to to be 20 shades whiter in 30 days, 120 shades whiter in six months, 5,000 shades whiter in two years. After two years our teeth crumbled into blazing white dust and blew away but we didn’t learn a thing. We thought we were getting stronger and lighter and brighter but we were only getting whiter.
“That’s mighty white of you,” we reassured each other. We lowered our expectations and raised our faces to the evacuated wasteland known as heaven. We’re just grateful and thankful, they did grow so fast just like everyone said they would, but we still have our health and countless other blessings. Children are dying far away, so far away, send all of the dying children farther and farther away, keep them from messing with our good lives, communicating effectively, optimizing our quality time down to the minute, decaying and collapsing in plain sight but promising each other that once we’re finally gone we won’t be forgotten. So good, so kind, so blessed, so rotten.
You stopped saying no to everything you didn’t want and said yes instead, to marigolds and golf resorts and luxury automobiles, to river cruises and trust funds, reverse loans and powdered bones, toffee coffee and marble coffins, crypto prescripto dispepto abysmal.
I tell myself that I will never lose my edge. I’ll pledge allegiance to misery in the most beautiful places, face blindness to the most beautiful faces, questioning the dominant paradigm of outdoor malls and dancing fountains, rejecting boutique adventures on boutique mountains, asking them to hold the simple syrup at the gates of heaven. I like mine sour and bitter. Give this one to that basic bitch in the Armani suit over there.
My ancestors do not approve. You are not above anything, they tell me. You will have no legacy. You will not be surrounded by adoring loved ones. Death has no chill, just like childbirth. Stop fantasizing about a boutique birth, a boutique life, a boutique death, and aim for “not screaming in agony.”
Or learn to enjoy screaming in agony. Get to know your ancestors, who did it all the time and were very very good at it, they made suffering fun, they took it to the next level, they made anguish look sexy. Get to know your ancestors, who dressed up for the big boat ride to a city of gold only to vomit into the wide sea for weeks, only to arrive in the swampy buggy hinterlands, a place where there is still nothing but thatched huts and mud 400 years later, a place where the fish and the locals had sharp teeth. In that exotic dreamland you will feel 2,000 times whiter. And you thought Spain was bad. Now you are white bones sinking into effluvial mud, no gold in sight.
Don’t go for the gold. Sit where you are and listen to the wind. This is your home. Sit and stay. This is where you belong. The tricksters told you lies about the world, snickering to themselves as you believed each one. Listen to the voice deep inside you, clear and true. Worrying about your legacy is pure narcissism. You will be gone, you will be forgotten, mighty white bones in the mud. Aim to help now. Do something now. Speak up now. Send money now. Children are starving now. You have no identity beyond this: Will you help? How will you help?
Who are you?
Honor those who sacrificed. Honor those who were forced to sacrifice, in spite of their best intentions to avoid sacrificing. Honor those who were sacrificed.
Remember what it means to sacrifice for your principles, to pledge allegiance to ideals that transcend property and party lines, to pledge allegiance to generosity that transcends blood lines, to pledge allegiance to humankind, to this planet and all of its crawling and screeching beasts who make suffering look fun day after day. Honor them. Pledge allegiance to love and sexy anguish and selflessness, so you can sink into the mud, your true home, finally at peace with what you’re made of, communicating suboptimally, unbound and boundary-less, dissolving to black, finally at rest.
Until then: You are the sum of your actions. Who are you? What are you doing?
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What an inspiring call to action. Thank you.
Thank you for the prompt, I also just donated directly to MSF. You really capture how superficial and self obsessed we have all become exactly when the world is on fire.