This track includes ten minutes of meditation practice; if that feels like a lot to you, maybe start at the beginning
Turn on the TV, get comfy, and play this track after you’ve watched the episode: The limit (Season Two, Episode Twenty-Two).
P.S. If you’re curious, here you can find out why I started this project.
Mentioned in this episode: a quote from Alexis Pauline Gumbs in the book Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies.
CW: use of the word “slow” as a euphemism/insult.
Recording Transcript (Meditation Begins at 3:18)
Hello again, adventurer!
Whether on a shooting star, a firefly, or a little muddy serpent, my wish is that this day finds you well, and not stretched too thin. But however it finds you, I’m glad you’re here. And I promise not to chant your name three times to push your limits even further.
I often find myself in these reflections trying to hold sympathetic space for the ways in which caring what people think can be a really legitimate factor in decision making. I think narratives of hyper-individualism are mostly untrue, because they falsely imagine that any of us are immune to social pressure.
And yet, today’s episode reminds me that there also is no way to stretch around the fact that sometimes what other people want for us just… isn’t actually best. There are people, in our lives and in the world, who are willing to ask us to overextend because of what it can offer them. In fact, for much of the world, exploitation is the foundation of our economic system and always has been.
Of course, economic coercion runs a bit deeper, and is usually a little more invisible, than the differences between our friends who really care about us, and hot dog knights who just need help getting out of “Baby. Us. Trouble. Time.” But it holds true that, often times, we are able to identify real care by its contrast to other forms of relating. When we know what genuine care feels like, we stop accepting validation that poisons us with scorpion stabs to the nerps.
Or at least, sometimes we do. Sometimes our mind is clouded by how hungry we are and we don’t know how to take care of ourselves because we just need a sandwich to smash our face into. And that’s when it’s great to have friends who actually do know how to model care for us. And who can see ways of honoring our wish for the Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant and cleverly rescue us from danger. Because finding ourselves exhausted and un-resourced in a maze is honestly too often what life can feel like.
And actually, maybe this isn’t so unrelated to economic exploitation. Genuine care is a powerful force, because it makes real to us the possibility of different ways our lives could be. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs reminds us in the Foreword of Practicing New Worlds:
“what ultimately brought the plantation system down, according to the colonizers themselves, was how the idea that there were formerly enslaved people somewhere practicing freedom made captive plantation workers ungovernable.”
Which is to say: care, actual care, genuine care, radical care, for ourselves and for others, is a profoundly powerful force. So really listen to the people in your life who model genuine care. Spend more time with them, organize your life around them, and give care back to them. The more we practice care, by giving and receiving it, the more we shape the world into a more caring and just place.
So hop on board this Ancient Psychic Tandem Care Elephant with me and let it give you control.
“Choo-Choo.”
