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“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In what may be one of the most complicated casualties of 2020, civil discourse in this country has taken a hit such that few could have foreseen. Returning to a world where communication and discussion between opposing viewpoints seems like little more than pipe dreams now.

Yet, it’s been known to happen. In 1971 Durham, NC, the forced association between Ann Atwater, a black activist, and C.P. Ellis, a Ku Klux Klan leader, turned into a lifelong friendship, documented in the The Best of Enemies book, play, and film, as one example.

We tend to be more understanding of friends, and friendships can grow out of conversations. But when we remain insular, it’s nearly impossible to discuss without becoming aggressive.

So, one more thing to think about going into 2021. Civility in social life.

The sun crested the eastern sky sometime around six this morning. Its early luster shined onto water, grass, rock, flowers, and trees. Men and women waking to its rays, or to various alarm clocks, all experience the same waking sensations.

Do we need to know that the reason the sun does what it does because we, as residents of this space-rock, rotate around an axis that causes half the globe to face light and the other half to face a dark, spatial vastness?

No, probably not. But we like to know. We have a thirst for exploring the unknown. That’s part of what makes life so exciting.

Needless to say, it’s been different. Perhaps this Christmas only passingly resembles christmases past, in an interesting, jaded sense of commercialism. But there is so much missing that it’s hard to recognize the holidays.

What’s really absent is community. From its humble beginnings in winters of thousands of years ago, it’s been about people gathering together. And that’s just something we cannot do right now.

So, hopefully it was a safe Christmas. And a warm Christmas. And something that, come next year, will resemble more of outlier than norm.

Don’t attack it. You can’t attack a creative work and expect it to come to fruition. It isn’t about assaulting the keyboard or the canvas. It’s a different kind of process. 

Ideas gestate, then become flesh through tenacity and understanding. There is little room for assault when it comes to birthing a creative endeavor. 

The battle is really between you and yourself, not the creative idea. The idea wants to be born. Wants to come to light. The only obstacle is your own fear over whether or not it’s any good,

But, don’t fret. Good or not, get it out there. It’s better to do and fail than to never do at all. 

Every day, it’s a constant push to be doing something. New devices come along promising more productivity, smarter engagement, and connected resources.

Rarely do we stop and ask ourselves, “Do I need this?”

In Walking on Water, Madeline L’Engle’s meditations on faith and art, she writes, “I sit on my favourite rock, looking over the brook, to take time away from busyness, time to be. I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it.”

I’m just as guilty, trying to maximize benefit through whatever time I have – walking through the park listening to an audiobook, or reading with the tendency to deviate to some screen or other. There’s just so much temptation in what is happening now.

Everything that needs to be done will still be there after.

Someone once spoke about distortion fields, perhaps as it related to physics. Maybe also I heard about it discussed in relation to personalities – possibly in the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. But, regardless, there are these fields through which fact can be misconstrued.

Noam Chomsky, circa the 1970s, said, “With a little industry and application, anyone who is willing to extricate himself from the system of shared ideology and propaganda will readily see through the modes of distortion developed by substantial segments of the intelligentsia [here meaning “social class, which includes historians and other scholars, journalists, political commentators, and so on…”].”

He continues on to say, “social and political analysis is produced to defend special interests rather than to account for the actual events.”

And, while possibly true fifty years ago, how amazingly poignant it seems in this day and age.

Maybe unconsciously, we rely on the media we consume to inform our perceptions of the world and our lives. Study after study has showed that which media outlet you consistently turn to will eschew the results of questions regarding safety and national defense; the economy; problems and solutions to crises; etc.

Chomsky suggested that it was easy to see through such propaganda. Again, fifty years ago, disinformation was perhaps not as rampant as it is today. And at the time, it’s doubtful he could have imagined the amazing influence of the internet on societal discernment. 

But we are living in interesting times, and it seems that there are those who can be easily swayed by such distortion fields. It’s important to find trustworthy news sources, to keep with reliable information, and to ask the question, Is there a reason this information is being presented like this?

Routines can sometimes be the hardest reminders of what we gave up this year. The daily rituals of waking, tea or coffee, commute, work. All of it now blends together.

And while we’re making progress in this most unusual of years, building routines can still be problematic.

As the year end apporaches, and I work on my Year in Review, I’m… Well, I’m flabbergasted. What a year.

But first and foremost, a need for daily routine is essential. Without it, everything can just become noise.