Abrovinscher in late capitalism

There are evenings when life feels pretty simple. You've eaten, maybe read something, maybe exercised, maybe watched a bad movie that was still pretty good. Then there are evenings when your whole life suddenly opens up like an old linen closet and everything falls out onto the floor at the same time.

Then you can start to think about how people really stand.

My mother uses a word that I like more and more: abro winches. Small homemade solutions. Temporary constructions. Things you make up when the right spare part is missing, the manual is gone and no one remembers who built the machine in the first place.

Maybe that's how we live.

To let go without throwing away

Earlier in the day, my mom said something that hurt, even though she didn't mean it badly. She wondered if part of my weight gain could be related to my difficulty letting go.

I replied that I don't know how to let go of things.

And actually, it's a pretty difficult question.

What does it mean to let go of your past? Should you forget? Who do you become then? We are largely made up of everything we remember: love, stupidities, betrayals, books, jobs, people, laughter, fears, places we've lived and things we wish we had said.

I also have a pretty good memory. Sometimes a little too good. I can remember things that other people seem to have put in a box, carried out to the garage and driven to the dump back in 2008.

But maybe you don't need to let go of the memory.

You can release the grip.

The archive can remain without all folders being open on the desktop at the same time.

Live in the moment, they say

The modern advice is often to live in the present.

That sounds reasonable. Right now, there may be no disasters. The coffee is there. The chair is still standing. No tiger has entered through the balcony door.

The only problem is that a human being completely without a past and a future would be a strange being. Almost a reed in the wind.

We need memory to know who we are and the future to know where we are going.

In addition, Ingmar Bergman is said to have said something along the lines of "wherever you are for too long, the demons will eventually come there."

The fully protected workshop is not a paradise either. If you sit on a deserted beach in the Bahamas long enough, you will probably eventually start worrying about your retirement savings, skin changes or whether your neighbor has a better sun lounger.

The human brain is impressive in that way.

Aristotle and the hamster wheel

Aristotle believed that virtue often lies between two extremes.

Courage lies between cowardice and foolishness. Generosity between stinginess and waste.

Lawyers sometimes reason in a similar way. Two extremes can both create absurd results. One seeks a reasonable middle ground.

That sounds wise.

Then Jesus comes and says something like: if you were hot or cold, I could accept you, but because you are lukewarm, I spit you out.

Right.

There they sat with their fine middle ground.

Although the contradiction may be apparent.

You can be moderate in your own life and still be clear about your values. You don't have to be burned out to think poverty is wrong. You don't have to feel all the suffering in the world every night to oppose racism. You don't have to choose between saving the whole world and ignoring it completely.

The problem arises rather when everyone chooses the comfort in between and no one intervenes anymore.

Then society easily becomes a hamster wheel down a cliff.

The happy tourist

Late capitalism also has a strange duality.

First it says: work, perform, compete, make a living, be employable, improve.

Then the commercial shows a smiling person on a beach and asks why you, in particular, aren't enjoying yourself more.

The purgatory of the work line on weekdays.

Bahamas on Instagram.

And when people can't handle the combination, they're told they need to get better at stress management.

It's hard not to laugh a little at the construction, even if the consequences are often anything but funny.

good enough

I am therefore beginning to suspect that “good enough” is a much more advanced philosophy than it sounds.

Not as an excuse for indifference.

But as an acknowledgement of how little we actually know.

Plato had his cave. We see the shadows and try to understand what is happening outside.

Mom has her eyebrows.

I almost prefer her version.

You fumble your way through experiences, principles, failures, love, strength training, power naps, books, humor and some makeshift piece of wood you found behind the radiator.

Sometimes the strategy works.

Sometimes the rules change before you have time to learn them.

And by the time you finally understand what happened, life has already moved on to the next version.

Be careful.

Perhaps the same thing applies to both people and life itself.

That which you love, you must set free.

Not because you should stop caring.

On the contrary.

You are being careful.

You do the best you can.

You fight for what matters.

But you don't try to crush what you love in an attempt to keep it.

Every person, every relationship, every body and every society changes anyway.

This even applies to your mental normality. The harder you try to control every thought and feeling to make sure you are completely normal, the more suspicious everything starts to feel.

Maybe even normality can run wild sometimes.

So you get ahead.

Not in complete darkness, but never in full light either.

Small winches are made.

You read too much into facts.

People try to save the world a little less on Sundays.

You love people you can't control.

You get anxiety sometimes.

And in between, something strange happens.

Life is actually going pretty well.