Is it a more innocent time we miss when we feel nostalgic for the past or for our “unspoiled” youth? Or do we just miss the days when we knew less about the world and did not realize we were in danger of being hurt? Experience does not spoil us, but it definitely makes us wary, reminds us we are vulnerable, cracks our hearts wide open.
Overused, measurement drowns out intuition and prevents us from deeper exploration. We forget how to feel our way, trust our instincts. And we go to absurd lengths trying to quantify what cannot be counted.
Photo courtesy of MPRM Communications. Judith Helfand’s newest film, Love and Stuff, puts the past in conversation with the present, and the results are moving. Helfand is known for socially-engaged films such as Blue Vinyl, an Emmy-nominated documentary about health risks from the PVC industry, and Cooked: Survival…
Figureheads are carved to endure storm-tossed seas, and they are set at the ship’s prow, visible and exposed, recognizable by all. They are not the engines that move the ship forward. They serve a different purpose, one that is easy to overlook if you have been trained to resist what seems merely decorative. In the States, we have substituted flags and parchment for flesh and blood, reluctant to elevate any family to permanent majesty. But while flags can be burned and parchment amended, neither is animate, conscious, and dedicated entirely to our welfare. Those we entrust with our welfare must scrabble for the privilege, often hollowing their souls in the process.
What would truly spoil a dog is if you broke his spirit, crushed his hopes, destroyed his enthusiasm. A ruined dog would no longer race to greet, beg to play, roll over to have his belly rubbed. But I have yet to see tender attention make a dog passive, bad-tempered, or even greedy. Their species is far better than we are at knowing when they have had enough (play, food, petting) and walking away to take a nap.
A screenshot from the new documentary ’76 Days.’ A new documentary shows some of what those in Wuhan, China, faced in the early days of the pandemic. 76 Days , funded in part by the Sundance Institute and the Ford Foundation, is being distributed by MTV Documentary Films.
Society categorizes us, and then we obey its categories. After centuries of prioritizing sedate mental work, we who are wedded to our screens turn our Roombas loose and then jog at our standing desks, desperate for a little balance. If we were never seduced into the life of the mind, we sit idle and fume, because the physical work is drying up fast.
If you train your mind to think deeply, you are not predestined to be a blazing success in our culture’s material terms. You are likelier to wind up juggling data in the tech world or doing slightly blurry, multipurpose work supporting a nonprofit. If you are really lucky, you might get to brew beer.
In my Irish family, strong tea was inseparable from emotional crisis, and my hand moves the dishtowel faster, nervous at the thought of all the unknown upset ahead. Grief and distress are far more likely to require this kettle’s services than an unexpected home birth.
Take the right precautions, and you are acting out of an abundance of care. You need not remain cautious, your steps slowing as you peer nervously ahead. You can move ahead with relative confidence. Nonetheless, you will still be mocked.