By Wade Lee Hudson

I know it’s not all about me. Nevertheless, “Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late (Bob Dylan).” At times, I’m sad, mad, lonely, and determined...

After facing these realities, the melancholy lifts and I feel liberated. I concentrate on making the website as good as possible before I die. (Suggestions for additions and offers for help are welcome.) It may take a decade to put the site together as I envision, but someday, maybe many more people will find it useful. 

My focus is on quality, not quantity. I work as if this work will someday strike a nerve broadly. I believe everyone should be interested — and committed to implementing these ideas. I think I’m basically right. I may be tilting at windmills; if so, I hope the world will be better for it. I may be pushing the rock up and down the hill like Sisyphus; if so, I’ll try to do it with a smile on my face, chuckling at the Absurd.

I cherish occasional nuggets of connection, such as two responses to the question I posed to the FromWade list: “In what way (if any) do you work on unlearning oppressive domination/submission social conditioning?”

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How a language got off the couch and into the world.

By Katy Waldman

First, let’s survey the situation. It’s as though the haze of our inner lives were being filtered through a screen of therapy work sheets. If we are especially online, or roaming the worlds of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present. We “just want to name” a dynamic. We joke about our coping mechanisms, codependent relationships, and avoidant attachment styles. We practice self-care and shun “toxic” acquaintances. We project and decathect; we are triggered, we say wryly, adding that we dislike the word; we catastrophize, ruminate, press on the wound, process. We feel seen and we feel heard, or we feel unseen and we feel unheard, or we feel heard but not listened to, not actively. We diagnose and receive diagnoses: O.C.D., A.D.H.D., generalized anxiety disorder, depression. We’re enmeshed, fragile. Our emotional labor is grinding us down. We’re doing the work. We need to do the work.

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The exercise of free will, personal responsibility, and individual agency are powerful. Enhancing self-determination is important. Individuals can dedicate themselves to self-development, prepare themselves for more effective collective action, and engage in moral actions that ripple through society in unpredictable and unknown ways. Once again, it’s not either/or, but both/and. Strong communities need strong individuals and strong individuals need strong communities.

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