August 4, 2022

That’s not how I see it

I’ve been sort of obsessed with Katherine May lately, whose podcast archives I’ve not delved so deeply into (yet!), but every time I listen, I come away with a gorgeous revelation that’s blown my mind. I’ve included some of these amongst my “Gleanings” lately, including the following, from her conversation with Emma Dabiri: “We all end up using the same language over and over and the effect is just deadening. You just think, I’ve heard that, I know that already, and the brain gets over it. There’s nothing interesting there anymore because we’ve all said it.”

And I think about that all the time, the affect of everybody speaking from the same script with permissible takes, and how meaning gets stripped of all of it. For example, what does toxic even mean? Or gaslighting? Or narcissist. When you’re using buzzwords, it’s time to stop talking, and start thinking, and this is what galls me about everybody who thinks they’re so brave in critiquing the flaws in progressive politics, because they too all start speaking from their own reductive scripts (and subscribing to obligatory substacks) and it’s so boring. When, all the while, thinkers like Katherine May are applying their own rigorous analysis (and sense of curiosity and wonder) to these very same issues, and it’s actually deepening connection and thoughtfulness, which is everything we need right now.

I signed up for May’s Patreon at the conclusion of the podcast where she talks about how one need not increase one’s own suffering in order to meet the hardship in the world, and I so needed to hear that. (There was also something she wrote in an instagram post ages ago about how none of us are obligated to watch over the entire world. Yes, there is a part of the world for which we’re responsible, but there are limits to that responsibility, and I needed to hear that too.)

I also love this line from her recent announcement about her forthcoming book: ” My books always have their feet in uncertainty. They don’t come from a desire to hand down wisdom, but instead to acquire it.”

And, most essentially, this line, from her newsletter, delivered on June 30, in the wake of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade: If nothing else, keep making the world beautiful. Keep singing and dancing, drawing and planting gardens. This is no insignificant thing in the face of a movement that wants to make everything plain and ugly, cruel and sour. There is radicalism in refusing to judge. There is radicalism in listening. There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’

There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’

I’ve been thinking about that steadily ever since, as I continue to think about and evolve in the ways in which I want to be political. Because my former aspirations to be the witchy woman ever with the placard on a broomstick have been dampened by seeing neighbours* who are my political opponents taking up the very same tools to what I regard as most nefarious ends. I’ve seen masses take to the streets in the last few months, and the effect has been horrifying, and I don’t want to be part of anything to do with that, and I really am starting to think that it’s all—whatever your side, with the rage and contempt—feeding the same terrible, monstrous machine.

So, what to do?

There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’

To live my life with integrity, according to my principles, gently, and honourably. My intention not to to beat anyone over the head with a placard, metaphorically or otherwise, not to try to convert everyone around me to my way of being and my way of thinking, because I don’t want to live in a world where everybody thinks the same—how uninteresting is that?—and, when I meet opposition, to say gently, “That’s not how I see it.” Not that I’m necessarily correct, even, in how I see it, but just to continue to complicate things, thoughtfully, generously.

There is radicalism in saying, gently, ‘That’s not how I see it.’