Thoughts on the Cost of Becoming Something New.
I don’t know how to describe this collective emotion. It’s something resembling the space that unfolds between the worst menstrual cramps I’ve ever experienced and holding a newborn baby.
Something is happening here.
And I don’t really know how to put what I’m witnessing into words. Maybe I’m not meant to. Maybe for now, I’m just meant to understand it for myself. But it’s like a woman’s uterus each month, how it builds a protective lining and waits expectantly for a fertilized egg with the potential to become a new life. Its purpose is to prepare for that occasion and when it happens, the womb becomes a cradle—a secret place—to hold that precious life while it incubates, grows, and becomes.
But when the environment can’t hold new life, or if the egg isn’t fertilized, the uterus has to shed its lining and start over again next month. The body knows how to do this. It doesn’t take into consideration any external rules or implications as to why the process did or didn’t unfold the way it was anticipated. It simply does what it was designed to do—it seeks to create new life.
And yet, somehow the body also knows that on some level we will grieve what could have been.
Observe.
Witness.
Modern living seems to operate inside of a system that’s designed to keep the individual going until the individual dies. And from what I’ve observed, modern systems in no way resemble the natural order of things. In fact, I’ve come to understand that life is actually a series of different types of deaths and rebirths, each one deserving of its own grief, over and over, and over again.
Cycles.
And, I’ve observed that death isn’t the opposite of life, but a stage of it. Transition. Transformation. Becoming new things. And, I think the death of things deserves our acknowledgment so that new things can be born.
Sometimes a house is built and later the soil shifts. The house was originally intended to be a shelter, but ideally it’s a home that holds and supports a thriving family—flourishing human life. But what happens when the foundation begins to crack, the roof leaks, and mold sets in? It no longer supports a healthy and stable living environment. Maybe the foundation can be fixed by adding a pier and beam, or drilling into the earth and adding a support somewhere else. Maybe a new roof will help. But over time, decay and rot and overall disrepair can become overwhelming. Sometimes the structure can’t be salvaged, and the building is torn down so something new can be built.
Death and rebirth.
I think that’s what’s happening here. I’m afraid the systems and structures originally intended to hold and sustain a thriving culture and society that we’ve been trying to uphold are starting to show cracks. That maybe this proverbial cradle/home/structure we’re holding onto can’t actually hold and nurture flourishing human life.
And all the discord we see and feel, well maybe that’s the lining beginning to shed. Any woman can tell you, this will hurt a while longer before it gets better. Before we start to feel the desire to invite life back in again.
What if that’s the key to all of this? Patriarchy, matriarchy, religion, atheism, conservatism, liberalism, capitalism, socialism—whatever the idea is that strives to establish the common good—maybe it never works because we don’t properly understand the interdependence between desire and creation and flourishing life. The male and the female, working together in concert to perpetuate the richness of it all.
Milk and honey.
Gardeners know that with proper sunlight and water and bees and pollen and all the things, their flowers will grow and the air will be filled with fragrance and beauty. I think life is supposed to be filled with fragrance and beauty. I think we’re supposed to notice and appreciate it, emulate it.
But this existing structure we’re holding onto seems so transactional. We do all these things just so we can extract something out of the things we’re doing. We work the jobs to make the money and obtain the health insurance to afford the prescription drugs we need just to keep perpetuating this type of existence. Until. We. Die.
I don’t think farmers cultivate the land solely to make money. Yes, farming is their livelihood, but farmers also cultivate the land because the land sustains life and nurtures human bodies. I sometimes wonder if they do it because of the artistry involved, the reverence for the soil and the nutrients it provides. The way of living and being that the vocation offers. That’s the kind of work that perpetuates human flourishing for the worker and the beneficiary.
In that same way, I don’t believe teachers choose to teach simply because they get summers off. They do it because enriching young minds is their way of being in and contributing to their world.
I don’t believe humans are meant to suffer the way we do, and yet the greatest cause of human suffering seems to be the collective choices of other human beings. We’ve come to accept that “hurt people, hurt other people,” and I think that’s true. But at some point, we have to examine why people keep hurting each other.
And then we have to ask, how do we stop hurting each other?
I wish I had the answers to all of these questions. I wish I had a voice loud and commanding enough to communicate them in a way they’d be received and understood. But I’m simply one woman with a uterus that’s winding down that innate need to bring new life into the world.
But that desire to sustain it? That’s stronger than ever and I desperately want to spend the time I have left working toward that goal. To love well with everything I have left in me. To create things that nurture vibrant living. To find my way of being and contributing to my world.
Maybe that’s what The Common Joy—my writing and artistic expression—has been about all this time. Maybe I’m meant to express myself by simply asking the questions I have out loud and attempting to unravel the answers by observing and witnessing the creation already around me.
And when I think about the cycles of death and rebirth in my own life, I have to wonder if the answers have been here all along.
Maybe we just need eyes to see them.
