Where do we find the space to engage this moment? For many people that question is a huge stumbling block. Especially for those new and not accustomed to, or wary of, getting out into the streets. To change the very fabric of society – how we relate and reorder towards kindness and unity – we cannot ask everyones political composure to be the same; objectifying resistance in the same way that power objectifies the repressed.
As if any of us are truly familiar, this week I’ve had a number of friends, unfamiliar with how to engage this moment, express concern as to how to enter the flow. Furthermore, I’ve had friend who live in rural areas, wild areas, (Upstate NY and Alaska) express similar concerns in relation to their perceived distance from what’s going on.
How, when we don’t feel the same proximity to what we are told is the site of struggle, can we effectively find and access involvement? Especially when we want to “live differently?” In either of these scenarios, whether this distance exists societally or environmentally, I’ve told them this: The work is where you’re at.
The most important space is between bodies, which exists anywhere people move and expands infinitely. We need to work where we find ourselves. There is no ideal political space other than our own bodies in parallel. There is no one site of engagement except the space between bodies. That’s almost anywhere you might find yourself. Maybe everywhere if we consider the space between our bodies and the natural landscape.
I have no conclusion to this argument other than political engagement is not a site or a moment in time. It is a lived experience and our lives exist in complex and ever changing shapes and configurations. It is infinite and timeless and that complexity of time, space, and desire is where we should find ourselves most alive and present.
So, if you are feeling like you don’t know how to get involved understand this; the other world that you are sensing may be at hand, may be possible, it begins in relation to you and where you find yourself. Situate your desires to make the world you wish to live in. – Sam