I woke up today to some messages from a friend in Syria who’d read the Imam’s thoughts on our habitual selves that I’d shared, lamenting the things one does habitually that one just hates; things like checking one’s phone as soon as one wakes, which made me smile, because that’s exactly what I was doing.
The thing is: there’s a reason why we need imams and priests and gym instructors — the people who habitually preach to us about habits — to remind us again and again about the things we do over and over, and that reason is that “habit stacking” isn’t the only way our brains and bodies work. And religion knows this too. That’s why we have cycles of fasting and feasting. That’s why some spiritual disciplines are practiced daily and others annually, if not once in a lifetime, like the Hajj for Muslims. We are nonlinear creatures.
But I also tend to ascribe to a sort of moderately Nietzschean view of morality — at least, as it’s been filtered for me by teachers who want to moderate his views. And that view goes like a lyric by an artist formerly known as Antony: “from the corpses, flowers grow,” which I take to mean that even the bad can sometimes feed the good. There are seeds of God’s goodness in all things.
I say “can,” and not “will,” because the bad more easily nurtures the worse. Jealousy doesn’t necessarily mean self-betterment. Aggression doesn’t necessarily mean a zeal for justice. That’s where the exhortation to examine our habits and consider when and where they trap us is most helpful.
Which brings me back to photography, this thing I’ve started doing more habitually — intentionally, and not accidentally — in ways I do recognize as dissociative, if not escapist. It’s a way to distract myself from real-world affairs that threaten to consume me.
But it’s also something I’m learning. Like these attempts at intentional double-exposure. I’m learning how to imagine them, but also, how my camera does or doesn’t allow for them. The second slide was supposed have another frame on it, but I don’t know where that exposure went.
A seed is sprouting.
We’re all called to “excellence in doing good, but that can’t look the same way for all people at all times. We know that we have different gifts, needs, and abilities. St. Paul knew we have different gifts, needs, and abilities — the foot cannot tell the eye: be like me. I’m sure the Prophet Mohammad (ﷺ) knew that too.
But it’s so easy for us to forget that. The culture is designed to make us forget. Everything that can be augmented, must be optimized. Every post that gets 10 views, must get 10,000. Why not? Do you not fear for your potential? The things you could do, you won’t, but you might?
The Imam said yesterday that we only get one shot at this life: quite literally YOLO. But he also reminded us that God looks most favorably on the small consistencies. Maybe these look like showing up to protests, or maybe these look like showing up online — we can do both accidentally and with intention. But that’s the only antidote to the pressure of days: faith in the moments that add up to eternity.
You know all the clichés: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But sometimes it’s also a series of stops and starts. Sometimes it’s HIIT, and sometimes it’s bed rot. I don’t think purpose can be measured by permanent and total availability to the project; it’s knowing you’re on the team and stepping up if and when you’re needed or called.
But some are just wired differently. Some are highly driven by a vision they have of where they need to be. And that’s great! But that’s still not the sum total of our humanity. The other day, someone quoted a futurist talking about a shift from “nonlinearity” to “neurodiversity” but couldn’t say more when asked what that actually meant, and it made me think about how much late-stage capitalist ideas are based on prescribed freedoms — the freedom to save time, the freedom to optimize your body, etc. — which aren’t true freedoms because you’re not supposed to opt out; they’re just new normativities. Nonlinearity is normative in that sense, while neurodiversity isn’t.
At the time, my mind took me towards ways of communication. It made me wonder how maybe storytelling has become a new normativity too. Social media, platform capitalism, user-generated content — all these buzz words are bolstered by the idea of democratizing story, making everything a story. Brands are a story, your life’s a story, etc. The Threads app seems to thrive on long-winded stories. But what if a neurodiverse future means we don’t prioritize narrative as the premium mode of communication? What if bullet points aren’t actually anathema, for example?
But the question of neurodiverse (or neurocomplex, as I’ve seen @alignedself.review put it) futures might take your mind in a different direction. And I think that’s how it’s supposed to be, by design.