Have read and re-read. This is sobering and brilliant. I feel it in my bones -- the before times, "a wave pattern that has picked up both velocity and force over time."This feeling of constantly preparing for something -- something 'unprecedented', never knowing what that 'something' will be is endlessly unsettling and true.
Jan, thank you so much. While I wouldn't wish this sense of constant on-the-verge-ness on any of us, I will tell you it is strangely reassuring to know I'm not the only one.
I’ve been feeling this. Maybe why my current essay is about facing a shortened horizon; it’s my stage of life but it feels like more than that. The third act is the one where the curtain comes down at the end and not back up. The road stops.
I've been tinkering with a piece about the idea of a lifespan off and on for years. I wonder if it'll ever be finished; I almost think maybe it'd be fitting if it did not. Thank you, Kelly.
I've read this three times, Marya, and still can't find what I think I need in the way of words to respond to it. Instead, I'll share a recent experience: I joined a local meditation group for the evening. It wasn't my first time there, but it had been at least a year, and even then I had only a drop-in or two with which to compare. Still very much a novice. As I sat in my 30 minutes of stillness, I had the keen sense of being surrounded by hundreds. I couldn't see their faces, only their legs and feet which told me that they were standing shoulder to shoulder. They came as doulas, beings-formerly-human who were there to usher in the birth of what is coming, to guide, to comfort, to reassure, to receive the slippery new arrival and do what's needed to attend to it and the one(s) who created it.
Grateful to you for writing in a way that allows, just allows, over and over again.
One of the things I miss about a settled-in-one-place life is being a part of a meditation community. The sense of collective presence in those rooms is powerful; thank you for reminding me of it today. That same collective presence must inhere in these virtual connections, too. I need to tap it more.
I do think it's here, Marya, though in my experience a bit harder to cultivate. So many synergies. I can talk myself out of it being anything but a coincidence, but I'd prefer not to.
I love this quote. I also remember being a younger writer and writing my way forward, writing my way out of where I was and into the future. Maybe writing moves in all directions at once. xo
Thank you, Marya. Read this very early this morning UK time and have just come back to it. "There are very few moments in history where it's clear that something is about to change; usually, we can only see the Before Times as such in retrospect, in light of whatever happened that changed the world."
I grew up in a world where we expected social and scientific improvement and progress. Now? Not so sure, and you've captured that sense of the unknown.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of progress, especially since reading a book called 'The Myth of Progress,' by Tom Wessels, which really reshaped the way I think about social movement over time. Thank you so much for your comment.
Yes! When I was in my 30s (in the 1990s) I took a degree in Environmental Science, which included environmental economics, geopolitics and such, alongside ecology and the more hard sciency bits. Everything I studied then about questioning what we think of as "progress" has become more and more relevant in the years since. I'll look up the book you've mentioned, thank you.
I feel it too. Holding up my heart with love into the unknown, breathing into the ushering of a new world. Maybe these before times weren’t that good and something better is waiting for us? Thank you for your reflection, loved every word!
Thank you for this, Lavina. I don't think the Before Times were good, or better; I don't know that what's next will be bad or worse. What I'm thinking about is the extent to which my (our?) tendency to allow forces to take hold without my (notice) has brought these times about; I at least need to be more mindful as I (we) move ahead.
Lovely as always Marya, and you've made me wonder about my own experience of these times. I can pinpoint a couple of Before Times in the last 8 years, and that makes me think we (all humans) are in a transition period. I just don't know if we're in a birth canal or falling down a mountain or somehow both.
How amazing to be sitting alone in my apt on a Saturday nite, reading a piece by someone who truly gets it. My whole life has been quite a ride, but now that I’m in my 70s and when a lot of folks my age are sitting back and reflecting, I made one of the worst decisions of my life and it’s time to stop, think, reflect on how this happened, and now pick myself up and fix it. I will never get back to what I was in the “before times”, but my new normal will still be a worthwhile life.
The uncertainty of youth, yes, I definitely had it back in the 60s. Life back then was NUTS! However, I love being 73 and looking back. The 60s were crazy, as were the 70s, 80s, 90s, aughts, and teens, all in their own ways. And yes, these 2020s are also batshit crazy. If we can manage to keep ourselves from destroying the planet (IMO it’s a crapshoot at this point, who knows if the planet will survive or not), then this period of evolution will be VERY interesting. I hope I’m around long enough to see at least part of it.
