Happy Monday,
I’m writing to ya’ll from a coffee shop in Burleigh Heads. The Gold Coast is a truly magical place that is nourishing me deeply already and the reason I’m here hasn’t even kicked off yet! I’ll be participating in a women’s retreat deep in ‘the bush’ and I know it will be glorious. In the meantime here’s something I find interesting.
During my 17 hour flight to Australia, I noticed something important.
No one is reading.
I walked up and down the aisles every few hours and out of roughly 250 people, only 3 reading lights were on. 3! Everyone else was watching their screens. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with watching a movie or a show on a flight but not cracking open a book (or kindle) for 17 hours is symbolic of where we are at collectively as a culture.
We are regressing.
We have all this “stuff,” but we no longer have our focus. I struggle with it too. I can be reading then lose focus and re-read a sentence then get frustrated and want to grab my phone then lose 25 mins scrolling. And there goes my reading time.
I made a conscious decision to not turn on the screen at all this flight and so I read. We all know it’s more enriching to read a book than watch a TV show, but it’s harder to do because it requires us to focus. It requires us to sacrifice our comfort.
Today there exists a connection between comfort and goodness which, for us highly binary thinkers, results in the connection between discomfort and badness.
But the truth is what is hard is not bad.
It’s harder to read a book than watch a movie
It’s harder to strike up a conversation with a stranger than stay quiet
It’s harder to ask for a ride to the airport than to call an uber
It’s harder to get dressed and go have dinner out alone than it is to order in food
All of these things are harder and better. We desperately need a little grit back in our lives. It’s that comfort that causing much of our issues these days.
While reading the debut novel by Mariel Franklin, Bonding (captivating book and highly recommend) on the plane, I learned that Orcas have a unique social intelligence. You could say that they don’t experience individuality. The limbic area of an Orcas’s brain (the part that processes emotion) is more developed than a human’s. There is something about that which causes them to empathize with other orcas as if they were the same. Basically, their psychology doesn’t recognize solitude, they don’t experience individuality the same way a human does.
Our separateness from each other grows with comfort. When life is harder, we ask for help. When we ask for help, we bond. When we bond, we are connected. Feeling separate is why we reach for our phones the moment there’s a lull. It’s the connection we crave and doing hard things helps us build that.
Ps. the sunrises here are epic.
On the Pod This Week: A solo episode diving into why we need elders, the Roman Empire, patriarchy, and the stages of men. Enjoy (Spotify).
(Watch the episode on YouTube here)
Have a great week everyone,
-Anya
The last time I flew I read a book, it was the only book I saw anyone reading, and I feel like a lot of people were looking at me like I was showing them up for being passive consumers.
I am totally aligned with you - currently trying to read more, and when I do, I find it so fulfilling. I had to remove instagram from my phone to stop myself from doomscrolling, it really helps to reduce my screen time.
The notion of hard = bad is truly hurting us individually and collectively.
What is good for us is often not the easiest route, we must choose the way up (climbing, it requires an effort), not the way down, everyday.
I often think about the humanity depicted in the Pixar movie Wall-e, that's what easy looks like!
Enjoy your trip to Oz, it sounds amazing!