What You Wish For
or The Secret Third Thing Redux
You know the saying, "You are currently living one of the prayers you used to pray"? I've seen a few variations of that float here and there, and I always used to think it was corny—tired, at least. 2024 for me was a year that saying was made for.
Excuse my Christianese, but it was a year of favor. It had been clear the year before that some things had to disappear to make room for that which was to come. I thought having gone through that year would leave me prepared. The question was, were these things to come going be the things I prayed for?
As often is the case, you can't always get what you want, and maybe I found I got what I need.1 I can't tell exactly... but I can say for certain, I did pray at some point for some of these things I got. Things now seem more… determinate. So why doesn't it feel that way?
I'll admit, I'm not coming back here with the same poetic fervor I usually have.2 I thought that things would make more sense than they do by now. Yet as I've received things for which I hoped and prayed and even begged in times past, I realize that as we journey and sojourn that at the end of the day, we are put on this earth as mere stewards of things, never really owners.
"I will only stand to lose more things. I will lose more people. I will lose more deeply as more important things and more important people vanish from the fabric of my reality..."
Seems I should've known to not anticipate so exactingly sometime ago.
For now, I'll try and seek that which can fully satisfy.
Giving Grace
The year is now 2025. To look at another is to see the spawn of Satan than the image of God. The past couple months have been especially socially tumultuous. I dipped from social media to dodge the brunt of it.
"Detoxing" as it's called is something I've been doing on a now-regular basis. I deactivate my account, keep my comms open as much as I can with select people, and keep connected enough to function as best I can in the real world.
Every time I do this, I realize just how bigger the rift becomes between what is "online" and what is "real". Every time, "social media is not real life" bears a deeper meaning in my mind, a deeper realization of the terrible trajectory we set ourselves on—easier to make out the fragments that were humanity and kindness and other good things amongst the rubble.
Now as we enter the second half of the decade3, we risk living the Groundhog Day of vigilantly navigating this technocratic, kleptocratic minefield for at least… *checks watch* another four years. Non-stop showers of bile and piss for the foreseeable future... I don't know if I can take that anymore.
I don't know when I might reactivate my account. I dread the thought of what comes with it, honestly.4
The lines in the sand in this overlong culture war are no longer partisan lines, I don't think. With mass shifts from the left to the right happening5, and the right seemingly drowning in its own hubris, the lines are blurring more than people might like to admit. It's insanity all the way across.6
The time has long been ripe for something different, something that works.
I found that giving grace works, which means to give people beyond what they might deserve. For me, it's always been gratifying, and I much prefer it to hating my neighbor. I’m far from a shining example, but I find my most profound moments with other people have involved either giving grace or being given grace.
It is illogical, it is sacrificial, yet if you try, you find very quickly it is intuitive. I believe we're meant, if not wired, to live this way.7
Inhale/Exhale
I've been maintaining a design-centric account while I've been off my personal one. I keep on this account for research and inspiration purposes.
I find when I'm not careful that it can rouse a bit of professional jealousy in me when I see contemporaries, even friends, making things I wish I'd made, or doing things I wish I could be doing instead.
This can be a good energy, but it can be bad as well. It can either push me to strive harder, or not even try at all. It's a gamble.
The main conflict that arises is this—that I cannot possibly do all these things I wish I could do, because I have limits, whether those be physical limitations, or lack of resources, skill, even confidence. Some of these things I don't think are things I even really want to do, I just find that I simply want to be on that pedestal and revel in the glory of it.
This makes it difficult to navigate through the troughs of life, when I'm chasing after the crests.
I look back and realize that every high in life is preceded by periods of lows—periods in the trenches.8 At least for someone like me, in this time of my life, the lows are prerequisite.
In the same way, one has to inhale to exhale, exhale to inhale again, and so forth. Instead of simply chasing the highs, I think one goal to carry into the next year is finding the perfect cadence between high and low, my resonant frequency, seeing as highs and lows are both inevitabilities of life.
And now some postamble...
Sometimes I read back at particular posts and they read a little insular—a little me trapped in my own head, like a therapy session done in the open. I think, "How could this possibly do anyone any good?"
I read back at what I just wrote and I feel the same about this. Almost.
Like I said, it isn't poetry, but having written this does feel right. These "Lessons" posts have become tradition, after all, so it has to be a little expected.
One thing I've always wanted to do is write prose. I want to take me out of myself, but still have it be me in a sense. But of course, as endemic among aspirational 20-somethings, it is one thing among many—possibly a pipe dream. There isn't even so much as a draft in my notes. I'm just putting it out there that it is something I want to do.
Another resolution, I guess. Time always tells.
That said, it will probably be sometime before you hear again. If all goes to plan, I'm entering another period of doing and striving and I hope in writing this, we can both be readier than ever for our doings and strivings, and stewardings and breathings and waitings and maybe just... living.
Okay. See you again in the real world.
How many more fingers on this monkey paw…
Maybe that time's come and gone.
I let out a huge sigh writing that out.
I like not knowing about your nth trip to the beach. I get hypothermia just thinking about how cold the water must be these days.
and those choosing to stay, further entrenching themselves in their deep, dark silos
Where this apparent shift from TikTok to RedNote, an app probably even more conducive for the spread of ideological, propagandistic content, fits in all this, I have no idea, and I don't care to try and figure that one out.
And now, an obligatory reference to Steve Jobs.