So life goes in cycles, but it also goes in waves.
Therefore we are not only recognizing that life functions naturally in a non-linear (and therefore inherently non-binary) manner.
We could go even further and dig into the fact that by this day and age we typically exist in a 2D, 3D, and 4D state simultaneously, but we’ll ride that wave when we meet it.
Say your cyclic pattern is like mine: Morning has been socialized as high stress from an early age. You feel automatic need to avoid stress in the morning by procrastinating. This is like knowing you have to surf or kayak to work (bear with me, you land lovers).
To my fellow JC and NYC folks, picture this:
The Hudson and East rivers have been gently helped to regain their nontoxic, god intended state by means of us backing off and letting it.
Because of this, you gain the option of enjoying a ride to work of your own means. No ferry (kesalul, ferry), no commute charge (kesalul, transit workers), just you and the river.
You wake up and look at your wave and weather app. You’ve already gotten good at feeling weather again, because it has become a more tangible part of your life. You see the skies are going to be clear but (shock of all shocks to we JC folk) it’s windy. The waves are rolling in, which means you’re going to have recreational wave riders in addition to the standard commute crowd. There will be interference from waves makes by other people all over the place. Their ripples will inherently interact with your’s.
Are you stressed yet?
If so, why?
Part of how we as a domesticated species (and yes, dogs do this too) deal with excessive stimuli is we block it out. Dissociate. And while dissociation (the ability to shut down so we can flow without force) is a healthy coping mechanism, like anything else too much is detrimental to our ability to function in a healthy society.
As our society in the US is not a healthy one due to colonistic imperialism, aka in our case white supremicist tyranny, and it’s need to deny that life naturally goes in cycles and waves, we are taught dissociation is our only course of action while shaming us for it (tv/internet/phone esp). In turn, we block out the shaming of reality by dissociating more, and while present, finding ways to self shame into further dissociation.
“Tyber this is way too heavy and you already stressed me out.”
I understand ya’ll, and I’m sorry. But without replicating through story the reason for the story at all, there’s no story. Stress allows us to learn.
Each ripple is a trigger, and each trigger can aid you in just flowing along. The key is to not overthink it from your own lense. Go with the flow.
So if stress allows us to learn, how do we differentiate between healthy and unhealthy stress?
Our waves and cycles.
If I know my cycle is to wake up in the morning dreading what’s to come, I instead let it do the work.
If I begrudge brushing my teeth, washing my face, doing my qigong, and showering, I will not follow through.
But if I remove my pre-existing notions, trained in by decades of unhealthy stress, and open my eyes to my day, then I find I am no longer pre-triggered.
Now don’t get me wrong: being Mi’kmaq, two spirit, trans, disabled, nonbinary, the list goes on, in a world that tells me I can not have an ID with my gender, a land without colonistic rule, infostructures that are designed to aid my health, safety from (and the dismantling of a system where) a large percentage of the population views me as an exotic object (or an evil monster out to corrupt the minds of your children), well..
It can be hard to get out the bed in the morning.
And I am extremely light skinned.
That’s is a direct shout out to you POC who deal with this.
This is also a shout out to all my trans & nb folk, esp my AMAB siblings.
Wela’lin for waking up today.
“Ty this is still stressful!”
Life is stress. But you’re learning something:
I wake up everyday and I tell mntu, life, god, to handle it.
After all that’s what I’m here for. To follow that wave.
The less dissociated from stress I am, the less difficult it is.
If I go to kyack off the beautiful pier at Liberty or Marin or Exchange, and I go into it seeing every ripple as a threat, then they are.
I have made them threats.
I’m not saying there aren’t people that make those ripples that aren’t automatically hating on me. They all got up with their preconceived notions too.
But if I’ve learned anything in my long (for a trans ndn) life it’s that worrying for those waves, those ripples, do not help me.
They in fact, help no one.
Because when those ripples happen, they are there to steer you on your kyack.
They take away your effort.
They allow you to coast
Surf
Sail your way into harbor.
Next time we’ll touch on nonbinaryism of triggers (triggers are not negative vs positive, they are both at the same time), and with it we’ll have some fun little graphs and charts of relative frequency overlaying with variable intensity.