I am still pondering your questions, however I wanted to pull out this sentence and address this:
*It’s easier to say “no” for the sake of a shared “yes” than to just disengage with no real alternative.*
I wanted to address this because my older children have chosen to disengage, and unfortunately they have no real shared "yes" in that choice. And it is, has been, so hard. My oldest is nearly 23 and he frequently feels both so alone and so disconnected, but he doesn't want to touch the various social media that his "arm's length friends" engage with. He has seen first hand how they do not and cannot connect with each other, even when they are in person because they are glued to their scrolling on social media.
My next two oldest are similar, as well. They would much rather engage with their peers face-to-face, small group. They are not on social media, really at all. And they have trouble connecting with their peers, mainly because their peers only really seem to connect, to be able to connect, over the latest social media trend.
It's lonely for them, I know, and I worry how they will be able to find their own sense of community (let alone spouses - if that's where they're called), when their own peers seemingly aren't able to disengage and join them.
It's very challenging! My SIL had trouble with hanging out with friends who, as you've observed, wanted to all look at phones _together_ even in real life.
I think, it helps to be part of a weird community that is doing _something_ together that requires embodiment (community garden work, sports, dance, building, etc). Even if that hobby is only so important to you, it becomes a firmer foundation to build friendships on.
We would up really deepening friendships with the 3-4 people who wanted to play a long running RPG (the pencil and paper and dice kind) with us, because we saw them regularly, and our phones were away while we played.
My best friendship was developed over playing chess. He is not on social media at all. Occasionally we would look at an online chess game together though. Granted I am nearly 40 and he is mid 40's now. He is unmarried so we made it a family night. Dinner, wife, kids, and Mike.
> Where have you benefited from being unable to go along with a bad-for-you culture?
In the spring of 2020, I was struggling to nurse my first baby. My state’s Covid policies freed me from the “obligation” to leave the house for various activities, which created the space I needed to truly rest and heal and learn to pay attention to my baby’s needs. For us, that year was (among other things, obviously) a bit of a reset button on our family’s priorities.
Your post reminds me of _the minority body_ which (among other things) recounts instances of people who are happy because of (not despite) their disabilities. A woman who uses a wheelchair experiences freedom from unrealistic expectations of how women ought to look. Etc. All real examples.
My own experience of suffering various things has made me more aware of the reality of others' suffering. And I'm so happy when I see my kids picking up on it. There's a young girl who mothers helpers for us sometimes, and she's allergic to dogs and we have a dog, so we vacuum before she comes. Her mother sometimes says, "she doesn't have to come if it's too much work to vacuum!" but I'm really committed to this being ordinary, not extraordinary, work. One time, I saw my toddler covering the toy kitchen with a blanket because some dog hair and been spotted on it (dog hair is literally everywhere in our house) and "I don't want (name) to get sick." We're doing better with allergy safety than fire safety! The same toddler once requested getting eggs from one store and not the other because at the other store, "their eggs are not gluten free." This is absurd. You can't even hide gluten in eggs. But I love that my kids are growing up thinking about this and being ready to attend to the unique needs of others.
A friend of mine translated an essay by Sr. Teresa de Cartagena, who was a woman religious who was deaf. Her essay focused on this theme of suffering or disability meaning you *can't* go along with some parts of a complacent culture and must choose how you diverge.
>>Divine generosity invites all to this blessed feast, but suffering grabs the infirm by their cloak and makes them enter by force. And so it says in the parable that our Lord gives in the Gospel about that man who prepared a great feast and invited many guests, and when it was time to eat, he sent out his servant to inform them that everything was ready. Being occupied with various tasks, or rather with nonsense, they excused themselves from coming; and so the indignant host told his servant, “Go out then to the plazas and markets. Make all the infirm, lame, and weak people that you find come and fill up my house.” And he did not say, “Tell them to come,” like with the first guests, but rather, “Make them come.” And so it seems that the infirm are brought by force to the magnificent feast of eternal health, because their suffering grabs them by the cloak and makes them enter through the door of good works; for if we do not enter through that door, we will not be able to reach the greatest heights of honor, which is to be seated at the table of divine generosity. O blessed convent of the infirm! Of them, I say, who enter willingly where suffering brings them by force, and do not choose to remain in the street.
