The Bridge #122
in which purple is the new orange (in other words, it's cool to be politically a little weird)
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.
Recently, my family and I moved into a new apartment. We have more space (two more rooms than before), and the basic amenities function better. (In our old place, there were recurring problems with heat, hot water, the security of the doors to the building, and the level of noise.) Now that our global situation has improved significantly, it’s like we’re a hermit crab who’s found a new shell, a new home, that fits us better. We’re still getting used to the new situation, boxes everywhere, furniture not yet built. Still, every day we find reasons to be grateful for what has improved.
Of course, finding the new place, setting everything up for the move, executing on the plan, it’s taken its fair share of energy and attention. Transitions are like that. Change is an investment. We put in energy and attention, allow for a little chaos, hope for the best, and then wait.
Some changes though can feel weirder than others…
Something to Consider
Like, it feels good when we choose a particular sort of change or transition in our life, and it’s something we choose that is publicly respected. Moving into a new home is a good example because it’s often something that we choose to do, and people applaud us for it.
It’s a different story though if we are forced to move due to a foreclosure or if we were renting and the landlord is selling the property, then it’s a bit more stressful.
It gets a little weirder when we are choosing a change that others don’t quite understand, like when we are wanting to leave a secure and stable job for something more “fulfilling” but we don’t yet have that figured out… Some people in our life are going to be a bit disturbed by that sort of decision-making. They might question if we’re making the right decision. We might trust our gut, our intuition, but we might also feel some self-doubt creep in as well thanks to that external questioning.
Changes that are unwelcomed or unexpected can also be weird, like when we are turning 30 or 40 or 50, and we feel like the world expects some sort of accomplishment of us because of the ten-year “milestone” and yet it’s an arbitrary thing related to cultural expectations and number-based systems. We are more than our age, so why might existential angst come at these times? It’s a little weird, no?
Same with the changes that happen at a geopolitical level nowadays, where because of news cycles and information access, we can (if we read or hear certain news) feel so bad about the state of the world, at the moment. It’s not something we explicitly asked for, to see these wars taking place and these cultural conflicts and technological complexities, and yet it’s also something we must confront in one way or another. We are forced to reckon with things that are not local to our reality, and yet it impacts our inner world whether we acknowledge that or not. We are learning to face the fears and anxiety, which is why “mental health” has become such a trending topic. It’s weird enough that we need to invent new ways to talk about the problem(s). Some have coined it the “polycrisis.”
Something to Read
For Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, politics is about meeting voters where they are (Roll Call)
Probably because I don’t live in SW Washington, I hadn’t yet heard of U.S. state representative Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, currently serving her second term as a Democrat in a typically Republican district, a district that both elected her to a second term and voted Trump into office. Pérez came to my attention because Ezra Klein invited her onto his podcast, and it quickly became apparent to me that the journalist was doing more than reporting. He’s on the hunt for people and ideas that can break us out of strict red-blue splits and imagine beyond what’s sold to us by big-name politics. Pérez and others like her are focused locally on complex problems, with a goal of incorporating voices and opinions that aren’t usually accounted for when we talk about “solutions.”
As a person, she defies easy categorization. Her father immigrated from Mexico; her maternal grandfather was a carpenter; Pérez graduated with a degree in economics from a liberal arts college. Then she became a bike mechanic and later opened up an automobile repair shop, before entering politics. She’s a mother of a young child, and she supports the right to an abortion.
Pérez supports legislation that curtails illegal immigration because, for example, fentanyl — an opioid that overtook heroine in 2018 as the drug causing the most deaths due to overdose in America — is often trafficked across the US-Mexico border. That said, Pérez also seeks to draw attention to systemic issues (like, multi-generational unemployment in her district causing a sense of disempowerment that encourages drug use), and she’s a major proponent of Right to Repair.
Something to Listen to
No one likes a break up, and honestly I’ve never met someone who loves divorce. That said, the fact that most love songs are talking about things from only one perspective (the point of view of the singer-songwriter), it trains our brains to love the simple. Of course, “they were wrong and we were right.” But - really?
This song “Rupture” moves me because it doesn’t give an easy resolution. There’s no chorus that drives home a main point. It’s one singer taking the point of a view of a man breaking up with his partner and he’s sad, but he sees that the break-up needs to happen. He understands she will be upset too because she wasn’t expecting this; it’s not his job to be charitable, however. He has to take care of himself. Then she responds, in the voice of a female singer, and says that his accusations of her not listening enough… she hears him. She also hears that he doesn’t care about her broken heart and what this means for her emotional future. Maybe he doesn’t know what it means to be in relationship with a complex human. Maybe he just wants someone who will do what he says and keep him company, like a pet dog or cat would do. Maybe he doesn’t want to be confronted for his lack of emotional sensitivity.
The singers are Ben Mazué, a doctor turned singer-songwriter sensation, and Yoa, a 26-year-old Parisian born of a Swiss father and Cameroonian mother who released her first full-length album this year and is already receiving awards and major recognition. The dancers in the music video capture well the tensions we can feel during a break up; the musical conclusion suggests there are truths that words cannot quite express. And so we play it again.
Is that it? Are you done? /
Did I hear everything or did you have more to say? /
Oh right, yeah, I noticed you didn't say /
"I see you suffering," but /
(as it’s said) What doesn't kill you makes you stronger /
Well, what if what doesn't kill me wears me out? /
Handicaps me, traumatizes me? /
Like a wound that never heals /
Or a heart left to die… /
What do you expect me to think the next time? /
Something to Practice
Consider complexity. When confronted with complex human situations that leave us with more questions than answers, do we search for an easy solution or allow ourselves to sit with the questions? Oh, the questions…
How can we stay with the complexity and the contradictions, without feeling resigned or paralyzed? Not so great to dismiss the thing out of hand. Can we though work through complex feelings and rest? Something to practice…
JPC 😎