Joan Didion wrote -
'what I want to tell you is not to move into that world where you are alone with yourself and your mantra, and your fitness program, or whatever it is that you might use to control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you to just live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it, try and get it. Take chances, make your own work. Take pride in it. Seize the moment.'

I'm going to read that again.

What I want to tell you today is not to move into that world where you are alone with yourself and your mantra and your fitness program. Or whatever it is that you might use to try and control the world by closing it out. I want to tell you to just live in the mess. Throw yourself out into the convulsions of the world. I'm not telling you to make the world better because I don't believe progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm telling you to live in it. Try and get it take chances make your own work. Take pride in it seize the moment.'

That, to me is willingness to be human.
What do you use to try to control the world and close it out?

I use busyness.
I use stories about being behind, and needing to catch up.
I use shame
I usea narrative of incapacity sometimes. sometimes I use a narrative of fragility.
sometimes I use a narrative of not ready.
sometimes I use the narrative of afraid or alone.

I use my aloneness as a shield from connection, which is pretty ironic. I do.

Didion also wrote,
'I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.'

It's true. True for me. This idea of wanting to protect against future losses. It's one way that I am unwilling.

She says, 'there's a point when you go with what you've got or you don't go'

I'm kind of at that point right Now. I haven't got much but I'm going with it.

She also writes that
'it occurred to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.'
'It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.'

She says that 'we are the stories we tell ourselves'.

This is true. What else are we if not the stories we tell ourselves?

When she talks about writing, she says that she writes entirely to 'find out what she's thinking, what she's looking at what she sees and what it means, what she wants and what she fears.'

How do you know what you're thinking? How do you clarify what you're looking at?
How do you know what you see? What it means? What you want and what you fear?