When life becomes incompatible with life
A notebook of thoughts on sustaining life.
The sky looked burdened. As if I could blow soot from a cloud. A January morning set to greyscale, where people walking past stared down into uneven pavement slabs, as if the asphalt were an oracle. I felt something walk by, just to the side of me. It was around knee-height, so I assumed it was a dog. After all, I live in a part of London where banners that read “all dogs matter”, signal a weekend of canine meet-ups. When I turned back to confirm my peripheral, it was not a dog, but a fox.
A glorious fox waiting ever so nonchalantly on a busy street, by the side of a tree. Part of the daily dash to the Northern Line. One of us. Our eyes met. The fox stopped as I did. Looked at me in a way that felt universal, in an intergalactic, planetary, stars and sun rays kind of way. No words needed. We understood each other. Smiled at each other. Then, I went on my way. The fox did the same.
It was a reminder of the absurd, magical, meaningful, brutally cruel yet deliciously divine life we’re all in. Never knowing what awaits us. A dose of the unexpected greeting you on your way to the train. A sacred interruption to the ordinary.
These moments remind us of what it means to be here.
These moments live next to the laughs that cause tears to splash on your chin.
These moments remind us of what it means to live in a time that doesn’t feel compatible with living.
We exist inside of conditions that are inhumane, yet our humanness is supposed to prevail. We witness atrocities and cruelty that’s so beyond our comprehension that it either causes us to dissociate or our hearts to break, yet we’re expected to scroll on to the next thing. We feel the weight of this world in our bones, yet we also have to carry our own individual circumstances inside the marrow.
We know collective grief.
Ecological grief.
Grief for the people we see murdered in streets they once called home.
Grief for people who’ve lost their homes.
Yet we must face our own grief too.
The inside grief that nibbles at our neurons.
Losing those we love. Losing jobs. Losing expectations.
Losing hope.
We watch budget cuts.
Read up on fiscal pressures.
See the market shift.
How much is olive oil now?
Economy: Unstable.
Hear our unhoused shaking coins in disintegrated coffee cups.
Then, we gaze into our own bank accounts, polish our LinkedIn bios, ruminate on if our jobs are our purpose, what jobs, where are the jobs, what’s the point in it all. How many more business podcasts do we need?
What even is work?
We’re in a polycrisis.
What with the climate emergency, financial insecurity, rising fascism (and every other-ism), threats to democracy, a plethora of humanitarian crises, misogyny, Iran, Gaza, ICEEEEEEEE, and beyond.
Throw this onto the unwashed pile of relentlessness that adulting brings, and the figuring out tax bills, catastrophising about improving one’s gut health, and remembering to cancel the latest free trials.
How we’re living is not compatible with life.
Modern living is cheating us out of our aliveness.
In an age where polarity reigns and binaries are rewarded, this need not be about thriving or escaping. Burning out or fighting hard.
It’s tempting to push into self-optimisation, searching for the magnificent, the answers, the life you never thought possible, choking on supplements and health tech.
It’s understandable to want to crawl into a no-scroll cave where no stimuli can interrupt you. Then there’s a part of us that wants to consume everything while finding it hard to breathe.
We want to do more, be better, fight harder.
Then, there’s times when we just don’t know what to do.
How to live.
That’s where I am, it’s where I’ve been for some time.
In the cave, the void, the great unknown, dark night of the soul. I don’t even know what to call it, but it’s a departure.
Not just from self but from life.
Like a fibre-optic cable on the ocean floor that’s been cut and now there’s no internet.
In this attempt to recalibrate myself I have only one answer.
In all of the searching, yearning, crying out and longing for answers.
I have just one.
We must continue.
That’s all.
If that’s all we have and all we do.
We must continue.
We need to find nourishing ways to stay here in all of this, finding ways to sustain ourselves, to sustain our neighbours (both known and unknown), to sustain this planet.
Our humanity needs it.
I am no longer in the business of just trying to survive and get by.
I can’t reach thriving.
Instead, I am in the deep study and pursuit of continuing.
Maybe we can meet each other there.
I love reading your posts, love from Nigeria!
Thank you for sharing this. I'm finding it very comforting to know that there are other people in the void of not knowing at the moment.