I am so happy to hear you say this—that you’re glad to bear witness to it, in any case—this is a good reminder for times when I go Dammit I do not want to watch this whole thing go down. I read or heard an almost certainly apocryphal story once about a monk of some sort who was in an airplane as it hit seriously rough air. He looked out the window as the plane appeared to go down. His seatmate asked why he wasn’t more scared. The monk said, “I am scared, but I am also curious. At least this will be interesting.”
Yeah, I’ve been reading across a number of folks who write here and there seems to be a questioning about whether evolution might be kicking into high gear right about now. Not just all the political/cultural upheaval but of course the tech as well. Tech could even kick in some physical evolutionary changes. Even tho’ it’s a scary time to be alive, it’s also a fascinating time to be alive.
I feel a bit like I’m riding along with Thelma and Louise as I move thru today. Your words touched me deeply
“..have passed through everything that came before and are hurtling toward the edge of now..”
There isn’t really anything I can do to stop the forward motion, I’m not in the drivers seat of the world. All I can do is pray that the ends come quickly.
There are days when that’s the intention I send up; there are days when I’m thinking about whether I can influence the course; there are days when I feel like I’m asking if everybody else in the car is freaking out; and there are days when it feels like all I can do is pass around the snacks. But if that’s what I can do, then by god I’ll do it. xo
It’s nearly impossible for me to believe my grown children are wrong in their viewpoints, though without their input I feel differently. Maybe we are both right or both wrong, or both right and wrong. I’m guessing the latter. Is it that uncertainty that evokes the fear we feel about other peoples choices we don’t understand?
Wonderful questions, none of which I can begin to answer. I do find myself less and less inclined to attach myself too tightly to any right, any wrong; when I do so, I feel like I don’t listen as carefully or hear as clearly or choose as well.
I also relate in a close up and personal way. I have a Before Time. I imagine we all have a time or 10 when the rug was pulled out from under us. Yet, there seems to be that one that changes everything and you will never ever be who you were before. A future so uncertain that breathing hurts. The Before ... and After... If we're lucky enough to ride it out, come through it semi-intact we may find the gold in that mosh pit of hell. Years later I'm still panning through.
The young people I've been listening to lately talk about that uncertainty, which gives me pause. Were we so uncertain at that age? Or did we—at least I—find some comfort in the illusion that certainty could ever be achieved? Thank you, as always, for your words.
I agree with Rita. I felt more personal uncertainty. I don't know that I felt certainty could be achieved but I felt somehow we, the world, would right itself. At the very least we'd figure some things out, we'd learn to be better humans and citizens of the world, we'd be OK. My heart feels for all of us, but especially for the young people of today.
Mine too. I am working on the next profile in this Chronicle series, about that same young woman; it’s a challenge to balance my own relief at her expressions of hope against my own worry about whether those hopes will be realized. Working on esson four zillion in Zip Your Freaking Lip, Lady. ;)
To both Paulette and Marya, I've spent 30+ years working in secondary schools in a more conservative than not area on the outer east edge of the Portland (OR) metro region, and I've observed a huge shift in young people. In my last year in the classroom, I had an extremely politically diverse group, and they were open about their life experiences, their identities, and their mental health issues in ways I once would have thought impossible. They were kind to each other in ways I once would have thought impossible--and it was all of them, even the Trump supporters. And this shift has happened quickly, probably in the last 6 or 7 years. It is the one thing that gives me hope for the future. I worry about and for our youth for so many reasons, but I remind myself often of how different they are from my generation in ways that I believe will serve them well in the After Times, whatever they end up being.
Rita, thank you for your insightful observance of the youth in your classroom. I found myself taking a deep full breath after reading this.
I'm curious Rita, are you still living in the Portland area? I'm in the Rogue Valley and often RV through Portland to see family. DM if you'd like to meet for coffee on one of these trips.
