We Are NOT in the Home Stretch!
And it is not my "last chance!"
I hate to be a whiner, but my inbox has been getting me down.
“Last chance, stragglers,” screamed the header of one email.
“We’re in the home stretch,” urged another.
Every retailer I’ve ever purchased from has decided that they need to whip me into a last-minute buying frenzy before the holidays.
But I’m not buying it. I happen to know there will always be another chance to buy, and this is not a “home stretch.”
Whipping up a buying frenzy is the uber-narrative of capitalism, of course, and it grows more urgent at the holidays. And so does my resistance.
I’ve been thinking about the way we get captured by narratives, as I nearly got hooked into one regarding the untimely death of soccer journalist Grant Wahl while covering the World Cup in Qatar.
Wahl died suddenly and without apparent cause while attending a match—and manipulative news stories jumped on lack of an immediate cause of death. What if, some asked, Wahl was assassinated by forces aligned with the rulers of Qatar, as revenge for Wahl’s support for LGBTQ rights. After all, he wore a rainbow shirt to the first match; surely the ruthless Qatari police couldn’t allow this? It was a nice fit for one narrative about how the world works.
Then I realized there was a counter story: Wahl was a victim of COVID-19 vaccine SADS (that’s “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome,” in case you don’t follow this side of the media circus). Ironic justice for a guy who had championed the vaccine, and more proof of the vast conspiracy favored by those of a certain political persuasion.
Of course, both stories were complete bullshit. The autopsy came out and ruled that he died from an aneurysm! Sadly, the stories about the real cause of his unfortunate death probably got fewer clicks than those juicy conspiracy stories.
I’m not a big lamenter, but I do lament how much we have to wade through urgency and outrage and false narratives to arrive at something like understanding. Where are the stories that urge me to slow down, consider what’s important and what’s true, and behave accordingly?
Ah well, here’s one (see below). I’m still making my mind up about this source, but I sure like where this writer is going. May it help you tune out some of the bullshit and enjoy a happy, peaceful holiday season.
Let me close this piece with some pictures from two walks this past week out at the Slough:
Anybody else notice the slight rightward tilt in all my pictures? I bet there’s a narrative that explains it …
I said to my husband last night - firmly entrenched in the couch during a deliciously snowy day of football watching - “Who buys a car as a Christmas present?!”, after seeing the 1000th ad for a new Chevy.
We don’t observe the world around us. It’s more efficient to follow stories and not think critically. (I, too, got briefly turned down the Wahl rabbit hole, until we learned the real, and equally tragic, truth; I’m not sure he would have survived back home, either.)
“It is almost as though the purpose of the stories we are told is to obscure reality, not to reveal it.”
I’m going to make a note of this for future writing. Am I obscuring or revealing reality?
I'm so with you on this. I think we're all suffering from urgency fatigue. A sense of urgency can also be addicting, I think, too. When I worked in the corporate world, there were always a few people that turned everything into a crisis, almost as if they got high off of it.