Objects moving through air...
I’ve been at odds with the universe. At enmity with the world. A bastard substance built of broken stars. The force of gravity compressing atoms into a fusion gone wrong. I feel the constant burden of what Matt Haig describes as "a hope that hadn't happened the way it should have".
In my experience the cosmos are neither caring nor uncaring, but capricious. A volatile system that seems to cast down all my attempts at comfort, all my striving for change.
I move through the world in a crouched position. Stepping heel to toe. Bent at the knees. Keeping my center mass low. I shift my weight slowly. Careful not to make a sound. Listening for any noise. I have been cautious and undercover. I stay quiet and inconspicuous. Maybe if I stand still enough for long enough, the universe won’t see me. Maybe whatever it is that watches my existence will lose interest and move along.
I try to hide my efforts. To cover my every track. To keep the world unaware. I try to keep my yearnings secret. To never utter them aloud. Then the universe would know. Then it would see me. It would hear the hidden and hushed up frailties of my heart, and I would be helpless against it's cruelties.
When you’ve had to start over as often as I have, you learn the value of being unladen. You learn to gather less. You learn to travel light. I don’t get attached or settled. I put almost nothing on my walls. I don’t own anything I can’t live without. Hesitancies and regret are the things I carry. They are more burden than I can bear. And it's time to set them down.
Steven Pressfield explains that whenever we make it our aim “to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe…an equal and opposite reaction.” This “reaction”, is what Pressfield calls “resistance”, an actively hostile, “protean, malign force…whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals”.
I think he's right, of course, but I'm also starting to think he's wrong. Resistance rises when we push against the ruts of everything we have always been. When we choose to reach beyond what we are. When we decide to run rather than give way to atrophy and inertia. A kind of friction. A contact force opposing motion. But, ultimately impersonal. Like gravity, or Newton's Laws. It doesn't give a fuck about you or I.
"The adversity. The losses. The frustrations. The disappointments." These are neither affronts, nor attacks, says Ryan Holiday. It's simply what happens when something moves.
The greater the speed, the greater the drag.
The more there is to move, the more the movement is opposed.
It is a mechanical process, indifferent and detached. Devoid of feeling and sentimentality. We needn't feel slighted. We just need more lift and thrust.
"Fortune is not out to get you." The universe is not picking you apart. "This is just what’s happening", Holiday supposes. This is just what is.
Maybe Leigh Bardugo is right. Maybe bad things and good things are the same. "Sometimes you just [have] to let them happen."
Maybe there is no enmity. Just objects moving through air.
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