Extant
Rotting is remarkably transformative, regardless of whether the process is observed or experienced
I’ve been thinking about dying again. About what it means to decay so completely that you become something entirely new.
Rotting is remarkably transformative, regardless of whether the process is observed or experienced.
This transfiguration births something new into the world, something no longer bound by the confines of what it once was. Caterpillar to butterfly; flesh to dust.
Dying reminds me that there is now space for newness to exist. A birth waiting inside the process of death.
A perpetual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
There seems to be a constant cord of shedding and growing inside of every being on this planet. It feels like once we get just comfortable enough, the leaves change and it’s suddenly Fall. When we finally settle into the cold, finding comfort in the early morning chill, the seeds we planted last season begin to sprout, and it’s Spring all over again.
I’ve learned over time that just because a thing is dead, it doesn’t mean it’s devoid of life.
The Libra in me craves balance. The middle child1 in me craves peace. The #82 in me craves harmony.
Perhaps it’s why I find comfort in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It’s a pattern I can dig because it means there’s always room for growth. A built-in margin of error in case you go completely off the rails. You can get it right in your next life – in the next iteration of you.
It’s the same in organizing, campaigns, and movements. To quote The Oracle, “everything that has a beginning has an end.” It’s true.
Grants end. Organizations shutter. Institutions crumble.
Eventually everything erodes. Even empires.
But your work lives on. It lays the foundation for the next leader, next organization, next campaign, next movement to take on the mantle. Concepts pass on in dreams that become reality.
It's hard to accept that a thing has to die in order for new things to live in its place. This is true whether we are talking about movements or our own personal growth.
For a very long time, I was hurt over the dissolution of a campaign I had worked on for nearly 3 years. My hurt was not just about the end of the campaign, but about how it ended. After campaign losses and changes in the social and political landscape, leadership decided to end the campaign. With barely a conversation to our membership and no public acknowledgement that we were transitioning to new work, the campaign I cut my teeth on ended in a whisper as if it hadn’t even began at all.
I ached over the dissolution of that campaign. Sometimes when I gaze into my navel for far too long, I still ache. Even healed wounds can still act up if a storm is on the horizon.
As time went on (accompanied by lots of journaling, venting sessions to friends/comrades, and getting a life outside of the Movement3), I found tendrils of our old campaign all around me. In conversations with members who grew into leaders. In my newfound experience that I use in the development of new campaigns. In community members who had been impacted by our work, or knew of us through that campaign. “That was y’all I saw on the news?! Wow!” Those are my favorite conversations. It’s not about having our work seen on TV, but it’s recognizing the reach of our work. When you’re in the day to day, it’s hard to see the whole forest instead of just the trees.
The campaign losses we suffered were still there. We didn't get our big win. We didn't change the material conditions for every incarcerated person in Connecticut. We didn’t pass the legislation that we wanted.
But we did make changes. We accomplished some of our goals. We integrated new people into our organization. We proved to the Governor that incarcerated people are worthy of more than empty words to placate them.
Many people were changed throughout the process of the campaign. Including myself.
That end created a beginning.
Sometimes the work is never even for you. Sometimes it’s for the next leader or campaign. Sometimes it’s for the next version of you.
In Merriam-Webster, extant is defined as “currently or actually existing; still existing: not destroyed or lost.” Extant is derived from the Latin word exstant-, to stand out, be in existence. An early definition of extant means “standing out or above.”
Even words can be transformed. Extant may have changed over the centuries, but it still retains some of its original meaning.
A beginning, an end, and a beginning–
While sitting with a friend a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a video of myself on YouTube from when I was 17 years old. A conversation reminiscing on who we were as teenagers had me going through Facebook photo albums and internet searches of my old names. I was looking for a particular photo of myself during an internship when instead I found a video of myself and another intern giving a presentation on our summer research. The video had been online for 15 years, but I found it by accident only 2 months ago.
Upon hearing my teenage voice, I became shocked, embarrassed, self-conscious, and angry (with myself). Shocked because this video had been online for over a decade without my knowledge, embarrassed because I found a piece of myself that I had buried for a very long time, self-conscious because I was still hard on my research even 15 years later, and angry at myself because it was the easiest way to displace unprocessed emotions.
I closed my phone, changed the subject, and shut down that part of my life with my friend. The idea of watching the video with her was only slightly more embarrassing than watching it by myself through semi-closed fingers.
At the time of the presentation when I was 17, I was self-conscious about my internship placement because it felt more like communications than “real science.” While the other interns worked in labs with doctors and conducted experiments, I worked for a science radio show. I yearned for pipettes and lab coats and projects on rockets (one kid was actually placed at a jet propulsion lab), and instead pitched stories about the science of sword swallowing, read the manuscript for the latest Michael Pollan book, and coordinated a Science Cabaret for children and families at the Coney Island Aquarium. When I was first placed with my internship at 15, I desperately wanted to continue my studies as a botanist-in-training and do science, not talk about science.
Despite all my feelings about wanting to do “real science,” that internship with National Public Radio changed my life. It opened my world to strategic communications, and set the foundation for me to use audio and video recording in my work and artistry. By the time the internship had ended, I had read dozens of soon-to-be published books, pitched several stories for the show, taught myself how to edit audio and video files, coordinated a summer event attended by over 80 people, filmed and edited my first PSA, and a host of other things.
The point of sharing both stories is that even in the death – of a campaign, an internship, or the person I once was – there is an opportunity for life. Just because a thing is dead, doesn’t mean it’s devoid of life
I had to be that person to become who I am today. That teen still lives inside me. Those ideals are still in me, long after that version of me has turned into dust.
That version of me had to exist in order for this version to thrive.
“Everything that has a beginning has an end.”
It's hard not to think about death when there are multiple genocides occuring. Palestine. Sudan. The Congo. In those deaths, the people we lost will never return. And it is the strength of those that came before us – of Refaat Al-Areer, of Shireen Abu Akleh, of the thousands of those whose names we will never know – who keep us going.
Friends: When you need to begin anew, what do you do to transition? How do you reconcile who you were with who you’re becoming? What signs tell you that you’re in need of a rebirth?
I’m not actually the middle child, but family dynamics are complicated and I am sandwiched between an older and younger sister that I grew up with. I’m a middle child, but not. I’m also an only child, but not. Check out my entry on Moments of Being and Non-Being for some only child blues.
In Supreme Mathematics, the number 8 means “build/destroy”. Nearly all of the names I've ever had in this life - not including my last name in marriage - have the 8 letters in them. Undoubtedly, I am a builder and a destroyer.
Inspired by “Get A Life, Chloe Brown” by Talia Hibbert, I made a list to get a f*cking life. I was married to the Movement and learned that I can’t live that way anymore. You can’t help anyone - your people included - if you act like a soldier all the time instead of a human. Read more of my thoughts on this here.