The Bridge #112
in which the flow of the year carries us on, floating
Hello
& Welcome ! The Bridge is a newsletter connecting the professional and the personal creatively across cultures and a diversity of topics, until we are not only full of ideas but also ready to take action. Thanks for joining in the conversation.
Take a seat, sit down, make yourself comfortable.
Today we’re going to talk about comfort amidst discomfort, getting the tension right, so that we don’t hurt ourselves. (like pulling a muscle while exercising or playing sports, it becomes one step forward two steps back when we try too hard.) When we’re too comfortable, we become complacent. That said, we don’t have to be afraid of the “slippery slope,” because while there is nuance as well as the specificity of our unique contexts and personalities, we can find a secure place within ourselves where we can talk about uncomfortable things.
OK, ready to relax? Let’s get into it:
Something to Consider
This year has been for me so far a good year.
It’s important I think to acknowledge the extreme weather, the inauguration of a rather unkind and indisputably dishonest U.S. President, the greater number of people who have been experiencing extended physical and mental sickness, the unhelpful negative news cycles and the distracting omnipresent world of advertising, among other sad realities of our modern world.
It’s useful as well to remember the positive things: We can connect with humans all around the world with the click of some buttons. Humanity (throughout time) has proven very resilient — navigating many wars, pandemics, dramatic shifts in power — and still we are alive, discovering problems and finding solutions. We have invented many technologies to improve our standards of living, and we are learning to adopt different cultural mindsets that could help us live in healthier community. We are capable of inspiring works of art, and we have love.
It’s not always natural to remember how we might calm our minds and soothe our hearts, when we feel hurt, anxious or upset. But as long as we are living, we are given new chances, and I’m really so grateful for the people who are helping me to remember.
Something to Listen to
LO QUE LE PASO A HAWAii by Bad Bunny
Maybe I’m stretching us too far here, but if you haven’t yet learned Spanish… tools like Deepl and GoogleTranslate exist for a reason. We can at least get a sense for what the words mean, by googling the song. OR let me say how grateful I am for friends who have pointed me to this song, released a few weeks ago, and who have helped me understand it.
Bad Bunny is a global musical sensation, and he sings and raps in Spanish. He’s from Puerto Rico, and he’s telling us in this song (staged as a sad love song, and incorporating folk rhythms, known as la plena) that he hopes for his people that they don’t forget their roots, their culture. Then, with the visualizer he’s talking about native species (different animals) at risk of going extinct (in Puerto Rico). And finally, by analogy and metaphor, what he’s helping us to understand and recognize is that some people moving in (to Hawaii or to Puerto Rico) without respect for the people already living there, are — intentionally or not — causing harm, and that’s also what we’re grieving when we listen to this.
Thеy want to take my river, and my beach as well /
They want my neighborhood, and my grandma to go /
Please don't forget the flag, not the lelolai neither /
'Cause I don't want them to do to you what they did to dear Hawaii /
Something to Go Deep Watching
Hollywood’s Fake War on Capitalism (Wisecrack 2)
If you haven’t seen any of the movies advertised from the last 5+ years, or you avoid certain types of films, you might not have noticed what has felt to me like a trend: More and more films seeming to blend intelligent criticism with basic “mopping up” of the mess the super-wealthy are making of our world with negatively-stereotyped rich people characters, that we are invited to hate, and see suffer, and not feel bad about it. “Wicked rich people getting what they deserve” in films like Don’t Look Up, or the Knives Out series, or The Beekeeper, or Triangle of Sadness, or The Menu etc etc.
Except that at the end of each of these films, we aren’t seeing the world made concretely better, we’re more left feeling a bit disgusted, frustrated, unnerved maybe, perhaps relieved at the “revenge” taken cinematically on the “uber-rich” but also troubled at how powerless we feel to really wreck that kind of come-uppance on what feel like distant gods messing with our world and our wellbeing.
What’s important perhaps to keep in mind is that if we allow ourselves to live under the illusion that greedy rich individuals are THE problem, then we might miss our opportunity to resist the larger economic system that is alienating us from our world and our humanity. Rather, let’s (maybe) allow films like this to be not only consumed passively (as mere spectators) but to be fully digested through critical discussion, so that we can find ways to take action in resistance.
In other words, these films show playfully how excess wealth can alienate us from ourselves and from others. What can we do about it?
Michael Burns (and the team at Wisecrack) do a great job opening up and deepening this valuable conversation. The casual, accessible tone and the host (Michael Burns) not taking himself too seriously lets us laugh a little, even while helping us to think. It's like, we shouldn't have our fun spoiled just because the powers that be are so cunning, and are tricking us into surrending our political values.
We can enjoy life and resist more slowly.
Something to Practice: (slowly)
In a world that can be go go go, and become a bit harsh, a bit loud, a bit mean, and definitely disconnected, it can serve us well to slow down and not feel like that’s a thing we already know how to do.
If you’re comfortable enough to be questioning what ways you might be hurting others without meaning to and what ways you could be defending yourself when you don’t need to, then you’re probably moving at a slow enough pace.
Then again, if you feel a bit challenged by the state of the world or by your role within it, then maybe you need more love and attention, more care and more comfort. Probably going to take some vulnerability (on your part) for friends to know how they can help you, but we can get there (slowly).
Thanks for sitting with me, here on this bridge, with pillows and blankets and couches and carpets (imagined, with comfy clouds and caring emojis) …
😊 JPC ☁️