agathokakological

I have subscribed to several Word of the Day services, and occasionally, they proffer up gems like this.

To be composed of both good and evil is the foundation of the human experience. I’d assume “animal” over “human,” save for the fact that only humans make judgment calls re: which behavior is good and which is evil. Everything else is just surviving.

It has been a long time since I’ve written here, but not as long as some previous gaps, so I suppose there is something in that. Since the last time I was dryvin-n-cryin, I have been back to the PacNW, hoofed through old stomping grounds which inspired nostalgia but no sense of homesickness, had a rancorous bout with COVID, built a university’s website, delved into ideas of societal collapse, and learned more Spanish.

The season is turning and I finally turned the heat on this morning. Deep gusts of dusty particles danced out like tendrils, leaving a fine velveteen mist on everything. I assume. I preplanned by replacing all of the filters in my air purifiers, lit some candles, and then settled in.

It is interesting to be in this space and time. To think about all of the history, of which I have barely a speck to recollect — if that — and to be okay with being present. Things are pretty shitty, tbh, but it is quite lovely to breathe in the cooler strains of autumn air, watch the leaves flicker beneath a gentle wind, try to come up with something that is both joyful and delicious at the same time.

There is a sense of freedom in absolving myself of the choices of others. I was trained from an early age to assume I was the cause of all of the problems in any given situation, and so I took that upon myself heartily. I think there was some benefit to that, in giving me a drive to achieve or find balance or discover — maybe I wouldn’t have needed that kind of framework as much if I hadn’t just assumed that, at all times, I was broken. Over the past few years, it has been a revelation to not only realize that I’m not exceptional in my fragmentation, but I am actually relatively dull.

One thing I love to do is to sit with the puppies, listening to them breathe, one of them resting their chin on the small of my back, and the other on the crook of my knee. An interconnectedness that allows for both space and time. Closeness. They are so robust that sometimes they take my breath away, and although I never would have thought I’d spend a large chunk of my early golden years bonding with two sleek ponies, it is thrilling to be here.

I spent a few years trying to control the chaos with my to-do lists and self-exploration practices, then I spent the last year just being in all of it; now, I wonder, am I ready to build something new? It feels like it, only because I am somewhat exhausted by the strain of trying to be who I was. Fifty to fifty-one was a year of molting, as it were, and learning how to feel in this different skin, tweaked perspective, deeper sense of myself. So, what now? It does seem like a fairly dramatic overhaul is on the horizon, and that the next few years will be in service of laying the foundation for and discovering what that might be.

My body is telling me that some of the ways I have lived cannot be sustained for this next chapter in my life, and while I mourn that, in a way, I suppose it’s a gift. We can’t keep muscling through everything, white-knuckling our way through the tough shit, and standing up and working, work, work until exhaustion—because the recovery time required is exponentially higher than it was twenty years ago. Or even ten years ago.

So a reimagining is in order—and an agathokakological one at that.