This is all about setting our expectations: this is the one thing we can individually control for ourselves. Expecting the world to jump back to how it was is a futile exercise. It might seem comforting, but it’s delusional, and will lead to disappointment that always comes when expectations are not in line with reality.
Acknowledging our struggles as a way to support each other and find strength, compassion, and connection.
I stitch all the wonderful photos and stories and captions together to create a mutant Frankenstein’s monster of a person who does all the things and against whom I compare myself.
The way I like to think about it, isn’t about my suffering or lack thereof. It’s that collectively, there is a sharing of the suffering that allows humanity to survive.
Despite everything, it’s still possible to feel bored simply because what we’re waiting for hasn’t happened yet.
Some of us still curl in our cocoons, waiting for our time to be right. We can now see both the butterflies, free and saving us all, but we can also see the raging worms. We know we want to be a butterfly, but it is tempting to escape early. To stay as we were. Because at least the worms are out there, in the world, not enclosed with only their thoughts and dreams and despairs and anger and fear.
The difference between being in immediate survival mode and a more sustainable survival mode, and the grief we need to allow ourselves to experience to move from one to the other.
We cannot skip this limbo stage. We cannot jump from old to new without a period of transition, which can become a period of metamorphosis if we only let it.
It’s hard to think about desire when it seems the world is upside down and inside out. But - what if we could think about desire not as productivity, but as keeping the littlest of sparks in us alive?
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