I am only a little older than you, and I remember being personally uncertain. Sometimes paralyzingly so. But I never felt the kind of uncertainty about the world that I feel now, that my young adult children feel. I feel how fortunate I was, to have only had to worry about personal uncertainty--though that felt hard enough. I cannot imagine bearing both kinds of uncertainty when I was young. I so appreciate you putting into these words how things are for so many of us.
Everyone I know who falls in this sort of hinge age range—many of us with elders alive and well and children (ours or others’) in or nearing adulthood—expresses the sense of uncertainty as much for other generations as for their own, themselves, ourselves. It’s one of the things I notice a lot lately, and while I think all that consciousness of concern for other cohorts can be heavy, it also suggests a lot of care, and that seems like a big net good.
when everything is mayhem how may I help ease this world? as it ends, begins, both at once
I relate to wanting to throw my arms around the world. Collectively, individually. I want to offer a silver lining even when I can’t feel it, feeling an ominous something. Systems are crumbling, have been - but it’s more evident now. I haven’t believed in them in a while, but I believe in the small things, glimmers. 🖤
I can’t even express how uncanny it was to read this, Marya. Thank you from my whole soul for how beautifully and hauntingly you have written about the inexplicable feeling I, too, am suspended inside. I thought it was just me, that it was a very personal precipice I stand upon. But it’s all of us.
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Allison. As I read these comments, I am oddly reassured, strangely glad that none of us, in fact, is on a personal precipice. The knowledge feels bolstering, somehow.
Have read and re-read. This is sobering and brilliant. I feel it in my bones -- the before times, "a wave pattern that has picked up both velocity and force over time."This feeling of constantly preparing for something -- something 'unprecedented', never knowing what that 'something' will be is endlessly unsettling and true.
Jan, thank you so much. While I wouldn't wish this sense of constant on-the-verge-ness on any of us, I will tell you it is strangely reassuring to know I'm not the only one.
Marya, I read this piece twice in a row. Its resonance, like an echo. Like sitting inside a rock cathedral and hearing the beat of my heart.
LORD, HOLLY, you and your staggering language. Leave some for the rest of us!! (will email tomorrow. thank you for checking in. xoxo)
Crying all the way through this post, dear Marya, both for the beauty of your writing, and the truth it imparts.
Sue, I'm so glad of you. Thank you for reading, for showing up in the world, for being here.
Thank you, Marya, for your kind response.
I’ve been feeling this. Maybe why my current essay is about facing a shortened horizon; it’s my stage of life but it feels like more than that. The third act is the one where the curtain comes down at the end and not back up. The road stops.
I've been tinkering with a piece about the idea of a lifespan off and on for years. I wonder if it'll ever be finished; I almost think maybe it'd be fitting if it did not. Thank you, Kelly.
Stay tuned for my post that drops Sunday night “Roadtrip” about this and this essay of yours in the shoutouts.
I LOVE YOUR POSTS
Gahhhhh You just made my dayyyyy
And “tinkering.” 🫶
I've read this three times, Marya, and still can't find what I think I need in the way of words to respond to it. Instead, I'll share a recent experience: I joined a local meditation group for the evening. It wasn't my first time there, but it had been at least a year, and even then I had only a drop-in or two with which to compare. Still very much a novice. As I sat in my 30 minutes of stillness, I had the keen sense of being surrounded by hundreds. I couldn't see their faces, only their legs and feet which told me that they were standing shoulder to shoulder. They came as doulas, beings-formerly-human who were there to usher in the birth of what is coming, to guide, to comfort, to reassure, to receive the slippery new arrival and do what's needed to attend to it and the one(s) who created it.
Grateful to you for writing in a way that allows, just allows, over and over again.
One of the things I miss about a settled-in-one-place life is being a part of a meditation community. The sense of collective presence in those rooms is powerful; thank you for reminding me of it today. That same collective presence must inhere in these virtual connections, too. I need to tap it more.
I do think it's here, Marya, though in my experience a bit harder to cultivate. So many synergies. I can talk myself out of it being anything but a coincidence, but I'd prefer not to.
I thought this was fitting:
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. -Anais Nin
I love this quote. I also remember being a younger writer and writing my way forward, writing my way out of where I was and into the future. Maybe writing moves in all directions at once. xo
I love this comment.
