A Sacred Discomfort

If the last few months have shown us anything it is that, as a collective, we are not good at being uncomfortable. We struggle with sitting in our dissonance and really feeling it — especially here in America. We have been ushered briskly into our homes and pressed into spaces that felt too small at the onset, and only seem to close in more every day. That was six weeks ago, and there is still no real end in sight. The stress and anxiety are palpable, and we are doing our best to stay busy, in hopes the distraction will keep us from feeling the weight of this thing that is sitting on our chests so acutely. We are buying, and binging, and baking. And we aren’t just feeling it in our homes, but across society as a whole. All throughout the United States, from the Pacific Northwest to the Florida Panhandle, we are being simultaneously stilled — and we don’t like it.

The silencing of an otherwise ever-present industrial hum has tuned us into our own selves, and we are being called to listen. We are forced to sit and face ourselves, to really examine who we are and the way we have cultivated our daily lives. We are being asked what is true of us. Stripped of our self-righteousness, and with the veil of privilege thinning, what we have found in this place is deeply unsettling. We are trapped here, pacing and agitated, without an escape from feelings that are crawling like ants beneath our skin.

Those we have derided as lazy and unmotivated have now become essential. While so many now sit helpless and unemployed in the middle of a pandemic, we recall the vehemence with which we once spoke against the notion that healthcare is a universal right. As the smog begins to clear for the first time in a century, we see how truly high the menacing capitalist towers ascend, shielding and fortifying the oligarchs that have tried so hard to disguise themselves as one of us. Politicians appearing on news screens cloaked in protective gear from their front yards are urging us to go back to work. Small business owners are being pushed to reopen, with so many new requirements that very few will actually be able to comply, but in a way that allows their government to deny their unemployment and wash their hands of them.

We have people touting guns and ignorance on the steps of our town halls, rioting in the streets for states to re-open, because it is becoming clearer by the day that we, as a people, as a system, as a nation, are broken. And the time is drawing close when we will no longer be able to deny that something is very wrong. It means we will have to make a choice. And the choices will be between knowing that our system is unjust, that our consumption is deleterious, that our basis of worth is completely flawed, and then continue to hold the line anyway — or accepting that we have to change. And as they say, “when you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

It would mean adopting policies that we have villainized as socialist. It would mean giving up excess. It would mean accepting that the things we’ve indulged in for so long are not only unnecessary but unwise. It would mean we give back that which we have unrightfully taken. It would mean we must make ourselves smaller and quieter in a culture whose proverbial dream encourages exactly the opposite. It means a paradigm shift at an unprecedented level.

And though this season is fraught with loss and heartbreak, on the underside of that current we have been given an opportunity that we, hopefully, will never come across again in our lifetimes. And if we can find a way to sit with this discomfort, let ourselves acknowledge it from end to end, feel our way through it, we might be able to see the sacred in it. The uncovering of truths. We could let it teach us, so that when we do it again, we do it better. Because if there’s anything we’ve already learned, it’s that we need to do all of it so much better.

Related posts:

Mucho se ha hablado y escrito sobre la influencia del Papa en su país de origen, Argentina. Distintos actores de la vida institucional creen ser exégetas y portadores de su mensaje en ciertas…

The most ideal dating applications can assist you to locate a spring season fling or something a lot more relevant– all of them rely on what you are searching for about companionship and which…

Carrying a hermes handbag might be beneficial if you’ve ever had the need to travel. You never know who you’ll cross paths with. It’s possible that you’re not alone. You never know how to say thank…