So How’s YOUR Golden Age Going?

Caught up on the executive orders? Got your cheap eggs yet? Found just the right balance of pharma, therapy, meditation, etc., to deal with all this?

Yeah, me neither. But I’m working on it.

In last week’s blog post, I shared my two-prong strategy for staying sane in the New Age of Trump:

1. I will devote myself to living my life as it is.
2. I will try to devote precisely the right level of attention to Trumpworld: not an iota less than necessary to detect oncoming threats/needs for action, not an iota more than it warrants.

What I’d forgotten to consider was Trump’s strategy of flooding the public square with so much chaos you can’t take it in. At 9:00, say, you read an article on an executive order, and it links to another executive order, and another, and by the time you’re done it’s noon and you’re overwhelmed. I’ve thought about limiting myself only to news about the Trump trans bans,* but even those are flowing thick and fast.**

As before, I’ve been working with all this in zazen (basically, Zen meditation). Last night, it dawned on me that I’m trying too hard with #2—the attention to Trumpworld—and ignoring #1.

So I’m making a shift: less Trump, more devoting myself to my life as it is.

I feel myself breathe easier every time I think about that. Moreover, living my life as it is involves my fundamental vocation: to tend sentient beings so they blossom. This vocation brings me bliss, and it can’t be bad for others either.

In a subtle way, living my own life is also an act of non-binary resistance. My life as it is includes me as I am: a non-binary person, living my non-binary life. My vocation has a non-binary cast to it because it’s my vocation.
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So how have you navigated the past two weeks? Feel free to share if you like. In the meantime, I’ve got a poem to revise.
 
 
*Talk about fun words to see and say. Try it. Trans bans. Transbans. Trumpytransbans. In times like these, comedy is mandatory.
**In case you’re counting…oh my goodness, I can’t even summarize all the executive orders that target trans people. Here’s a link to one of Erin Reed’s recent posts. She’s a respected trans journalist writing about trans issues. She’ll clue you in.