The Bridge #118
in which we imagine ways to metabolize, compost, hospice, grieve
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.
Some problems we simply cannot ever solve.
I recently fell sick, and that’s just it: We cannot avoid getting sick. We cannot solve that problem. We can only do our best to care for ourselves amidst the fact (that we are sick).
Some might argue we can practice ‘preventative medicine’ or live in a way that encourages health, but still it will happen sometimes we are going to fall sick.
Tough to swallow, but it’s true.
Something to Consider
Death is another one of those things. It can’t be solved for. It’s a problem we must live with.
Relationship break-ups, the coming of winter, the decay of food, the fall of night, the loss of precious objects… these things happen. We might want to minimize how often they happen, but they’ll happen all the same.
If we can’t stop these things from happening (a little like the Grinch in reverse — he can’t stop Xmas from coming, and we can’t stop the cold of winter), if we can’t avoid completely these sorts of happenings (like loss or pain) from happening, what can we do about them?
From what I’ve learned, one of the best ways to treat problems like these (whether it’s by healing or grieving or accepting or screaming, or seeing the silver lining) — it’s to gather in community with others. We must tend to endings as a group.
Do you know anyone facing an ‘ending’ of some kind that could use greater support? Are you able to show up more for them? Do you know how to gather friends and neighbors?
Is there a way you can lean into others more when confronting problems that cannot be solved?
Something to Read
The grief to grievance pipeline (Alex Evans, The Good Apocalypse Guide)
This is one of those pieces that I am sharing as much for the content as I am sharing because of how I discovered it. Casper ter Kuile is someone I have been following for 6-7 years now, inspired by his ever-expanding ideas on innovative spirituality, and curious as well about his life path having immigrated from Europe to Brooklyn (knowing mine was destined to go the opposite direction). Will Brown is someone living in London traveling in Europe right now and while staying with my family earlier this month, he got a feel for how I see “politics” playing out most importantly on the local level, and he pointed me to Alex Evans. Casper ter Kuile then recommended (this last week, via substack) an article by Alex Evans that he felt treated an interesting theme:
How to create collective rituals around grief that bring group cohesion (and break the cultural tendency towards unhealthy alternatives)?
As you’ll see if you read the piece, Alex Evans has an abundance of examples recent and distant history provide us showing how when we experience a collective loss, we can sorta choose trauma and let the shared sense of loss stay stuck with us for, like, forever, and that’s a manner of bonding that can bring groups of all sizes closer together. We’ve all experienced it at some point, going through hard times together helps bring a sense of solidarity (like when suffering through school). And certain kinds of leaders are able to capitalize on that to help bring back group cohesion. Unfortunately it does often lead to violent ends.
On the other hand, and thank goodness there is another hand (or point of view, or pathway forward) to consider here, we can deal with collective loss differently. When we create a space with one another to grieve (the little things and the bigger things), and we share that space experientially — which is to say, we gather together all at the same time to grieve — then we can also find group cohesion. We can recover or reimagine a group identity that stretches beyond what had previously felt broken, and then we can get along better (less blaming and shaming, more hugs and messy happy tears). To do it, we need the safe container (or “ritual”) to grieve together.
Something to Hear
“Tonight” (Phoenix, feat Ezra Koenig)
French synth band (electronic house music, with a French twist, basically) Phoenix famous for songs (from 15+ years ago) such as “1901” and “Lisztomania” that receive near-excessive radio play in stores, the lobbies of movie theatres, restaurants, rock gyms etc — the band has a way of creating these catchy summer-vibe beats and nostalgic lyrics, and they can’t help not being cool because they’re French after all and off-handed about their well-educated minds, and the catchy lyrics of course, but anyways…
They released a new album a few years back, one song of which features Ezra Koenig (of Vampire Weekend, which is one of my all-time favorite bands). The song “Tonight” has a music video that features a mesmerizing split screen that begins in Paris and Tokyo, and it deliberately confuses our sense of place which is a bit hilarious after a while. I share the song here because another way maybe to find our “group” to belong to today in a world of broken-up nationalism… mash up some cultures together and make a sweet-sounding song to dance to.
OR grieve collectively, as mentioned up above.
Something to Practice
Grieving isn’t something that we are going to come to so easily, so it helps to talk about it little by little.
What if the next time you had friends over for dinner or you were having an open-ended lunch conversation, you brought up the topic, maybe connected it to some happening in your own life, let the grief hang there a minute or two or six (six is probably too much but maybe it’s not) and let space for your friend(s) to share what they also might be grieving? See if by doing so, you feel any lighter.
(Heavy things feel heavier, the longer we carry them.)
I’m grieving by the way the impossibility of living two places at once, the inevitable and undesirable loss of pets no matter how cute they are when we buy them and despite all the work we pour into caring for them, the fact we miss out on so much while we work to pay bills, the friendships we can’t keep, the childhood freedoms that can’t last forever, the hurts we sustain when we’ve felt so alone, the sense we need to stay busy for reasons of status, the lessons that take so long to learn, the backlog of grievances we hold. Will there be time to release them?
JPC