I’m not going to tell you exactly what brought me to the place, because those conversations aren’t for the public. What I will say is I started imagining, dreaming, conjuring something I shared with
I am tentatively calling Shattering - something that you have probably experienced especially if you’ve found yourself here, or on the pages of some of the writers I adore here.It’s not a small crack or a break. Something foundational dies in a million pieces. Kind of like a supernova. And maybe we get to decide the afterlife (a black hole, a neutron star, a white dwarf…). But this is starting to sound like a post I need to write a different day.
For now, I’m sharing the epilogue for my debut book Welcome, Wonder. This is the only thing I have to offer that feels in what is, for me, a post-apocalyptic reality. A world I’ve known has ended.
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If you haven’t preordered my book Welcome, Wonder you can grab a signed or plain copy right here.
Epilogue, Welcome, Wonder
“Instead of marveling at the tree, we make plans for its utility. We are a people much more concerned with ruling than loving. This is a mistake that positions us in places where we are no longer close enough to another person or thing to perceive its pain or need. To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.”
Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh
There is another kind of wonder not captured in this book. A type of awe you can find Dacher Keltner and others speaking of as they cover the vast meaning and experience of awe and wonder. It's the kind of wonder we feel in horror of what humanity is capable of doing. The type of awe that makes us sick to our stomach, realizing how deeply disconnected and violent we can be.
I'm writing this at a time when militarized powers - both global and local - are supporting one another in ethnic cleansing and genocide of those they've dehumanized while also terrorizing and even killing their own citizens. Black, Queer, and Indigenous lives, joy, flourishing, and agency not only don’t matter, it is all being attacked systemically and systematically. Forced starvation, displacement, war crimes, and trauma on civilians are actively going on across our shared blue dot. Ecologically, the crisis we have created and continue to perpetuate has already profoundly damaged the only place in the universe we call home - at a rate that leaves us unsure if the effects are reversible. There is an intentional erasure of histories and identities, and regularly there are sacrifices of our interpersonal flourishing on the altar of being right. A loneliness epidemic is the subject of many reports around widespread well-being.
Wonder isn't the golden ticket to fix these issues.
But.
Wonder does stretch our imagination toward an existence of collective flourishing.
Wonder reminds us that it doesn't have to be this way…
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