Mortals Review: Issue No.28
On the budding fruit of autumn, letting go, how to get comfortable with dying, the influence of relationships to make meaning and living fearlessly.
Hello and welcome to another Review. I hope you’ll at least one thing you find interesting, useful or enjoyable. If something particularly resonated, I’d love to know about it.
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What’s alive for me
Welcome new subscribers to Mortals (formerly Notes from the Edge)! Thanks for signing up, I appreciate it.
As we get closer to the autumn equinox, I am feeling very much like I am harvesting the fruits of my labour from the summer.
Like I am beginning to pick some nice wee things off their branches. It has been a very exciting time for me. Finally, after many months of research and development, I launched Mortals and have transitioned this very newsletter to align with that venture. By that I mean I updated the name and donked a logo on it.
But most importantly I opened applications to the pilot programme that will begin in October. As of this issue, the applications for the pilot are now closed, but as a subscriber, you will be the first to know about its progress and what follows. So keep fresh eyes out for that!
In retrospect, it’s not surprising that not longer after having finally moved house, with renovations completed, did I have the mental and emotional energy to launch Mortals. It is a great reminder that we can not and should not over extend ourselves for some mad pursuit of progress. Some things take time. The work that is Mortals is really the budding fruit of a thing that has consisted of many years of deep rooting into the ground. I’ve been stretching out, gathering nutrients from so many places. It is such a deeply enlivening experience to do this.
And the crazy thing is, that is not the only thing that is coming to fruition. There are other things I am very excited about.
But that’s a crap tease. So lets get back to normal programming. For new subscribers, these Reviews are a regular-ish summary of things I am doing, reading and exploring. Often academic papers, or other published pieces that act as constellations of powerful inspiration that relate to mortality and living. I hope you find something worth exploring further. Let’s get straight into it.
Notes from the edge
‘Letting go’ is such a powerful concept to really grok and try and do in your life. We’re so often told to ‘just let go’ of things (small annoyances, grievances etc) but to truly let go, as in, you’re clinging to a rock battered by frothing, raging river rapids and you know you can’t stay holding on forever and you will have to one point… let go… into who knows what? That is tough. Thankfully Lao Tzu has much wisdom on the matter.
P.S I’m not sure how this worked because I read the piece on Medium where it was published, then it appeared behind a paywall, but I bookmarked/saved it to Notion originally and it’s the whole thing. So its a bit of a hack/cheat, and I hope the author doesn’t begrudge me sharing his work like this. But it is good.
Letting go is an art that few people know how to practice well. It’s also something that many of us need to learn fast if we want to live stress-free and emotionally healthy lives. Stress is directly related to holding on too tightly.
We need a balance between letting go and holding on so we can find peace in our lives once again. Letting go doesn’t mean you stop caring — it means you start caring about more meaningful things than the things you let go of so that your time and energy is spent more wisely going forward.
🚻 Discomfort with suffering and dying, a cross-sectional survey of the general public
Research like this informs my work. It is really important to me to find underlying, common threads to designing something like Mortals. If we take conventional, mainstream cultural wisdom… talking about death is just a pain. All it does is stir up unpleasant emotions, or kick people into mindsets or behaviours that they don’t want to be in. However, if done properly… it’s like getting that ferocious lion to stop snarling and that big fell rolls over and suddenly, he’s still a big scary cat but he’s not quite the threat you thought he was.
When people feel more comfortable about the dying of others, seriously ill people may feel more socially connected, which can positively affect their well-being. Moreover, being around seriously ill and dying people or being exposed to these topics through other means (e.g., by watching someone giving testimony about their illness), could open the door towards building new knowledge, developing skills for caregiving, or changing attitudes towards these topics. A number of initiatives have been described in the literature which aim to foster the potential of communities through the establishment of community-based mutual support models around serious illness, death, dying, and loss.
🤝 The influence of relationships on the meaning making process: patients' perspectives
Doing things by ourselves is increasingly the source of our problems. Why the hell would you try and engage with the deepest components of your life by yourself. That’s a recipe for punishing weight on your shoulders. It’s like talking to a mirror and expecting someone else to be there. So this study - like the previous - is a helpful indicator (not proof/or the only truth) of how another way is possible.
The data collected in this study suggest the development of meaning is gained through relationships, specifically an increase of meaning in family relationships, the connection to friends, and a change in compassion towards others. A common societal misperception of meaning making is that it is a personal, individual journey. The Presence of Meaning theory proposes that meaning is generated when individuals view their lives as significant and purposeful. This suggests that it is based on relationships with others rather than an individual pursuit.
Letting go. Living in fear. It’s all connected. Margaret Wheatley - co-founder of the Berkana Institute - outlines 8 fearless questions to ask yourself. Confronting the difficult things is not just about the big things (death) but the everyday too, which permeate our lives and colour them. This piece contains a rich set of questions to contemplate.
Sometimes, it is our task to find out how much music we can make with what we have left. What is the name that is big enough to hold your fearlessness, that is big enough to call you into fearlessness? That is big enough to break your heart? To allow you to open to the suffering that is this world right now and to not become immobilized by fear and to not become immobilized by comfort? What is the way in which you can hold your work so that you do feel free from hope.... and therefore free from fear?
🎧 Listen
I had a conversation with my brother about music festivals and how a recent festival felt quite starkly different, between some acts and bands. Some felt quite dead, compared to others that really did feel quite alive. It was something in the spirit of the performance, or the instruments themselves.
So this aliveness is something I keep trying to feel more in music, and it’s something that I keep finding in The Doors. I don’t think they are very cool at all these days. They have way too much baggage, and they’re a bit of a cliché. But there is just something in the arrangement, the combination of instruments. Maybe it’s the organ, with its sound delivered by air. It’s literally breathing. It likely has something to do with Morrison and his short life, and his bright burning of talent and force.
Nevertheless, here is one of my current favourite Door’s tracks: Peace Frog. It has this jivey bassline, rolling drums and swaggery vocals, and that guitar solo… Enjoy.
🤔 Last thought