I failed out of academia after two postdocs because of burnout and because I belonged to the wrong demographic categories for hiring at the time. It felt like a catastrophe, and in a lot of ways it was. I love teaching and working with ideas, and I think a professorship at a good state university in the middle of the last century would have been an ideal career for me. But those days are long over, and secular academia is completely trapped in a terrible local minimum of publish-or-perish careerism and toxic ideologies. To get out of that basin, I had to get bumped out. But I'm incredibly glad I did.
Thanks for writing this piece, Mrs. Sargeant! To answer your first question: My wife and I have decided to abstain from financially patronizing mainstream films and TV shows that utilize scenes with a porn aesthetic (that which is typically referred to as "simulated sex"). We've decided to do so primarily out of love and respect for the actors who are required (sometimes willingly, many times with reservations) to sexualize themselves for mass consumption, basically serving themselves up as softcore porn products in an industry that can no longer recognize what is and isn't pornographic. By saying "no" to this material, we're saying a better "yes" to a heightened capacity to love our neighbor/entertainer as ourselves.
Also, I really love the cue cards. We stayed for coffee hour at church yesterday, and I was kind of mystified at a few folks who were there, ostensibly wanting to converse, but didn’t seem to be asking others any questions. Maybe we (as a culture) need to learn some new tools or methods for starting conversations.
Yes. This!!! I myself am so bad at starting conversations or keeping them going. It seems so awkward to simply start asking questions that provoke and promote deeper conversations and connections. But small talk? *shudders* I like the weather, but unless you're going to geek out of storm chasing..."Yes, it is humid," is hardly the conversation piece
But conversation can be a learned skill, and in my opinion it’s mostly about curiosity. Not that I’m the greatest expert in practice, but even the weather can be a segue to something more personal and interesting (“So humid, it wrecked my gardening plans for the day! What would you do if it wasn’t so muggy out?”)
In my experience, it's a big shift to think of conversation as chasing curiosity versus being blandly pleasant/not making mistakes.
And I think people make that mistake at a bigger scale with dating. When I went on OkCupid dates, it was clear a lot of guys were trying to be pleasant and not ruin a chance of a second date. But I had a very different goal. I assumed it was possible for us both to be "nice" but a bad match, so my goal was to make it easy for them to know if they wanted to date *me in particular* which meant bringing up weird enthusiasms like the history of germ theory.
Love this quote from Rebecca West's Black Lamb Grey Falcon:
"In the West conversation is regarded as a means either of passing the time agreeably or exchanging useful information; among Slavs it is thought to be disgraceful, when a number of people are together, that they should not pool their experience and thus travel further toward the redemption of the world."
That’s a great paradigm shift. I had a realization in the past couple of years that I can create more space for others’ authentic selves (which are by far more interesting than the bland socially acceptable selves we sometimes imagine we should be) by bringing my own full weird authentic self to my interactions and friendships. If I feel lonely in my oddly specific interests, maybe I have not given others a fair chance to learn that I have those interests.
Another shift for me is to *expect* conversations and friendships to take work, especially initially (as opposed to assuming I’ll just stumble into a perfectly flowing enjoyable discourse, and ending up disappointed or unexpectedly exhausted).
I love all of this. Chasing curiosity, putting forth our own weirdness, and working to get better at conversations.
My husband and I had a recent conversation(!) about how to have deeper conversations. He wanted to get better at it, and thought he could learn something from me. I don’t feel like I am particularly skilled in this area, but I was able to come up with two strategies I use, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes almost as a game. I try to make every question go one “level” deeper; and I try to see how long I can keep the focus of the conversation on the other person rather than on myself.
Obviously either of these can be taken to an extreme, but I appreciated the chance my husband’s question gave me to make these two conversational “moves” a little more clear in my own mind.
I have such a hard time with this, but I’m learning. One thing I do is reflect people’s questions back at them: “what do you do? what brings you here today?” and then try to find something in their answer to comment on or to ask a follow up question, which could be a simple “oh neat, tell me more!”
And then I store up those stock questions for conversations where I need to be the more outgoing one. It can still be super awkward, but usually it leads to a nice casual conversation, at least
I don't have a smart phone and my dumb phone I don't keep around me very much. I don't respond to texts fast and don't answer phone calls much I once I am home with my kids and wife. People often say I wish I did not have a smart phone but have to have it for my job. I say you don't actually have to have it for your job. You did not have to have it 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. You don't have to have it and they don't but some how they are tethered to it.
