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A few days ago, my friend Ona over at On A Thought wrote about Spending Time. I can’t stop thinking about it. Right when I read it, I went in to comment, thinking something like “Amen!” or “Preach!” But as so often happens to me, once I started writing, I started having things to say. Lots of things to say, some of which I said in my a way-too-long comment.
(My comments do sometimes get long. I know it’s not great. My texts are long too. And sometimes punctuated, which my teenager always finds quaint and sometimes finds offensive. But I have interrupted myself! Another thing I do often.)
My response manifesto:
THIS. This is how we feel in a culture that says we are worth only what we accomplish or produce for someone else (usually for someone else to profit). It says our right to exist is predicated on doing things, and not all these good thing that you listed but instead “useful” things that earn money or serve patriarchy or preserve inequity or all of the above. If you’re me, your soul knows it’s not right, and so does your body, and many times even your mind knows it’s not right. But the whole things churns on, and you keep going. And if you’re me, this eventually leads to mental and physical illness, to the point that your self FORCES you to stop.
And this is what happened to the whole world; we all forgot that our worth is inherent in our existence and not determined by these thin and harmful measures, and we all were operating brokenly and in pain, and even when worldwide disease and uprisings and beatdowns and 21st century lynchings and lies brought everything to an actual, concrete HALT, we have failed to turn away from it.
Every nanosecond you spend lying on the sofa looking at shadows is a VICTORY. When you float in a pool thinking, or memorize every word to a song, or noodle or doodle: you are a fxxxing CHAMPION and I commend you. It’s proof that you are a human being and that you still know how to human.
Let all the time be spent! May it all be wasted, squandered, released, embraced, enjoyed! Splash that shit around like it’s cheap perfume!!
