OUT OF THE BOX - I wrote you another letter
This newsletter is a reader-supported publication made possible by paid subscriptions. If it has brought joy or meaning to your life, would you consider becoming a paid subscriber? Every subscription makes a huge difference and helps to ensures that I can continue this work. Small, one-time donations are also welcome here. July 12, 2022 Dear One, Every day, the world will try to take your sensitivity from you. It will design 24-hour news cycles to provide you with moment-to-moment updates on the new atrocities it has conjured up, new suffering for you to absorb. It will assault you with an endless stream of meaningless content and a fire hose of other people's thoughts, opinions, beliefs, fears, and anger. As the world grows bigger and louder and meaner, it will not seek to accommodate your sensitivity, which could serve as a wayfinder for other souls. Instead, it will expect you to adjust, acclimate, desensitize. And if you cannot do that, it will lay at your feet a spectacular array of numbing agents from which to choose. It will tell you repeatedly—but implicitly and explicitly—that you need to toughen up. You must never do this. You must never allow the world to make a liability of your most precious and powerful resource. You must never let it wrest from you that which is uniquely, exquisitely yours. Protect your sensitivity as though it were a small child or a helpless animal. Build a fence out of gentleness and time and stillness and erect it around your sensitivity like they do for young saplings until they're big enough to fend for themselves. Except this will not happen to your sensitivity because it will always be tender and vulnerable and you will have to maintain the fence forever. Be assured that you will meet other people along the way who have built fences similar to yours. They will be the ones to gleefully, and with much appreciation and mutual recognition, help you safeguard what's inside. Love, J Photo attribution for article: Lea Redmond’s World’s Smallest Post Service. If you appreciated this post, please hit the like button. It helps me know what content is meaningful to you. (And, I’m not gonna lie, it gives me a warm feeling in my heart.) |
Older messages
I Was Here
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Who gets to be seen?
An Artist Speaks to the Moment
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
My conversation with artist Holly Ballard Martz, whose work—spanning many years—seems impossibly timely, urgent, and reflective of this moment.
More is More
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
In the spring of 2020, the art world was quick to adopt accessibility measures. Now they're going away because white nondisabled people don't need them anymore.
What Makes Something Art?
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Or is the better question: What makes someone an artist?
Telling the Story of Absence
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
How do you put together the pieces of something that was never there?
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