What do you want in your life this year?
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, especially as the year seems to get off to a start reminiscent of a bad political thriller.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying time off from college. Mostly writing, reflecting, and spending lots of time outside and with family.
But I’ve also spent time dreading what’s to come. As college starts again, the new surge of COVID promises to make what will be the second semester of my sophomore year certainly different from “normal”. It’s certainly good to be optimistic – to look at the bright side. One is certainly that fewer social obligations will mean more space and time for me to write (I’ll be working on my second book of the year, but more on that soon).
Even with the upsides, the fact that net-net the latest waves pose less of a threat to my friends and loved ones or that I’ve had some incredible revelations as a writer and am feeling better than ever, it’s easy to look forward and feel a bit of dread. An uncertainty that seems to provide nothing but certain chaos.
And chaos as a writer, chaos in general, is not fun.
I do things like meditate, long walks, and deep reflections to find my calm in the chaos. To let inspiration into my life.
But sometimes the motivation to create that space, to put in the time, effort, and energy required to make it through, isn’t as present as others when up against challenges that make me feel powerless.
And how do you not feel powerless nowadays?
Algorithms dictate what we watch, big governments set the rules and tell us what to do, and the world and the actions of those around us seem to be spinning faster around us than ever before.
In light of this powerlessness, I often find an outlet in writing. An ability to create new worlds, reflections of my world and my thoughts, and share them with others who can also feel a sense of agency when reading my stories. Liberation through story.
But it’s also more complicated than that.
I oftentimes find myself setting expectations for the things that I feel powerless to control. Maybe it’s guidelines at my college and how it will affect my life with the virus circulating, maybe it’s communication with friends and co-workers, or maybe it’s something as simple as the weather.
These expectations are things that I prepare for, and oftentimes, when reality fails to meet them I find myself having to manage that disappointment. Then there is the opposite extreme, setting expectations so low that I begin to dread tomorrow become even cynical of the world and people around me. Life never fails to surpass expectations, but constant cynicism isn’t a recipe for a happy life.
It’s not what I want.
So I’ve worked hard to try and balance my expectations and adjust as the reality of life signals new indications about what the future may hold. But where’s living in the moment in all of that? How can I work to accept the moment and what’s ahead, while feeling empowered and motivated instead of powerless?
I think it may just have to do with transcending expectations altogether.
The truth is, that we will forever be powerless. No life on earth (or anywhere beyond in this universe for that matter) are Gods. We are all forced to live bound to the laws of physics and nature that we may never understand and certainly struggle to truly control. Things like genetic engineering and geoengineering seek to put humans in a godly position, but in truth the unknowns of these technologies only prove that humans don’t control or manipulate these things but instead try to tap into their power.
But I refuse to believe we are actually powerless. We have agency over much in our lives and in the modern age may just have more agency than any set of humans or life forms in history. Simultaneously, in an ever-more complex society with overlapping systems and infrastructures we can feel as if things are out of our control. And it can be crippling.
We sometimes feel as if we have to surrender. Our time to a job. Our money to pay endless bills. Our emotional bandwidth. For the longest time, I thought the word surrender meant giving in. I thought that surrender was accepting defeat and that the answer was to fight back against the things we don’t like and change them. But our world is already full of conflict, do we really need more of that?
Then I realized something. I do surrender.
I surrender all the time and every day. I give in and I accept what’s to come without another thought. And this doesn’t always have to come from a place of defeat.
We can surrender with trust (hell, even in war, a surrender comes with trust that the fighting will stop).
All of this reflection soon brought me to love.
I thought about my loved ones and family. Do we feel powerless when with our partner? My answer is certainly no, and I think for most healthy relationships people would also vehemently deny that they feel powerless. In fact, having someone else so close to you in your life may be freeing. One of the central themes of every love story is that to be a truly whole person, to be the best version of one’s self, it takes a unity of two in order to transform that individual.
It’s a beautiful central theme that has made the love story an irreplaceable pastime of generations of storytellers.
So, why do we feel liberated when with our loved ones (people who we don’t control), yet feel powerless at moments in broader society?
