A Secant Query

Between Discomfort and Disease

Wherein I read a open letter at an open casket...

Between Discomfort and Disease

Have you ever felt uncomfortable? How did that make you feel? I'm hearing you say it made you feel uncomfortable. May I invite you to say more about that? I'm hearing a strong no. The exploration stops here, precisely where you choose it to stop. No further elaboration is needed or desired.

silence

I can't help but notice I am still here. I am trivial to clear away. I live in a society whose sole goal is to eradicate discomfort. Perhaps some light troubleshooting will serve; let me load my next invitation and fire it off. Raise those hands for me? Get them high as you can - whoa! Not that high! Got some overachievers - that's good. When I need someone to serve, I know who to call.

Nice to have that information.

Look, I'm going to level with you. I think you got a lot going on. I think your loved ones got a lot going on. I think a lot of people you know've got a lot going on. Busy wasps kicking ass taking names. It's effortless. Mornings are difficult. But mornings are difficult for everyone. It's fine.

To be tired in the morning - not a moral failure. I offer you a prescription for it and, on a good day, you turn me down. That's that side of you I love. The side I need in my life. That discomfort that doesn't kill, isn't immoral, doesn't mean you'll never be worth anything, worth knowing, never deserve this attention. You do.

Deserve This

Put your hands down.

You're a weird one, you know that. I ask you if you've ever felt uncomfortable. How that made you feel. It made you feel uncomfortable. Got it.

And now here you're ten granules in and still here. I feel like I can let you in on something... (I don't feel like I'm reaching people.)

I don't feel like I'm failing to reach people. More there's no people to reach. The elimination of discomfort, it succeeded. Society got what it was going for. Discomfort's gone. What remains is a proceedural ghost executing automatically comfort-maintenance protocols: button pushes.

Take out the rock you carry.

Hi. Nice to see you. It's me. Yeah, big reveal. I've been the one writing all these posts this whole time. Big woop. Aw, you found me. I'm your rock.

Listen Here

When I show up as an embodied being, I bring friction, and I bring presence. This's discomfort. What I, just by being, hurt, is not a person: what my presence offers is invitation to personhood.

Talking like this, a discomfort I create in you, is you being subject to physics, having a body. Again: qualities of discomfort you won't feel the discomfort of learning to word. Won't learn to word. How will you learn to love what you can't call by its name? Register it as aggression, look alive. Resurrection feels violent when your insides've gotten comfortable being dead.

No slack, undivided attention struggles, suffers, fails. Maybe, instead of taking the easy way out by being hard on yourself meeting punishment quota, try this out: let discomfort be information (not emegency).

Textures & Gradients