Ps Why is your brain so beautifully brilliant?
Thank you, Marya. Read this very early this morning UK time and have just come back to it. "There are very few moments in history where it's clear that something is about to change; usually, we can only see the Before Times as such in retrospect, in light of whatever happened that changed the world."
I grew up in a world where we expected social and scientific improvement and progress. Now? Not so sure, and you've captured that sense of the unknown.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about the idea of progress, especially since reading a book called 'The Myth of Progress,' by Tom Wessels, which really reshaped the way I think about social movement over time. Thank you so much for your comment.
Yes! When I was in my 30s (in the 1990s) I took a degree in Environmental Science, which included environmental economics, geopolitics and such, alongside ecology and the more hard sciency bits. Everything I studied then about questioning what we think of as "progress" has become more and more relevant in the years since. I'll look up the book you've mentioned, thank you.
I feel it too. Holding up my heart with love into the unknown, breathing into the ushering of a new world. Maybe these before times weren’t that good and something better is waiting for us? Thank you for your reflection, loved every word!
Thank you for this, Lavina. I don't think the Before Times were good, or better; I don't know that what's next will be bad or worse. What I'm thinking about is the extent to which my (our?) tendency to allow forces to take hold without my (notice) has brought these times about; I at least need to be more mindful as I (we) move ahead.
Oh my dear Marya, your words are filled with the energy of mindfulness and an open loving heart! Thank you for sharing with us!
You are incredibly generous. Thank you for reminding me to keep steering myself back to mindful and keep unlocking this stubborn heart. xo
Lovely as always Marya, and you've made me wonder about my own experience of these times. I can pinpoint a couple of Before Times in the last 8 years, and that makes me think we (all humans) are in a transition period. I just don't know if we're in a birth canal or falling down a mountain or somehow both.
“somehow both” made me laugh, grim as that may be—thank you, Sarah, as ever, for your words.
How amazing to be sitting alone in my apt on a Saturday nite, reading a piece by someone who truly gets it. My whole life has been quite a ride, but now that I’m in my 70s and when a lot of folks my age are sitting back and reflecting, I made one of the worst decisions of my life and it’s time to stop, think, reflect on how this happened, and now pick myself up and fix it. I will never get back to what I was in the “before times”, but my new normal will still be a worthwhile life.
The uncertainty of youth, yes, I definitely had it back in the 60s. Life back then was NUTS! However, I love being 73 and looking back. The 60s were crazy, as were the 70s, 80s, 90s, aughts, and teens, all in their own ways. And yes, these 2020s are also batshit crazy. If we can manage to keep ourselves from destroying the planet (IMO it’s a crapshoot at this point, who knows if the planet will survive or not), then this period of evolution will be VERY interesting. I hope I’m around long enough to see at least part of it.
I am so happy to hear you say this—that you’re glad to bear witness to it, in any case—this is a good reminder for times when I go Dammit I do not want to watch this whole thing go down. I read or heard an almost certainly apocryphal story once about a monk of some sort who was in an airplane as it hit seriously rough air. He looked out the window as the plane appeared to go down. His seatmate asked why he wasn’t more scared. The monk said, “I am scared, but I am also curious. At least this will be interesting.”
Yeah, I’ve been reading across a number of folks who write here and there seems to be a questioning about whether evolution might be kicking into high gear right about now. Not just all the political/cultural upheaval but of course the tech as well. Tech could even kick in some physical evolutionary changes. Even tho’ it’s a scary time to be alive, it’s also a fascinating time to be alive.
I feel a bit like I’m riding along with Thelma and Louise as I move thru today. Your words touched me deeply
“..have passed through everything that came before and are hurtling toward the edge of now..”
There isn’t really anything I can do to stop the forward motion, I’m not in the drivers seat of the world. All I can do is pray that the ends come quickly.
There are days when that’s the intention I send up; there are days when I’m thinking about whether I can influence the course; there are days when I feel like I’m asking if everybody else in the car is freaking out; and there are days when it feels like all I can do is pass around the snacks. But if that’s what I can do, then by god I’ll do it. xo
It’s nearly impossible for me to believe my grown children are wrong in their viewpoints, though without their input I feel differently. Maybe we are both right or both wrong, or both right and wrong. I’m guessing the latter. Is it that uncertainty that evokes the fear we feel about other peoples choices we don’t understand?
