Another World is Probable

As we enter into a new year according to the Jewish calendar, I feel the energy of change. I’m being transformed. Some might say I’m like a piece of coal being turned into a diamond, but that’s a myth. Diamonds are related to coal, but they’re the purer cousin so no, if you squeeze coal really, really hard, it will not become a diamond. When discussing this with a friend, she said a more apt metaphor is that of a seed. More in this week's post.

I am very attached to the fruits of my creative labors. I want my blogposts to become viral. I want the book I write to hit bestseller lists. I have very specific ideas about the trajectory of my creative efforts and boy do I get irritated when my ideas don’t match up with reality. It’s tough being an artist y’all. My ego can get in the way and when that happens, I have to remind myself what it means to be an artist. More in this week's post. 

I learned something interesting recently. If people think they’re supposed to help someone else, they will. If they don’t think it’s their responsibility, they won’t help. That has interesting implications for kindness. More in this week's post. 

I notice people seem to feel despondent and hopeless when it comes to climate change. They’re saying things like, “This is the coldest summer for the rest of your life,” and “Better move to the Great Lakes region because it will be the only place to get fresh water.” I get it. When there’s an onslaught of terrible news stories, such as flooding in Pakistan or the U.S., record heatwaves, epic fires, etc., it’s easy to feel gloomy. You’re more than welcome to feel depressed or live in dread regarding climate change if that works for you, but it doesn’t work for me. More in this week's post. Also, check the original for sources: https://www.anotherworldisprobable.com/2022/09/04/hope-needs-tending/ 

A little more than a year ago, I wrote a post called “Plants and People Need Pruning.” It was about letting go of relationships and recognizing it’s really hard for me. Part of the reason it’s hard is that all too often I don’t get a proper goodbye. The people that mattered to me – friends, partners, potential partners – just stopped talking to me. They were in my life one day and gone the next. Sometimes it wasn’t so dramatic. Sometimes they pulled a “slow fade” – gradually our communication became less and less until it disappeared altogether.

Some of my friends, especially the ones from college, I speak to on a less frequent basis because we live in different time zones, but I still consider them my friends. I understand relationships have ebbs and flows so this post isn’t about them, but rather the other relationships that are well and truly dead. Almost all of those relationships never received a proper goodbye. More in this week's post.

Several years ago I watched a Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on extreme success and extreme failure. She made the point that both positions catapult you out of your normal range of emotion and so both are hard to process. Both feel surreal because they aren’t everyday occurrences. Her point is resonating with me because I just got back from my sister’s wedding. More in this week's post.

I feel unsettled after learning what happened to novelist Salman Rushdie on Friday. I’m upset by multiple things. One, the stabbing occurred during a lecture, an event you would think was safe and peaceful. Two, multiple people were so enraged by words, not actions, words, they sought to kill someone. That’s pretty intense. And problematic because to quote Rushdie, “The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.” More in this week's post.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard over and over again you need to figure things out. In the U.S., we’re fond of “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” going out there and “seizing the day,” and just generally “making stuff happen.” There’s this idea if you aren’t hustling, you’re doomed to live an unsatisfying and unfulfilling life. It’s exhausting, frankly. But what if there’s another way to move through the world? An easier way? Read more in this post.

Growing up I heard the expression, “Opportunity only knocks once,” and I really took it to heart. I took advantage of every opportunity that came my way because I was scared it would slip away like a snowflake melting in the sun. Except as we know, when snowflakes melt, they come back again when it snows. Very rarely does it snow once and that’s it forever and always. Snowflakes are like opportunities in that they come around again if we only wait for them. More in this week's post.

Have you seen that track event where one runner has a baton and then they pass it to the next person? That’s what I think humanity is like. We’re each carrying a baton that we give to the person ahead of us. We do that over and over again until eventually, humanity is in a different place than it was before. More in this week's post.