Riotous Revelation

a brief recess from it all

I was absolutely tickled. It wasn’t the funniest thing I’d ever seen but it might be the most charmingly mystifying. How had I never noticed this before?! Intrigue gave way to anxiety gave way to acceptance gave way to outright laughter all in a matter of 2.5 seconds. I stood half-naked in the mirror when I made the discovery. One of my nipples (left) sits lower than the other (right)!

The moment before the discovery, my head was a full swirly mess. How do I lock down a location for my TV shoot? What about the financing? What if I can’t sell the show? Why do I feel like I’m on autopilot? Why do I have no energy? Am I a bad person? Am I lazy? Why does everything feel so incredibly hard right now? Why does every email and every text take a herculean effort? Is this depression? Burnout? What’s the solution?

One question led to another led to another.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one feeling this way but I suspect I’m not.

We’ve experienced collective trauma (a word I have mixed feelings about) over the last few years. Trump, #MeToo, a global pandemic, a racial reckoning, January 6, a planet on fire, wars that might lead to other wars that might lead to other wars, reproductive rights hanging in the balance. No matter where you stand on these issues (and I hope you stand on the right side aka my side), we’ve all been battered, beaten, and bruised. We’ve vilified the other side at the expense of our own humanity. It feels sometimes like the world is caving in. At least from my little spot. As we “return to normal” it’s becoming increasingly obvious that’s just a fiction. We can’t return to normal if normal never was.

I think a lot of people feel this. I blame the shutters. They’re open too wide. Information floods in faster than the human mind can process. Not to mention that the type of information everyone gets is different - some completely false, all extremely biased. The content silos we all exist in - be it twitter or Facebook or YouTube or instagram or tiktok or news apps - mean we’re not only alone in these information tornadoes, but the distance between us is increasing.

For the longest time, the human psyche only had to worry about the immediate family and the village. The world, for eons, was only as big as the furthest point one could see. We had the capacity to process, account for, mourn, celebrate, assess, defend, and support the tribe we were in. I don’t imagine that was always a perfect system, especially if you were at the bottom of the tribal hierarchy. But that’s how it was for all of human existence until extremely recently.

We just weren’t built to take in the pain of the whole world. We weren’t even built to take in the joy of the whole world. Not metaphorically and certainly not physically. None of us were designed, by evolution or providence, with that in mind. And yet we now have access to, nay, we are fed, as many bits and pieces of information about the world as can fit on our screens throughout the course of a day. Which is a lot.

Too much.

It goes against the nature of our minds, endocrine systems, spirits, synapses, muscle fibers, and hearts. We simply weren’t made that way.

And yet….

One of my damn nipples is lower than the other one!

It’s a most ridiculous observation, one that should not make a mark on my daily list of notable things. But it did. The pure silliness of it is the thing I love most. How is it that, in a world of increasing entropy, my nipples should differ so much? Why did they decide to do that? Have they always been that way? Is it new? Or just new to my eyes? Do I need a chiropractor? Would anyone else notice? The whole thing is ludicrous and delightful. I’m still chuckling about it.

I wish I could say that there’s a lesson here. I wish I had deep words of wisdom. I wish I had tips and tools for closing the shutters a little, a way to narrow the floodgates of information that leave us overwhelmed and burnt out and scared. But I don’t.

What I can hope for, though, is that you have ridiculous nipples too. Or maybe a hilarious mole. Or perhaps some deliciously exotic stretch marks. Or a patch of whimsical body hair. I hope that your eyes are pointed in the right direction to see it. I hope that it makes you laugh. I hope that everyone around the world can have a moment of farcical discovery. I don’t know if it’ll fix things. But I do know that a brief respite from the burden we carry, and everybody carries something heavy, is a fine enough place to start.