People Practice
Elemental prompts for ritual and reflection
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Previous practices:
Some people are prone to biliousness or heartburn; I am prone to people poisoning.
It comes upon me like a wave of absence. First, I just want to go home, and then my words disappear. After that, I get the strange sensation that my eyeballs are trying to retract into my head, as though I am a snail and have the luxury of a shell to hide in. After that, I need a little lie-down, perhaps for a decade or so, until everyone has left me alone for good.
It’s not that I hate people. The problem is that I find them beguiling, and then overdose on their abundant humanness. People are endlessly saying curious things, or behaving in ways I find mystifying, or displaying singular talents that feel so far away from anything I can do that I can’t look away. There’s a part of me that always wants to rush to their aid, or befriend them, or brighten up their day.
Other times, I find humanity terrifying: rude, selfish, unfathomable. Some days, I walk down the street or drive my car, and everyone seems to be pushing and snatching. And, of course, I read the news, which is full of the worst things that people do. People, I say, and shake my head.
How can we get the measure of this massed humanity, the unruly crowd of Everybody Else? They always seem so other, so unknowable. Can it really be that we are the only reasonable people left in the world, and everyone else has spiralled out of control? I doubt it. Instead, I think we can learn to make our peace with the lives that surge so mysteriously around us.
Today’s Practice is about decontaminating strangers.
People Practice
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