Size matters

Photo: Booker T. Sessoms 2024

I’ve been thinking a lot about size lately, and about how it affects outcomes and consequences. The size of a sailboat in the eye of a storm. The size of cars and houses and whether our internal spaciousness is dependent on either (it is not). The size of a country in the throws of a democratic crisis. You see where I am going with this.

Spoiler-alert: I don’t have the answers you are looking for.

Human collectives are messy, no matter the purpose. Whether it is a collective, a company, a country, or a coven, the larger the messier. We all have our own dreams and aspirations. We are all activated by random or not so random stuff, we all communicate in very different ways. It’s not difficult to see how this could get complicated fast.

But I have also been sitting with the elements each of us can decide on, independently of what is going on around us. We can always decide where we put our attention and how we show up for ourselves and each other.

Here’s the thing. Political narratives thrive on division, but we do not. In the words of Catherine Pierce, in one of my favorite poems of all time, we are built like that: built to love the purpling desert in the twilight.

In short: we are built for love. Big, unapologetic, devil-may-care love. And that is the only size that really matters: our outsized ability to love. I am holding onto that. Love is the boat I want to be on as we hurtle towards the eye of the storm.