Where I’m At + Updates
Happy November everyone. Can you believe we’re already here? Before I get into it, I want to give a heads-up that I will be traveling to Southeast Asia next week, and will be gone for a month (crazy, I know). My backpacking journey will include Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.
I started planning this trip a year ago, but had been thinking about it long before then, so it’s insane that it is approaching so soon. I’m looking forward to all of the adventures, new friends, and tasty foods that I will encounter. With the excitement though, I’m also feeling the anxiety that comes up when you find yourself in unknown places and spaces. I’m planning to write whilst I’m there, so this might end up transitioning into a travel blog of sorts, but maybe not.
I can’t predict how my new surroundings will affect my writing, but all I know is that there will be an effect. I’ll be 11 hours ahead of New York time, so my writing schedule will likely alter as I figure out the equilibrium between writing and traveling. So, if you’re one of the people who looks forward to these posts, know that you might not hear from me when you expect to, but I promise that I will deliver once I’ve gotten the hang of things.
Now that that’s settled, today’s post will be a shorter one because, when I sat down this week to write, I didn’t know what to say. Most week’s I’ve been able to get clear on my topic and then run with it, but this week proved more difficult because I felt burnt out. After weeks of ingesting the horrors on social media and the news, I had passed the point of intense rage and gut wrenching sorrow, and instead transitioned into a numbness that threatened to swallow me whole.
I wondered whether we truly did live in a rage-filled and uncaring world. Maybe peace really isn’t possible, I thought to myself. I looked at my increasingly divided social media space, and felt like we were all screaming into an endless void. Then, I deactivated my Instagram.
Almost immediately, I noticed I was breathing better with each day away from it. To be honest though, I felt shame over the relief I was feeling. Did it mean that I didn’t care? But no, that wasn’t it. I still cared a lot, but my time away had made me realize that I also cared about my well-being.
It had gotten to the point where I was spending entire days reading articles and watching videos to “stay informed”. Even when I forced myself to get away, so that I could get other work done, I would still think about it the entire time, and then, before I knew it, I would find myself on socials again. It was like a drug. I couldn’t stay away, and my core needs fell to the wayside in the process. Eating was neglected, and sleeping was neglected.
Disconnecting, even just for a few days, was what I needed to see a zoomed-out view of my life. I came to terms with how depleted my mind and body had become, and realized that there were other ways I could approach things. I could keep myself informed AND, at the same time, be more intentional about the stream that I was taking in. I could budget out time to care for myself, like cooking a nourishing meal, or taking a long walk outside AND, at the same time, continue to care for the world.
On some level, I believed that not prioritizing my own needs, and completely overwhelming myself, meant that I truly cared. But then I (thankfully) realized that was total bullshit. Noticing this helped me to realize that refilling my inner well was essential because, when I fill my well, I am better able to believe that peace is possible. In other words, when I give love to myself, I am better able to give love to others, and peace, as far as I’m concerned, is all about love.
I’ve held a lot of conflicting emotions throughout this crisis, and they’ve mutated more times than I can count. I’ve felt rage, sadness, grief, fear, defensiveness, confusion, and denial. My platform, as of now, is not huge, but I still have consistent readers. Because of this, I’ve wondered obsessively over whether my words were chosen well. Sometimes I felt they were chosen too carefully, and other times not carefully enough. In my attempt to contribute, I feared the idea of doing more harm than good.
But then I realized that this fear was a bit silly. Of course I could never throw together the perfect words because I’m not a god. I’m not all-knowing or all-powerful. However, my intention has always been to advocate for love for one another, and intention, I realized, is what is most important here. We cannot control the outcomes of our lives, but our intention is what guides us towards where we want and need to be.
I’ve done my best to learn and impart what I can but, at the end of the day, I’m just a person. I don’t know what the ultimate truth is (if such a thing even exists) and, like everyone, my life and beliefs are a product of my past experiences. Even as I’ve tried to be an advocate for peace, I have noticed my own defensiveness come up. I asked myself at one point, “but what about my family's pain? What about Jewish pain?” I then realized that I was missing a key point that is required during all peace processes – that of immediacy.
The massacres that occurred on October 7th were not justified, and all of the massacres that have occurred since are also not justified. None of it is. If we are being tasked to recognize pain however, then we must recognize the pain that Gazans are undergoing every single day. And not because one pain "matters" more than the other, but because it is extreme in its intensity, and is happening as we speak.
There’s always more that I could say, but that’s all I’ll say right now. If we lived in a perfect world, things like bombs and prejudice wouldn’t exist. But we do not live in a perfect world because we are not perfect beings. As humans, we make a lot of mistakes, we’re selfish, and we make assumptions. Unfortunately for us though, these natural dispositions can have dire consequences.
A few days ago, I watched a video on TikTok about sending good energy to strangers, and liked the idea of it, so I’ve been practicing it every day since. Basically what I’ll do is, when I see people while I’m on a walk, or doing errands, I’ll say nice things to them in my head.
Here are some examples: If I see someone who looks forlorn, I’ll think something like, “I hope things get better for you soon.” If I see someone who is dressed up, I’ll say, “looking good!” If I see a couple canoodling on a bench, I might say, “I’m happy for you both, and I’m rooting for ya’ll!”
Doing this simple practice has felt good, and I hope that these messages land with these folks on some unconscious level. What I realized through this exercise is that it has helped me to feel more connected with humanity. Because I’m taking a few extra seconds to look at a person’s disposition, and think of a relevant message to send them, I connect with the truth that we all have hopes and dreams, and that we are all fighting unique battles every single day.
Peace isn’t about being kind and loving just for the sake of it. The kindness and loving uplifts us all. A few years ago, a coworker said to me – “when it rains, all the boats rise” – and that has stuck with me ever since. The way I see it, showering our world with the care that we all need benefits us all. Think about your day to day. Whether right in front of you, or on another side of the world, are there strangers that you can send kind messages to?
I’ll admit it: I have felt increasingly hopeless as the weeks have dragged on without a ceasefire, and as I’ve witnessed so much division, but disconnecting with social media, and re-connecting with humanity, was exactly what I needed to remember that a future rooted in love is possible. It was what I needed to believe, though things feel quite bleak at the moment, that there will be a different future for the next generations. Call me hippy dippy, I don’t care. I will always do my best to radiate messages of love, and you can count on me for that.