🌿 THE DEEP THINKER'S LOUNGE
YEAR TWENTY-SIX.
OF INSPIRATION, PONDERINGS, AND LEARNING.
SPOKEN BY PEBBLE$.
Dear Readers, dear Earthlings, dear Fellow Mammals:
This piece is inspired by Margaret Atwood's The Year Of The Flood, which caught my eye because of its dust jacket. I was intrigued. It is the year twenty-six, and The Deep Thinker's Lounge invites all: those who intentionally give the mind time to wander, to ponder, to be fixated on a subject and pause, and those who are lost in the busyness of life, the chokehold of screens and AI agents & superagents, those who are afraid of boredom and endlessly distract themselves. This isn't judgment. This is both observation and reminder, an open invitation to return home or find its location.
I have a few things I want to address, readers, earthlings, mammals, so if this letter leaves you heavy-hearted or overwhelmed, it is OK to leave and return to it when you are ready. Now, let us take our seats and turn our minds to the following parts of the human condition.
Today is a day and a moment for The Deep Thinker's Lounge, a place of inspiration, ponderings, and learning. A place where pain's wisdom has words; those who are alone are not lonely; we speak freely about how foolish we have been and what we have learned; we think a little deeper than our belly's rumble, and we live beyond today. When I got past my trauma and the things that triggered survival mode, I finally saw me; I saw my pain, I could cry honestly, I learned how to let go over and over again. Like cranium to brain and ribs to heart and lungs, those innermost soft and vulnerable parts need protection; if everything that comes your way can penetrate & destroy, it means you're not standing guard over what you have been trusted with. The times you weren't soft or tender enough might haunt you, but the times you were too tender and soft will keep you up more nights than you can count. We can only hope that one of us will stand guard in that moment when the other needs rest the most. That one of us will be available to provide those few hours needed for regaining strength and wakefulness.
Stepping out of survival mode restores our ability to be a mailman or mailwoman, although some residue may remain in our approach. Here's the reality: the mailman doesn't care about you, but he cares about the package. Some days the package is for you, and other days it is for somebody else. However you may feel about being a recipient or not on the day that packages are being delivered, that responsibility ain't on the mailman. Recognize your power, go to the places you are meant to go, be in the rooms that need you, get to the other side of your trauma, and don't apologize for how long the journey took. Don't apologize for staying in rooms that you once fled, not because you were rejected, but because you grew uncomfortable too quickly and rejected yourself.
This reminds me, readers, earthlings, mammals, that the next level of discomfort and continual learning is a curse word in some parts of our neighborhoods, but don't feel alienated when the neighbors look at you strangely. Solitude. Solitude done right doesn't leave you lonely; it leaves you yearning for others who understand you without the need to explain yourself or relive what you overcame. It leaves you with an increased understanding of yourself. In the stillness, you will hear voices and words without parted lips. You will see regular features and forms, and the infrequent ones; they will be in your mind, your dreams, stillness, on the surface of water, the sound of birds, and memories. It might scare you, but remember where you are, and your heart will be calm soon enough, and your breathing will return to its regular rhythm. Remember to breathe.
Like the insight gained in solitude, we identify ways our existence may affect others, positively, negatively, or both. How foolish of us to think that we need to step on toes, crush each other beneath our feet, ensure each other's absence, and take things violently to dominate. Do we think that we are justified? Are we somehow supported by some law that forgets the value of another human? Haven't we seen enough cruelty, suffering, death, wars, poverty, and been sleep-deprived by the nightmare of our own deaths?
The birds of the air have taught us what open skies can do; what quiet spaces can provide. The air was cleansed when we deprioritized the 'necessities' of our activity and consumption for something more meaningful. Distance taught us how crowded we had become, internally and externally. How we had stopped respecting each other's space, how much we needed each other, how precious proximity can be. When we had to turn off autopilot, when we had to sit still, when we had to sit with ourselves, when we had to see ourselves naked, bare-faced, natural - how did we cope? What did we finally see and understand? What did it leave us with to explore and examine? What seed did the famine plant within us?
I asked, what seed did the famine plant within us? When the airborne threat was killing people with slight discrimination but equal doses of fear. When your enemy needed a neighbor, you showed up; when they lost people they cared about to the airborne threat, you extended empathy. When consuming to no end was a silly thing to do; when the 'new normal' became a phrase, a potential mantra as we took the learning of isolation into the wild of opening borders, new places, a better you, a better me, a better us, and improvements across the world. Why did we burn the seeds? Why did we water the seeds and burn the flowers? Why did we burn the fruit? How does the contained safety of home turn into a battlefield, warfare, a full-blown war with resources stolen, seized, people massacred? We humans and our problems! Now the birds hide, the air has lost its crisp quality, and we've fallen into the lake of numbness and consumption once again. What hope do we have to offer each other, to offer me?
Readers, earthlings, and mammals, what hope do you have to offer?
The second page of this letter should arrive in two weeks. Do not despair before the fourteenth sunrise.
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Peace & Love !