I am still pondering your questions, however I wanted to pull out this sentence and address this:
*It’s easier to say “no” for the sake of a shared “yes” than to just disengage with no real alternative.*
I wanted to address this because my older children have chosen to disengage, and unfortunately they have no real shared "yes" in that choice. And it is, has been, so hard. My oldest is nearly 23 and he frequently feels both so alone and so disconnected, but he doesn't want to touch the various social media that his "arm's length friends" engage with. He has seen first hand how they do not and cannot connect with each other, even when they are in person because they are glued to their scrolling on social media.
My next two oldest are similar, as well. They would much rather engage with their peers face-to-face, small group. They are not on social media, really at all. And they have trouble connecting with their peers, mainly because their peers only really seem to connect, to be able to connect, over the latest social media trend.
It's lonely for them, I know, and I worry how they will be able to find their own sense of community (let alone spouses - if that's where they're called), when their own peers seemingly aren't able to disengage and join them.
It's very challenging! My SIL had trouble with hanging out with friends who, as you've observed, wanted to all look at phones _together_ even in real life.
I think, it helps to be part of a weird community that is doing _something_ together that requires embodiment (community garden work, sports, dance, building, etc). Even if that hobby is only so important to you, it becomes a firmer foundation to build friendships on.
We would up really deepening friendships with the 3-4 people who wanted to play a long running RPG (the pencil and paper and dice kind) with us, because we saw them regularly, and our phones were away while we played.
My best friendship was developed over playing chess. He is not on social media at all. Occasionally we would look at an online chess game together though. Granted I am nearly 40 and he is mid 40's now. He is unmarried so we made it a family night. Dinner, wife, kids, and Mike.
> Where have you benefited from being unable to go along with a bad-for-you culture?
In the spring of 2020, I was struggling to nurse my first baby. My state’s Covid policies freed me from the “obligation” to leave the house for various activities, which created the space I needed to truly rest and heal and learn to pay attention to my baby’s needs. For us, that year was (among other things, obviously) a bit of a reset button on our family’s priorities.
Your post reminds me of _the minority body_ which (among other things) recounts instances of people who are happy because of (not despite) their disabilities. A woman who uses a wheelchair experiences freedom from unrealistic expectations of how women ought to look. Etc. All real examples.
My own experience of suffering various things has made me more aware of the reality of others' suffering. And I'm so happy when I see my kids picking up on it. There's a young girl who mothers helpers for us sometimes, and she's allergic to dogs and we have a dog, so we vacuum before she comes. Her mother sometimes says, "she doesn't have to come if it's too much work to vacuum!" but I'm really committed to this being ordinary, not extraordinary, work. One time, I saw my toddler covering the toy kitchen with a blanket because some dog hair and been spotted on it (dog hair is literally everywhere in our house) and "I don't want (name) to get sick." We're doing better with allergy safety than fire safety! The same toddler once requested getting eggs from one store and not the other because at the other store, "their eggs are not gluten free." This is absurd. You can't even hide gluten in eggs. But I love that my kids are growing up thinking about this and being ready to attend to the unique needs of others.
A friend of mine translated an essay by Sr. Teresa de Cartagena, who was a woman religious who was deaf. Her essay focused on this theme of suffering or disability meaning you *can't* go along with some parts of a complacent culture and must choose how you diverge.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/devotional-reading/teresa-de-cartagena-on-eternal-health
>>Divine generosity invites all to this blessed feast, but suffering grabs the infirm by their cloak and makes them enter by force. And so it says in the parable that our Lord gives in the Gospel about that man who prepared a great feast and invited many guests, and when it was time to eat, he sent out his servant to inform them that everything was ready. Being occupied with various tasks, or rather with nonsense, they excused themselves from coming; and so the indignant host told his servant, “Go out then to the plazas and markets. Make all the infirm, lame, and weak people that you find come and fill up my house.” And he did not say, “Tell them to come,” like with the first guests, but rather, “Make them come.” And so it seems that the infirm are brought by force to the magnificent feast of eternal health, because their suffering grabs them by the cloak and makes them enter through the door of good works; for if we do not enter through that door, we will not be able to reach the greatest heights of honor, which is to be seated at the table of divine generosity. O blessed convent of the infirm! Of them, I say, who enter willingly where suffering brings them by force, and do not choose to remain in the street.
Thank you for sharing this; it's wonderful!!
