When All My Words Fall Short

The best I have to say about this time of pain and crisis

Photo by kazuend on Unsplash

I don’t know what to say right now. This feels like a time when words fall short, or at least — for once — when I fall short of having them. There’s a mix of exhaustion and boredom making me restless these days, a splash of cynicism hanging over me like sleep paralysis, that adds up to a perennial shrug at the world that I don’t know how to shake. I don’t know what to say right now. I have no words of comfort.

It’s not that I don’t know what to do — the work of this time is the same it’s always been: heal trauma, regenerate landscapes and watersheds, and organize with your neighbors to build networks of resilience and mutual aid. There’s nothing new to add there. Just do it. Keep doing it. That will always be the way forward.

Maybe it’s a time to talk less and do more.

I’ve made a marginal, but existent, name for myself by talking a lot about trauma and spirituality. I don’t know that there is much more to talk about on either of those subjects right now. Trauma is a weird word, or more specifically, a WEIRD one. It’s a term that came from the psychology of so-called “WEIRD” societies: Western, educated, industrial, rich and democratic* (*strong asterisk on the last one). According to the American Psychological Association…