Trust is the answer.
The bedrock of any institution, the bedrock of all connection in the world.
Without trust we have fear. Fear of what will happen. Fear of others. Fear of ourselves. Yet, with trust, comes a sense of power. A sense of togetherness that is even more liberating than being alone and in control of everything (it is possible this is why theology of gods in so many widespread religions has a higher-being seeking to connect with living beings, for even a master in control of everything cannot be alone).
This is when I realized my original feeling of powerlessness comes from a lack of trust in the world around me.
But how are we supposed to trust today?
To this, I don’t have the answer. The breakdown of trust we witness has young people distrusting the existence of their own futures, many citizens of democratic countries distrusting the institutions and infrastructures that hold our world together, while also so many of us constantly putting our trust into people who we feel wrong us (politicians, exes, and the list goes on).
So maybe the question is not how do we trust, but instead who do we trust, what do we trust them with, and why?
It’s a question we likely ask ourselves all the time. And the more I love someone, the more I’m connected to them, the more I entrust them. It’s why I don’t have expectations about the lights turning onto tomorrow. It’s not even a thought. I just trust that they do. But a privilege like that should never be taken for granted, as we see today an attack on free speech, voting rights, and other basic liberties we have all come to collectively trust are part of our agreement of being taxpaying citizens in 21st century America.
Ultimately, trust is never blind.
It comes with validation and accountability. No one will ever get everything right. Just like your partner doesn’t always take out the trash or remember to get that one thing you asked them from the store. We are all imperfect beings. But we come together to have conversations that improve ones relationship going forward.
In the end, these moments build trust.
And when someone passes a threshold, maybe they cheat on you, or if they are a politician maybe they take dark money and break campaign fundraising promises. When this happens, we hold one accountable, trust is broken, and these painful moments often lead to positive change.
So with all of this trust broken in the present day, with people not even knowing who or what to believe about the present state of the world, how do we know when trust is broken and who and what can step up to replace them?
I think the answer may just lie in the land of story as it so often does.
In any good novel, there is more than just one opponent. The main hero is often boxed into a corner. With three or more “opponents” driving them to act, to conflict, and ultimately to change in the end. These opponents don’t have to all be bad guys. “Opponents” can be love interests, friends on adventures, really any character that has a conflicting set of values to the hero.
At first glance, this may seem like a chaotic sea of interactions. But in the practice of a truly great story, it works much more like a symphony.
That is because all these opponents, even with their conflicting values, all have the same desire in a story with a strong narrative.
And ultimately, at the end of a story, after all the conflict and tribulation, our main hero has a big revelation that leads them to take a heroic action. This is often the climax of a story, and it is the part we have been waiting for the entire time as a reader. But it’s not just the action that is exciting. It’s seeing the change in the character. Ultimately, a deeper psychological desire that is fulfilled by the end of the novel.
So I’ll ask you again.
What do you want this year? Or maybe, more specifically, what is your desire (what do you want to achieve) and what is your need (what do you want to feel)?
I’d love to hear your answers. As diverse and nuanced as our values can be, I have a feeling there is more that ties us together than drives us apart.
And maybe it’s the answers to these questions that can spark conversations between parties that normally fight. Because at the end of the day, the real world is not a story. We don’t all have to be opponents.
We can work together. And when we realize that and truly do it, it becomes a lot easier to trust.
It’s still not easy and there’s no exact calculus to what it takes to trust someone and with what to entrust them with.
But this is where the art of surrender comes in.
It’s messy, imperfect, and sometimes it requires a taking risk based off a feeling, a passion that one just follows and is prepared to either toss the canvas away or have an incredible masterpiece.
But it is mastering this imperfect art of surrender that may just make the world a better place. It may just make all our lives a bit happier.
It may just set us free.
I’ll be back in touch with a writing update soon (I’m almost done with Millennium Game and will soon be sending it to beta readers, email me to be added to the list) and a new writing experiment I am conducting this year I think you will all love.
I hope you all had a happy holidays and are off to an amazing start to this year.
In the meantime, don’t forget.
Together we are boundless.