Rewriting - 023
Dear {FirstName | Friend},
For the last few months, Golda has been practicing her birthday. Lying in her crib every night she'd sing happy birthday to herself. She’d ask us to light candles so she could practice blowing them out.
“When is your birthday?” And she practiced “Oct-TOE-ber Ay-TEEN. We have Elmo cake. Sing hap-bur-day. Blow candles. Say yayyy!” And on her birthday, we did just that.
Three days later was the first anniversary of my aunt’s death. The tradition is to light a yahrzeit candle that burns for 24 hours in her memory. Instinctively, Golda tried to blow out the candle. We explained that we blow out some candles but not others.
She stops. Thinks. And I see learning happening. I see her brain rewriting itself. It’s clear in a 2 year-old, but it happens to adults too. As we learn, we rewrite our understanding of the world. As we change the narratives of what has happened to us, we rewrite our truth. We reshape the world around us every day.
Let’s talk about rewriting. Here we go.
“Inner Conflict” animation by Fausto Montanari
Creating Seasonality
Earlier this month, I proposed meeting with a friend on the 16th. “I’m taking off that day. It’s a nw moon.” Huh? Is that a thing?
He explains that for the last 6 months, he’s felt trapped in the same thing day after day. His routine became meaningless. But since adopting rituals around the moon cycles– on the new moon, taking the day off to clean and meditate, and then two weeks later, watching the full moon rise in the evening– he’s felt more in a rhythm.
It seems a bit unusual. But we all have annual rhythms. As the weather turns colder and we break out our fall sweaters, boots, and jackets. Our plans change too. 'Tis the season for apple picking, chai, seeing the leaves change, pie. Sweater weather!
But COVID has kept us more stagnant than any other year.
We’re not feeling the same movement we’re used to.
So many of us are seeking and creating our own seasonality.
Every 2-3 months brings a new internal season. Learn something. Binge a new show. Change diet. Take on a new habit or ritual. Move locations.
My seasons have felt like this: March to June I was staying at my in-laws. Big family meals, minimal social contact, work was very slow. June to August was coming home, more reading, watching The Sopranos and intense documentaries, kickstarting work. Isolating just the 3 of us. End of August started a chapter of seeing people, picnics, social distant walks, touring houses in the suburbs. Parents coming to visit.
The next chapter will come around Thanksgiving. I’m looking towards the Winter like a bear seeking a cave. I'm seeing friends do the same: eyeing plans for a Winter of hibernation.
We have a need to find natural rhythms and cycles to the next chapter every few months. Not by the colors of the leaves or the weather but by our internal clock. In a time where time passes in strange and slow ways, we’re all rewriting our own seasons.
“Black is a Color” photograph by Tim Tadder
Rewriting Experiences
I crashed my first wedding in October 2002 at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. And in October 2010 when my friends and I got busted and the bride told us we ruined her wedding, I knew I had crashed my last one.
At dinner parties and even once on stage, I shared the tale. How we scouted it out, took pictures in the photo booth, drank for free, and almost got beat up by 11 groomsmen.
Once, I was telling it to a group that happened to include one of my friends who was there that night. In the middle of the story he stopped me. “That’s not what happened. We did the hora at the beginning.”
Telling it over and over, I was subconsciously making it a better story by rearranging details, increasing the tension and drama. In my head I rewrote what had happened. And so did he.
And so do we all.
We change details of our experiences to fit with our worldview, to be more interesting, or just to make sense of what happened.
And rewriting our stories becomes our truth. I changed little things in my head and told that new story over and over so many times that I believed it's what actually happened. This is what psychotherapy is–getting help to rewrite trauma and reframe our experiences.
The human brain has the ability to be able to re-edit, reframe, refocus, retell, and rewrite our stories. And we can use that gift to help us feel differently about our past. The stories we tell ourselves and the experiences we share become the way we process the world. And in that way, because our stories can be retold, our reality can be molded and shaped.
Maybe Trish still tells the story about how her wedding was ruined. A perfect day until that moment at the end when four overconfident twentysomethings walked up to her and her new husband to shake his hand, kiss her on the cheek and thank them. Hopefully (for her sake and ours), she’s rethought the story to be a funny ending to the best night of her life.
In retelling that story, like so many others, we rewrite the details to reshape how we feel about them. Our experiences are molded and then cemented into a new truth.
If we are ever to come to terms with our trauma, embarrassment, rejection, regret, and failure, we must learn to rewrite our stories.
“Start” installation part of the “Word on the Street” series by Scott Froschauer
Rewriting The War Narrative
Whether we grew up on Disney or Marvel, Bollywood or even the Bible, the story of good vs evil is engrained so deeply into our bones. Everyone believes they are the good guys.
The nonprofits and the social entrepreneurs do, sure. But so do the frackers and the politicians, the pharmaceutical companies and yes, even the terrorists. They believe they are the good guys trying to take down the evil empires of the world.
Over time, we have all come to believe that the way to solve problems in the world, for good to defeat evil, is to identify an enemy and eliminate it.
It’s not just the story of fairytales and mythology.
It’s the story of modern medicine: identify the pathogen and destroy it.
It’s the story of politics: choose an enemy and defeat them.
It’s even the story of agriculture: find the weeds, and kill them.
The belief that by destroying evil, good will prevail is called redemptive violence. It’s the cornerstone of what’s known as a war narrative.
There’s always an enemy to get rid of to solve a problem. Crime is caused by criminals. So lock them up and we’ll have no more crime. Or terrorism is caused by terrorists. Kill them and we’ll defeat terrorism. …right?
Well, not exactly. It’s dangerous for us to think so reductively. We ignore the systems and complexity that creates crime, poverty, terrorism and just focus on getting rid of the symptom.It’s like taking aspirin to get rid of heart pains, neglecting a 5,000 calorie a day diet, constant stress from work, and lack of exercise for a decade.
"An alternative to war emerges when we see all the enemies – weeds, criminals, terrorists, calories selfishness, laziness and so forth – not as causes of evil, but as symptoms of a deeper condition. Warring on the symptoms allows the deeper causes to go unexamined and unchanged."
That’s from an article by Charles Eisenstein called “Building a Peace Narrative.” It blew my mind this month and while it’s long, it’s worth reading to think about the ills of the world in a new way. Changing systems, not just continuing to fight battles against the symptoms.
If we are to adopt a peace narrative, we must first accept that our inclination for war narrative creates conditions for more war. Bombing terrorists creates conditions for more terror. Locking up criminals destroys families communities, which creates conditions that breed more crime.
The peace narrative is built upon an idea of understanding and relating to one another. Not to point fingers, but to start asking “why.” Why does greed exist? Why do people turn to crime? Or white supremacy? Why are they pro- this or anti- that?
We can rewrite the war narrative. A peace narrative is possible.
Besides, there are no good guys or bad guys if we all believe that we are good.
“Beyond Love” pencil on paper drawing by Diego Koi
Thank You (But Please Vote)
Thank you for reading this. Truly. Thank you for taking time on your weekend to let these thoughts steep. There’s a lot to read here, especially this month.
Normally I’d ask you to share this with friends who might appreciate it. Or reply if you feel inspired to start a conversation. I love hearing from you every month.
But more than that, I’m asking you to vote.
The election this week will shape the rest of our lives. We have a chance to rewrite our future by participating. Tell your family. Tell your neighbors. It’s never been more important. If you need resources on where your polling place is, you can visit vote.org. If you need someone to research the issues for you, talk out the pros and cons, or pay for you to fly home to Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, please reach out and ask. I’m happy to do that for you.
Thanks again for reading. And for voting.
With gratitude,
Jake
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