The World Is on Fire — You Don't Have to Be | Field Notes
There is always a third way.
Christina Koch on Artemis II - at work, pausing to look out the windoe
The world is on fire these days, culturally and literally.
First of all, that doesn’t mean you need to be as well.
You may have people in your life telling you that you’re not overreacting enough.
You may have people around you that are in a 24/7 state of apoplectic, and telling you that if you are not, you are not paying attention, or you’re ignorant, or hurling – or implying – other negative judgments against you.
It may be you that is apoplectic, saying if you’re not upset, you’re not paying attention, and a hundred other overt to subtle judgments pushing you on to more hours of people upset talking upset about a myriad of upsetting things, because that’s what a good person does.
And yet…
There is always a third way.
Did you know that your stomach acid, your acid reflux, your creaky joints, your restlessness, bad sleep or insomnia, your headaches, neckaches, your constant, hypervigilant, hair-trigger state does not actually help anything?
It isn’t action. It isn’t productive. It cannot contribute anything productive or generative towards stopping anything bad much less building something good.
I say this gently because however self-evident it may seem after the fact, before you take it in, it seems and feels as though standing down to any degree is a let down, a slacking off, a dishonorable and irresponsible thing to do.
That is at least partly because so many of us grew up in that intensity of a 1, 2, 3 or 5 alarm constant, rolling crisis of unpredictability, possible catastrophic loss, sudden violence, and/or physical threat.
Some households looked like a crisis war zone, but most looked like middle or upper middle class, well appointed, enviable looking households and brutal families.
Trauma zones don’t always look like car crashes or bomb sites.
Often they look like a loving mom and dad, a beautiful home, social and business successes, standing in the community, and kids with good grades and smiling faces.
So now that all that chaos of trying to maintain in a family full of secrets is playing out on the international stage via our government and politics – structures that were built and committed to providing a steady, safe environment of social structures, nature settings, industries and an economy for We The People to be safe, community minded, and flourish in our daily innovativeness, our ingenuity, our creative endeavors for thriving and flourishing for all – the original betrayal of the family, playing out in our faces 24/7, everybody gets to face and heal the traumas of this culture of promises betrayed.
If you have so far been spending all your energy to come up with coping patterns and skills to get by and make it in the world anyway, as though the world is sane and you’re having a personal problem, then this is a particularly challenging time.
Resonance isn’t only musical, or for machines.
Resonance is within us every day.
Bodies like knowing what to expect.
That’s why even mayhem, threat, waiting for the other shoe to drop, can all be a kind of comfortable for you, because you know how to do that, you know how to live that way, because you needed to live that way for some intense moment, or some long, intensely threatening years growing up, or in a marriage, or at a job.
It is extremely intelligent to adapt to your circumstances, and more circumstances are unsafe than conventional wisdom or conversation allows for.
It may not be safe to talk to people about how unsafe and precarious your life and finances are, but it is totally acceptable – and a sign of your intelligence – to talk about how unsafe the world is right now. Resonance.
Children are geniuses at so many things.
They can see the truth behind the facades, and they operate on that truth instead of the narrative, which is often told to hoodwink, manipulate, gaslight the child into submission.
Kids know they are being manipulated, so they adapt and become great manipulators. Obviously that is the true currency of the environment.
Kids are genius in coming up with coping patterns to deal with the reality of the dynamics of home, not the narrative the parents or society comes up with.
Then as an adult, going through these times, you can find yourself triggered, frightened, manipulating others or yourself to navigate a situation that adult you has a lot more resources to navigate than that 8 year old inside you.
But your reactions are so well practiced, so ingrained, it seems impossible to see and catch yourself at it fast enough to stop reacting as if you are currently as threatened as your 8 year old was on the regular.
You may not even know you are triggered, or reacting to a long time ago and not in the present situation at all.
But here’s the thing. There is a moment — and it may be happening right now, reading this — where something in you goes quiet. Not numb. Not shutting down. Just… a half-second pause where the part of you that has been running full speed since you were small says, oh. I’m doing it again.
That pause is not nothing.
That pause is everything.
That is the beginning of the third way, and it doesn’t require you to fix anything, solve anything, or be any different than you are right now.
It only requires you to notice.
And breathe.
Judgment will stop the process – yes, this is a process – so just notice any thoughts and meet them with maybe, maybe not, and breathe.
Notice how in that pause, there is room — a spaciousness. A calm, a peace. The ability to take deeper breaths.
Maybe your shoulders come down from your ears a little bit.
Maybe your body sighs, or smiles, or blinks.
A funny thing about This Moment is that there is so much room, and suddenly you can see so many more possibilities.
Okay, at first maybe you can only see one or two other possibilities – but that right there is tremendous.
In this third way, you are at the center of discovering all sorts of possibilities that you can’t see when you’re “in it.”
This myriad of possibilities is always present, in the present moment, but we are present so little of the time — this is a huge revelation when it happens.
Once you can pause, you can make an actual choice.
Before that, you’re reacting to the past, thinking it’s happening again.
The news and world is full of 8 year olds fighting 14 year olds arguing with 2 year olds. It’s exhausting, and a little humorous when you finally see what’s going on from the inside. Whew!
Your system spent years, decades, practicing the safety strategies that are now causing you pain.
Your younger selves were genius and incredibly devoted defenders and protectors, and they are still on the job.
It takes some time and space for you to change your perspective to seeing that, and appreciating how devoted to your wellbeing they are.
You find yourself catching yourself in your triggered responses sooner and sooner.
What used to take months to realize, gets down to weeks, or days, then hours, then you’re aware in the moment, even if you can’t stop it to pause — yet.
The more you choose to be On Your Side, to be in the present, to set yourself free, the sooner you can see the triggers, their origins, how now is different from then, how many more possibilities you have today than back then — and choose differently.
And by doing so, the more you can live in the third way, the way of being present to the actual infinite possibilities imbued in the present moment, that wonderful, glorious, relieving - pause.