Generally special; liminal glue
#75: Making a trail or two, attending the distractions, and becoming plural
PREVIEW
At one point or another, we all contemplate the path we’ve chosen and the path we’re still choosing. Today’s musing is an attempt to quiet the worries we encounter along the way, ft. photos from Colorado (2019). Please comment with your thoughts – your own worries and encouragements – or feel free to email me and discuss. Let’s keep this line open.
Paths up the mountain
There’s a Hindu proverb that says that it doesn't matter which path you take up the mountain, because they all lead to the same place, and that the only one wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain telling everyone that their path is wrong.
Then there’s me, simultaneously worrying about the path I’m taking and criticizing my every detour. I try to tell myself to step back and understand that life – this non-sensical web of relationships and careers and leisure – is weirdly non-linear, and that I should be easier on myself.
For those of us that want to create our own way up the mountain, it can be tempting to follow a tried-and-true method. But tried-and-true doesn’t even mean easier — we’re just lured in with the promise of proof. The truth is, the more worn the path, the more difficult it is to get a grip. Tried-and-true is just a worn-in skate shoe on the wet clay of a marked trail.
The unworn cracks, weeds, and grooves of paths not yet taken, while full of obstacles, are actually easier to 'grip'. Not only are your steps are more carefully considered on these new courses — creating a new path makes it more personal. I’m reminded of growing up spending my days in the woods with friends. The trails we'd make in our coming and going were ours, and that lent to their specialness in creating a magical world all our own.
Overcoming the desire to define
“I think the more we can divest ourselves from the need to define ourselves, the freer we’ll be to do our work and do what we want to do when we need to do it.”
CASEY GERALD
I have a tendency to want to define myself, fit myself into a mold — but the truth is, we are all many things. Sometimes I'm scared that a lack of focus will detract from some sort of legacy or effectiveness or truth. But I’m working to realize that my happiness is actually rooted in the distractions of life and that it's okay to be more than one thing.
Whatever is calling us in, at any given moment, is what needs to be attended to. But if we don't accept that as true, it can be hard to hear the voice when it's calling. This isn't to say that we need to simply 'go with the flow' — it’s deeper than that. It's as important to know when to sit down and write or go for a photo walk, as it is to know when your partner needs a hug or your friend needs a night out. The language of the universe is intuition — knowing what a single moment needs and how to fill each space with its fullness and truth.
Prodding the in-between (both/and)
Much is made of specializing and its detractors, the generalists. But if we’re living in the real world, we are nothing if not liminalists: prodding the in-between, turning the page, held in a pattern of human transformation.
In contemplating our growing and these constant detours, we learn that the many shifting iterations of ourselves are the liminal glue that keeps us interested and careful and loving.
Human being is active and plural. It is true that you only live once, but it is also true that at once is many. Enjoy your lives; make new paths; love more.
Actual miscellanea 🔗
An attempt to return to form here — in the earliest days of miscellanea, I mainly shared links. It was a more inclusive and whimsical form of sharing that I’m trying to get back to. Something for everyone.
On being available for the work you were meant to make 📝
“I think more and more and hope more and more, especially in this time, we as artists can learn and believe and show that being miserable, and being unhappy is not our destiny. It’s not what we’ve been sentenced to, and it also is not the highest expression of things that we want to make.”Let’s Ignore Each Other in the Same Room 📱
“Parallel play is one of the hallmarks of secure relationships, but it has to be done right,” Dr. Levine said. “It’s all about availability. If you know that the other person is available and that, if you need them, they will pay attention to you, then you feel secure.”LOL (it’s a tweet) 🦜
Curators Are the New Creators 💭
“The real scarcity isn’t content anymore. It’s attention. When it’s impossible to absorb everything from the flood of information, the best we can do is pick and choose what matters to us most — or, better yet, find the people who can do the curating for us.”Early Southern Gospel Special 🎧
From NTS, songs of praise and joy from the gospel churches of the US south, dating from the 1920s.
“A lot of times, the thing knows what it wants to be. And when I get it wrong is when I try to force it to be what I most obviously think it should be.”
CASEY GERALD