Wonderful questions, none of which I can begin to answer. I do find myself less and less inclined to attach myself too tightly to any right, any wrong; when I do so, I feel like I don’t listen as carefully or hear as clearly or choose as well.
Feeling this!
I also relate in a close up and personal way. I have a Before Time. I imagine we all have a time or 10 when the rug was pulled out from under us. Yet, there seems to be that one that changes everything and you will never ever be who you were before. A future so uncertain that breathing hurts. The Before ... and After... If we're lucky enough to ride it out, come through it semi-intact we may find the gold in that mosh pit of hell. Years later I'm still panning through.
The young people I've been listening to lately talk about that uncertainty, which gives me pause. Were we so uncertain at that age? Or did we—at least I—find some comfort in the illusion that certainty could ever be achieved? Thank you, as always, for your words.
I agree with Rita. I felt more personal uncertainty. I don't know that I felt certainty could be achieved but I felt somehow we, the world, would right itself. At the very least we'd figure some things out, we'd learn to be better humans and citizens of the world, we'd be OK. My heart feels for all of us, but especially for the young people of today.
Mine too. I am working on the next profile in this Chronicle series, about that same young woman; it’s a challenge to balance my own relief at her expressions of hope against my own worry about whether those hopes will be realized. Working on esson four zillion in Zip Your Freaking Lip, Lady. ;)
To both Paulette and Marya, I've spent 30+ years working in secondary schools in a more conservative than not area on the outer east edge of the Portland (OR) metro region, and I've observed a huge shift in young people. In my last year in the classroom, I had an extremely politically diverse group, and they were open about their life experiences, their identities, and their mental health issues in ways I once would have thought impossible. They were kind to each other in ways I once would have thought impossible--and it was all of them, even the Trump supporters. And this shift has happened quickly, probably in the last 6 or 7 years. It is the one thing that gives me hope for the future. I worry about and for our youth for so many reasons, but I remind myself often of how different they are from my generation in ways that I believe will serve them well in the After Times, whatever they end up being.
Rita, thank you for your insightful observance of the youth in your classroom. I found myself taking a deep full breath after reading this.
I'm curious Rita, are you still living in the Portland area? I'm in the Rogue Valley and often RV through Portland to see family. DM if you'd like to meet for coffee on one of these trips.
Deep breaths are always good!
I am only a little older than you, and I remember being personally uncertain. Sometimes paralyzingly so. But I never felt the kind of uncertainty about the world that I feel now, that my young adult children feel. I feel how fortunate I was, to have only had to worry about personal uncertainty--though that felt hard enough. I cannot imagine bearing both kinds of uncertainty when I was young. I so appreciate you putting into these words how things are for so many of us.
Everyone I know who falls in this sort of hinge age range—many of us with elders alive and well and children (ours or others’) in or nearing adulthood—expresses the sense of uncertainty as much for other generations as for their own, themselves, ourselves. It’s one of the things I notice a lot lately, and while I think all that consciousness of concern for other cohorts can be heavy, it also suggests a lot of care, and that seems like a big net good.
when everything is mayhem how may I help ease this world? as it ends, begins, both at once
I relate to wanting to throw my arms around the world. Collectively, individually. I want to offer a silver lining even when I can’t feel it, feeling an ominous something. Systems are crumbling, have been - but it’s more evident now. I haven’t believed in them in a while, but I believe in the small things, glimmers. 🖤
The glimmers are more important than ever. Thank you for being one of them. [heart emoji] [I'm not on my phone] xo
Back at you. ♥️
Yes
David, it's such an honor to have you here.
I can’t even express how uncanny it was to read this, Marya. Thank you from my whole soul for how beautifully and hauntingly you have written about the inexplicable feeling I, too, am suspended inside. I thought it was just me, that it was a very personal precipice I stand upon. But it’s all of us.
Thank you for this beautiful comment, Allison. As I read these comments, I am oddly reassured, strangely glad that none of us, in fact, is on a personal precipice. The knowledge feels bolstering, somehow.
Oh yes, Marya. It really does. ♥️