"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard

For the last two weeks, I spent most of my time submerged in water. I took some time off and away on vacation, the ocean held me as it always does when nothing else seems to. While I floated the world kept spinning, burning in flames. What I notice it's the amount of paralyzing guilt that surfaced and the feelings following it. At thebottom of our guilt or even our rage, sadness, fear there's hopelessness and to be hopeless feels really at odds with being a human. It challenges us, it puts us in an uncomfortable place. Maybe because in hopelessness, we find reality - as it is. Not that we don’t know very well all the ways the world has been collapsing, but feeling helpless on an embodied way makes us touch a level of truth that is hard to swallow. Pema Chodron says “In Tibetan there’s an interesting word: ye tang che. Theye part means “totally, completely” and the rest of it means “exhausted.” Altogether, ye tang che means totally tired out. We might say “totally fed up”. It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. 

This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. Without giving up hope - that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be - we will never relax with where we are or who we are.” One thing is a fact, this world is undoing us. Perhaps our work right now (alongside participating and acting against this patriarchal conservative unjust system) is to sustain our hopelessness, in a new way. And, in doing so, find what staying hopeful actually means to each of us and how and when we hold on to it. To find a new type of hope, one that isn’t disassociated or numbing. I don’t have answers, formulas or any self care product that will take away the complexity of our times. But examining our relationship with hope and hopelessness can help us connect with what lives in the bottom of ourselves. While under water during these past weeks, my hopelessness kept asking for more silence, much more than what I thought I needed. Honoring it feels like the right and honest thing to do, sometimes the only possible thing to do. What does your hope or hopelessness need?

With love,
Mariana