An idea and an invitation...

and a communal experiment.

Hello dear friends,

It’s been a while since I last checked in. In that time, an election came and went, and with it, a set of questions—none of them new, but definitely more insistent—surfaced.

What will our future look like? How will we prepare for what is to come? How will we tend to the most vulnerable? What will happen to our earth? How will we maintain our tenderness and compassion when things feel sharper, meaner, scarier, and less predictable? What will this world look like for our children in five, ten, or twenty years? What does building resilience in community actually mean? How will I find the energy to do what I know I must do when I am already so exhausted?

I imagine you have your own questions.

My brilliant friend Tracy passed along a maxim to me about 15 years ago that I hold close at all times and employ so frequently that Cleo’s eyes roll immediately whenever I say it: “Don’t experience future pain.” We cannot know the future. Why weigh ourselves down with the pain of our imaginings? All we have is this moment and what it brings. And yet, this practice is a tough one to maintain when things get sticky and scary.

Right now, my mind wants to ruminate and fret. It makes up stories. It busies itself finding patterns, sorting, analyzing, and pulling things apart like string cheese. It loops, it wanders, it reaches, and it circles back. Over and over again.

The anxiety comes in waves. I spend time in the middle of the night trying to predict the future and create order in the chaos. I also find myself indulging in a variety of numbing behaviors in order to manage the creeping fears.

Here is something I know to be true and real: I don’t want to numb my way into this next chapter of our dystopia. I want to be grounded and resourced.

Over the years, I’ve built up an arsenal of habits to quiet the anxious little hamster on the squeaky little wheel of my mind that wants to keep running for its life. I dance, make art, write, work in the garden, spend time in nature, maintain a yoga practice, swim, walk, and prioritize my time with friends and family. And still, my brain is moving too quickly. There is SO much noise in there.

What my brain doesn’t do well is REST.

The thing is, I know that it must.

All of our brains must rest if we are to engage meaningfully without retreat.

One of my 4-year-old students drew this portrait of me. It’s a vibe!

I haven’t had a regular meditation practice since 2020. I know that I want to meditate, but I don’t do it in any consistent way, and that is exactly what I need right now.

What I am doing is scrolling. And even though I find no joy in it, and I can hear my inner voice telling me to stop when I do it, I just keep reaching for my phone. I spend 2 or 3 minutes at a time, many times per day, in the weird digital morass of Instagram.

I’ve worked hard to get to this minimal level of engagement, creating all kinds of barriers to my usage. I closed my personal account years ago, maintaining a public-facing account that I *use* for posting about this Substack, art, and other career- related stuff. I very rarely “like” or comment about anything. I unfollowed almost all of my family and friends so that most of what I find on my feed is impersonal and boring, and it is easier for me to tear my eyes away.

And still, I find myself there, swimming in that chaos, my attention diverted, confused, and squandered. For me, Instagram is a crazy hodgepodge of TOO MUCH. Even when what it offers is beautiful and meaningful, it crashes up against the next image, which is something entirely different. My mind cannot make that many transitions in day. So…

I have a proposal. An offering, if you will.

I want to swap out the time I spend scrolling on social media with meditation. I want to eliminate the noise of that space and replace it with stillness and quiet.

That’s what my mind needs in order to prepare for the next level of engagement. It must take a break.

Some people are amassing weapons, others are building bunkers or imagining the prospect of immigration. My first step in preparedness is sharpening my most accessible tool: my attention.

This is how I plan to do it :

Every time I engage with social media (for me, it is Instagram) I will stop, put down my phone and meditate for 5 minutes. Not a walking meditation, and not a guided meditation, but an actual sit. In silence. I will replace the scroll with a visit to emptiness. I will set a timer and do it.

I know that in the course of this experiment I will pull all my regular shit and make excuses and fail and succeed, and I will feel so many things. That’s the fun part. I will not pretend to be virtuous or pious. I will be messy and complicated. And I will share what that brings up here with you.

In fact, in the course of writing this post I wanted to reach for my phone and check Instagram twice. I didn’t do it. Also, I resisted checking IG because I also didn’t want to meditate. So there’s that too. See! Messy!

I invite you to join me

Without shame. Without judgment. In a spirit of wild curiosity about what could, or might happen to us and for us. Or not! Perhaps it will be a failure—and won’t that be interesting!

What I do know is that we need strong grounding, boundaries, and rest if we are to take good care of each other. This is how we prepare.

Maybe Instagram isn’t your numbing drug of choice. What is? Are you willing to meditate every time you feel that urge to engage with the behavior that you reach for when things feel too boring, painful, uncomfortable, weird, tense, or meaningless?

Here’s what you can expect from me

I’ve spent a lot of hours in Al-Anon meetings and I’ve benefitted immeasurably from the nonjudgmental, non-hierarchical container created by the participants. A lot of wisdom bubbles up in community when we get honest about our bullshit. I’ll do my best to make this a safe place to experiment with what happens if we try this thing out.

I will also do my best to be honest about how it’s going. (I just picked up my phone to check Instagram, and then I put it down again. I still haven’t meditated yet.)

I will also moderate the comments.

What you can do

Try this with me. I’ll be your accountability buddy. Everyone else who decides to jump in on this experiment will be here for you as well. We’ll do this together.

Send this to 5 people, or 50.

We will talk about how it’s going in the comments. And I will write about it. And then we can discuss it in community.

What do you think? Does it make you curious? Annoyed? Filled with the shame of “you shoulds”?

Perfect. We’re off to a great start.

Ground Rules:

• Kindness and compassion. For yourself and others.

• Respecting others’ experiences by using “I” statements.

• Or, in the words of my dear friend Droo, “Be cool. And if you can’t be cool, we have a problem.”

Resources I find helpful, if you want. Or just sit and be empty!

Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

The Nap Ministry (rest is resistance)

This podcast episode with Amelia Hruby

This podcast episode with Gabor Mate

The documentary The Social Dilemma

Perennially turning to Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron and Mary Oliver.

OK! Let’s do this.

With love,

Belle