I failed out of academia after two postdocs because of burnout and because I belonged to the wrong demographic categories for hiring at the time. It felt like a catastrophe, and in a lot of ways it was. I love teaching and working with ideas, and I think a professorship at a good state university in the middle of the last century would have been an ideal career for me. But those days are long over, and secular academia is completely trapped in a terrible local minimum of publish-or-perish careerism and toxic ideologies. To get out of that basin, I had to get bumped out. But I'm incredibly glad I did.
Oh, and this was during Covid!
Thanks for writing this piece, Mrs. Sargeant! To answer your first question: My wife and I have decided to abstain from financially patronizing mainstream films and TV shows that utilize scenes with a porn aesthetic (that which is typically referred to as "simulated sex"). We've decided to do so primarily out of love and respect for the actors who are required (sometimes willingly, many times with reservations) to sexualize themselves for mass consumption, basically serving themselves up as softcore porn products in an industry that can no longer recognize what is and isn't pornographic. By saying "no" to this material, we're saying a better "yes" to a heightened capacity to love our neighbor/entertainer as ourselves.
Also, I really love the cue cards. We stayed for coffee hour at church yesterday, and I was kind of mystified at a few folks who were there, ostensibly wanting to converse, but didn’t seem to be asking others any questions. Maybe we (as a culture) need to learn some new tools or methods for starting conversations.
Yes. This!!! I myself am so bad at starting conversations or keeping them going. It seems so awkward to simply start asking questions that provoke and promote deeper conversations and connections. But small talk? *shudders* I like the weather, but unless you're going to geek out of storm chasing..."Yes, it is humid," is hardly the conversation piece
But conversation can be a learned skill, and in my opinion it’s mostly about curiosity. Not that I’m the greatest expert in practice, but even the weather can be a segue to something more personal and interesting (“So humid, it wrecked my gardening plans for the day! What would you do if it wasn’t so muggy out?”)
In my experience, it's a big shift to think of conversation as chasing curiosity versus being blandly pleasant/not making mistakes.
And I think people make that mistake at a bigger scale with dating. When I went on OkCupid dates, it was clear a lot of guys were trying to be pleasant and not ruin a chance of a second date. But I had a very different goal. I assumed it was possible for us both to be "nice" but a bad match, so my goal was to make it easy for them to know if they wanted to date *me in particular* which meant bringing up weird enthusiasms like the history of germ theory.
Love this quote from Rebecca West's Black Lamb Grey Falcon:
"In the West conversation is regarded as a means either of passing the time agreeably or exchanging useful information; among Slavs it is thought to be disgraceful, when a number of people are together, that they should not pool their experience and thus travel further toward the redemption of the world."
That’s a great paradigm shift. I had a realization in the past couple of years that I can create more space for others’ authentic selves (which are by far more interesting than the bland socially acceptable selves we sometimes imagine we should be) by bringing my own full weird authentic self to my interactions and friendships. If I feel lonely in my oddly specific interests, maybe I have not given others a fair chance to learn that I have those interests.
Another shift for me is to *expect* conversations and friendships to take work, especially initially (as opposed to assuming I’ll just stumble into a perfectly flowing enjoyable discourse, and ending up disappointed or unexpectedly exhausted).
I love all of this. Chasing curiosity, putting forth our own weirdness, and working to get better at conversations.
My husband and I had a recent conversation(!) about how to have deeper conversations. He wanted to get better at it, and thought he could learn something from me. I don’t feel like I am particularly skilled in this area, but I was able to come up with two strategies I use, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes almost as a game. I try to make every question go one “level” deeper; and I try to see how long I can keep the focus of the conversation on the other person rather than on myself.
Obviously either of these can be taken to an extreme, but I appreciated the chance my husband’s question gave me to make these two conversational “moves” a little more clear in my own mind.
I have such a hard time with this, but I’m learning. One thing I do is reflect people’s questions back at them: “what do you do? what brings you here today?” and then try to find something in their answer to comment on or to ask a follow up question, which could be a simple “oh neat, tell me more!”
And then I store up those stock questions for conversations where I need to be the more outgoing one. It can still be super awkward, but usually it leads to a nice casual conversation, at least
I don't have a smart phone and my dumb phone I don't keep around me very much. I don't respond to texts fast and don't answer phone calls much I once I am home with my kids and wife. People often say I wish I did not have a smart phone but have to have it for my job. I say you don't actually have to have it for your job. You did not have to have it 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. You don't have to have it and they don't but some how they are tethered to it.