Scattered across my still partially frozen yard, my thoughts lie next to the mementos left by pine trees shedding. Cones with a little heft in your hand etched with texture yet smooth at the same time. Branches of chevon shaped clippings made up of nature’s needles. Needles that can become splinters if you’re not careful in how you handle them. Lots of pinecone thoughts; library books, liminal space, letter writing, love, landscape and literary coteries. Lots of potential splinter thoughts, too; fraying safety nets, public ambush and bullying of a courageous ally, firings and retaliations, worries about Social Security, my primary source of income right now. The scattershot nature of my thinking makes it hard to sit down and write a coherent essay for you every week, as well as the uncertainty cancer and other medical issues bring. And on the joy side, the unexpected call to be back-up caregiver for my grandson. I’m trying to reconcile living each day amid dread and joy. I don’t want to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. If I just focus on joy in what I share, it seems I am oblivious. If I focus on dread in what I write, it seems I am no longer inspirational. I need to contain both to remain an emotionally stable critical thinker. I need to contain both to remain honest. Figuring out how to do that here and in my daily life is what I’m working on right now.
I’ve been getting a newsletter called Ness Labs from a neuroscientist named Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Ness Labs is named after the Old Norse word, nes which means “headland” or “promontory”. In other words, a venture into unfamiliar territory or a point from which you may have a different perspective and discover something new. Ness as a suffix, is used to create nouns that describe the quality or the state of being of something. She’s gotten my interest because she is a big fan of living a life directed by curiosity and experimentation rather than the setting of fixed outcomes and goals. One should treat failure as data, not as something to fear or self-criticize. Living life in her view should be a series of daily experiments. A goal becomes a hypothesis to be tested. Her writing on liminal creativity presents a unique take on what we are living through right now in the essay's part where she talks about liminal societies. I am experiencing older age as a liminal space as well and am trying to look at limitations that are creeping in as opportunities to problem solve and be creative.
From a recent Ness Labs newsletter on uncertainty:
“The beautiful uncertainty of not knowing what we want isn’t something to overcome, it’s something to embrace. It’s the liminal space where curiosity lives. It keeps us learning and evolving throughout our lives.”
I’m going to think of this Substack (and how to manage dread and joy in my daily life) as an experiment. I’ve been hesitant to turn on pledges for paid subscriptions because the nature of my life right now (a lot of uncertainty) means I might not deliver a weekly essay, and I feel a sense of responsibility to my readers. If I think more experimentally about this rather than think I must write and post an essay every Sunday, I can commit to giving you something once a week. Maybe it’s some links like the ones I’ll give you today to Ness Labs, or to some analysis by someone else that captures some interesting perspective, perhaps some photos I’ve taken, scattered random thoughts on an object that’s capturing my attention, reading aloud from books I love, quotes from books that stagger me, interesting historical things I’ve been researching and most of all the questions I’m asking and results of my own experiments about how to live with joy and dread, examples of others who might be doing it well (black women for a very long time) and of course your sharing your experiments and questions in the comments. I’ll see what engages you and what does not. I’m not yet ready to turn on the paid subscription (working on why not in therapy right now) but am excited to start a new experiment.
What concern or desire might you like to turn into an experiment?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff will release her new book, Tiny Experiments, on March 4, 2025. Hard to believe my release date for How to Be Old, was 3/10/2024 almost a year ago. It feels like I’ve lived 20 lifetimes since then!
I enjoy hearing your random thoughts. Somehow, they give credence and heft to my own. Life should not be a pursuit of happiness, but rather a pursuit of awareness of all the emotions we experience in all the phases of our life -- a presence. Like you, I am a sometime caregiver to my grandchildren aged 2-5. I don't think that I could experience the joy that a young child brings (so untainted by the world), if I was not dealing with the swing of fortune that aging brings. Lucky for us, there is nothing that can unleash as much dopamine as a hug from a little one!!
A few months ago I heard about a Commonplace Book, a book dedicated to writing down quotes, ideas that impact you. I started keep "My Commonplace Book," which now includes "A goal becomes a hypothesis to be be tested."