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I think one of the cruelest things about the Empire is that it does not only threaten destruction. It demands your participation, in real time, as the threat unfolds.
It asks you to witness a genocide, watch the world normalize it, and then prepare yourself for the possibility that one of the oldest civilizations on earth could be threatened with annihilation next.
It asks you to feel the dread of what may be done in your name and still answer your emails on time.
Still go to work. Still pay the bills. Still keep the machine fed as though the world has not tilted beneath your feet.
This is one of the great violences of modern life.
We are expected to metabolize horror privately and perform normalcy publicly.
We are expected to absorb the slaughter of Palestinian people as background noise, then absorb fresh threats of catastrophic war, and still return to our little stations of obedience—our purchases, our deadlines, our productivity, our polite smiles.
But the soul knows.
The body knows.
Some ancient and incorruptible part of us knows that human life is sacred, and recoils when it is treated as expendable by men drunk on power.
So no, I do not think the task right now is to feel fine.
I think the task is to remain human in a system that rewards numbness.
To remain human is to refuse to call dissociation resilience.
To remain human is to refuse to confuse productivity with morality.
To remain human is to refuse the lie that your worth, in a moment like this, is measured by how efficiently you continue serving capitalism while the air fills with the language of war.
There is something profoundly sane about being unable to carry on as though all of this is normal.
There is something holy in the part of you that will not make peace with dehumanization.
I think this is where the priestess work begins.
Not in transcendence.
Not in aesthetic spirituality.
Not in pretending to be above fear, grief, rage, or dread.
It begins in staying present enough to tell the truth.
It begins in refusing the dead language of empire.
It begins in refusing to let genocide become old news.
It begins in refusing to let threatened slaughter become content.
It begins in refusing to let the machine colonize every chamber of your inner life.
It begins in protecting the altar of your humanity.
Drink water.
Eat real food.
Step outside and let the sky remind you that power is not God.
Touch the earth.
Light the candle.
Say the prayer.
Text the person you love.
Cry when the tears come.
Do the next necessary thing, but do not confuse necessity with devotion. The machine may demand your labor. It does not get your soul.
This is the line we have to hold collectively and individually.
I will do what must be done to tend my life, my people, my work, and my responsibilities. But I will not call this normal. I will not surrender my conscience for the sake of convenience. I will not let proximity to horror train me into moral deadness.
I will remain reachable by grief.
I will remain reachable by beauty.
I will remain reachable by the terrible, sacred fact of human life.
If you are struggling today, I want to say this with great tenderness and with absolute clarity:
There is nothing wrong with you for finding this unbearable.
Something is wrong with a world that asks you to witness genocide, live under the threat of wider war, and keep performing as though nothing is happening.
Your dread is not weakness.
Your grief is not dysfunction.
Your inability to fully normalize this may be evidence that your soul is still intact.
So remain human.
Tell the truth.
Protect your inner life.
Tend what is yours to tend.
Love with ferocity.
Refuse the spell of numbness.
Refuse the theology of empire.
Refuse to hand over your humanity in exchange for the illusion of functioning.
This is not how we become invulnerable.
This is how we remain alive.
~
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