Decompiling Oppression #103
Sam McVeety
How Do You Live?, asks the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki and the team at Studio Ghibli. It is a singular experience, one that left me overwhelmed with feeling. Gratitude, for the opportunity to witness this kind of art, both deeply personal and seemingly universal. Sadness, at the possibility that this is the last work from a great artist. Curiosity, at all the thoughts and questions that it brought to my mind, and all the many ways of seeing that might be eluding me.
I wanted to wind down this year with a reflection on gratitude, and I can think of no better frame than that question. How do you live? With gratitude, with sadness, with curiosity? We've looked at gratitude before, as a gift and as a manifestation of distance or intimacy. I'm reminded that, like any gift, one must be present to truly receive and appreciate it.
When I look within myself to write about gratitude, I find it harder than past entries. Not because I can't think of things to be grateful for, but because I realize that I feel less present at the moment to those appreciations. Part of the challenge, I realize, is even as the calendar tells me that the end of the year is approaching, I don't feel myself winding down. Work continues at a fever pitch, taunting the onrushing official holidays like a schoolyard game of chicken. Everything seems to be compressed and then compressed again, in a spiral that feels unsustainable.
So I have to make my own space for gratitude. As ever, time will not create space on its own. It reminds me that gratitude is a practice, one that must be practiced, with intention and spaciousness. For me, part of making space for gratitude is making space for joy, and making space for hope. Hope, too, is a practice, a lens that helps focus and sharpen what is truly important to live for.
It reminds me that I am grateful for commitments, to myself and others, and the ways that they help me set boundaries. Exercise in the morning, cooking dinner with Jordan at night, and also literally "shaking out the day", a nightly ritual of silliness to embody a transition between work and home. It reminds me that I am grateful to be in community with people who respect those boundaries and help me explore when those boundaries are serving me and when they aren't. It reminds me that commitments and boundaries are not enough on their own; they can create space, but not fill it.
When I think about what can fill those spaces, I am grateful for the moments of feeling seen. We spend so much time flattened, on screens, in snippets of text, in categories. Even as we know that we're doing it, to each other, to ourselves, it can be so difficult to escape. To reach beyond that flattening, and feel true connection, however fleeting, is marvelous. I am grateful, too, when others ask me to see them, to bear witness to the boundless feelings that we are all capable of feeling, risking and hoping that others will hold us with care. There is such bravery in allowing oneself to feel, and not becoming numb, to joy or to tragedy.
Returning to the world of Miyazaki, there's a scene in My Neighbor Totoro that exemplifies this simple, ecstatic joy of hope. Having planted a bed of acorns during the day, Mei, Satsuki, and Totoro (an affable forest spirit) return to the ground at night, under a moonlit sky. Performing a wordless dance, the group first coaxes one seedling out of the ground (with a satisfying "pop!"), and then another and another. The sprouts coalesce into an enormous tree, branches and boughs racing up the trunk, as its canopy brushes against the sky. It is simply enchanting.
This scene has become its own practice of joy and gratitude in our household, doing the "Totoro dance" to encourage our own garden to flourish and provide nourishment for our community. Combining the silly and the sublime, we strive to remind ourselves that life is never simple, and, life is simple. Our actions matter. How we live matters.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What boundaries do you need to set or revisit, and what commitments do you need to make?
Communal: How can we support each other in honoring these boundaries and commitments?
Solidarity: Support Huayruro and their work towards a world where we see others and can be seen by them.
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