Part one: Gears & Mechanisms
It eats us all, those gears and
wheels, concatenated struts,
organs, levers, flesh, pulleys.
Pressure Dressing, Mark Scroggins
Welcome, dear reader –
I’ve been thinking about another definition of the word play -- meaning space, the space in or through which a mechanism can or does move. The play of a clutch (for those of us still driving stick shifts!) or the steering wheel.
Once we become familiar with a mechanism, we forget about this play, this space. The machines we use every day – our cars mostly – become second nature to us. It’s only when we drive someone else’s car that we recall the idiosyncrasies of our own.
This forgetting happens with these mechanical objects but it also happens in the mechanisms of being human. We develop systems and then forget that they were constructed, forget that we were part of their origin story. When those systems work, it’s ritual and magic and wonder. When they don’t, we find ourselves stuck, frozen in the system, caught in the gears.
Take a moment to think of the mechanisms at play in your life.
We tend not to notice the systems that work. They are beautifully invisible.
The mechanisms that don’t squeak and groan. Or we groan, “I always…” “She never…” “He won’t…” “I can’t…”
That’s the language of stuckness. I’m fluent in it. My own discordant squeaks sound like “I’m overwhelmed! I can’t get it all done! It’s too much!” followed by wallowing, junk food eating, and procrastination.
The orchestra of broken mechanisms is loud. In stuckness, it’s easy to forget that we have any agency, that we can find any wiggle room, any play in the mechanism.
In fact, we often respond to a broken system by replacing one stuckness with another. We short circuit, lash out, issue an ultimatum, put down an untenable rule or boundary for ourselves and others. If you find yourself saying “I’ll never…”… or “You can never…” you’re probably in ultimatum territory. (Ultimatums look like terra firma but are actually quicksand.)
The irony of being stuck is that the mechanism keeps running. We are stuck within its gears, often within a design of our own making.
In the next newsletter, I’ll offer some ways of reflecting on stuckness, on the broken systems in our lives, so that we can open up space.
For now, I encourage us all to think about the systems in our lives. What is working? Where do you find yourself stuck?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Emily
*Play is my word for the year. I’ve been working to be more playful in my life, and to think about all of the aspects of play. From time to time, I write about those here.
**I’m thinking now of all the machines that have some play in them – from drill presses to the arm of an extendable lamp to the swinging arc of the gymnasium’s rings. What comes to mind for you?
***We recognize our own broken mechanisms by what we dread. Are you putting off that conversation with your boss, sibling, friend? Are you dreading Sunday night when your child needs your help to deal with their homework?
****Systems come in all sizes, from remembering to put new toilet paper on the roll to keeping receipts to having difficult conversations.
I became aware of how many different systems are in play while writing this blog. There’s at least 5, ranging from the technical to the emotional. This week my systems for the technical/idea side worked just fine. I don’t have a good system in place (yet) for when I found myself wanting to revise extensively. I hadn’t put aside enough time. That was when my system of dealing with emotional distress in writing kicked in – 1) perfection is the enemy of the good and 2) if you’re actively practicing your craft, not everything is going to be stellar, but each practice does elevate the whole.