familiar strangers letter

Edit: This post is from 2019, when I still believed times were bad with my ex because I wasn’t good enough. It took years of abuse, of ‘good behavior’, before I realized, and before I was able to escape.

I leave the post below as a time capsule for myself— I hoped leaving my home town and valley would fix a relationship I should have left years prior. I continued trying to fix myself instead of trying to view the whole picture.

I do think “The Familiar Stranger” concept below is apt— if only I had applied it more rigorously to the situation I was in. I say roughly below, ‘you are not beholden to your past mistakes,’ yet I clung to a sunk cost fallacy, hoping and believing my situation was the best I deserved.

If times are bad in good times too,

Seek higher ground than haze.

In clearer air, take in the view,

To break free from the maze.

♥︎ We are all deserving of courtesy, care, and respect.

Dear Seeker,

Life is a bit of a Merry Go Round.

I woke up some time in November 2018, and realized the place I lived did not suit me. So instead of clinging, staying, ‘making it work’, I realized:

a) I was self-employed, highly mobile, and able to live and ‘make it work’ anywhere, so why not ‘make it work’ in a place more conducive to the lifestyle I wanted to live?

b) For me, life is best lived in bouts of newness. That’s the only way humans can slow down time. Live the same day, month, year, your brain just writes over the memories that are similar, and whole stretches of time can disappear. Do new things, and the reverse happens- weeks feel like months, months feel like years. That’s why a childhood summer felt like a full year. Each day was an endless possibility of new. Everything was new.

So time slowed down when I started to do new things again. I made the decision to move in mid November, fixed up the threads of life, packed, pared down, worked hard to get all of my woodworking done by January 1st, then moved in the first week of January. Time has moved so slowly amidst all of this newness— a new city, a new lifestyle, a new community.

On one hand, doing the same things over and over means they are easy, efficient, and effortless. Taking the same route to the store, to the library, to the post office. The way you prepare for bed, or your morning routine. Habit building can be good. Tempering it with newness means more decision making on your part, more figuring things out, more ‘on’ time.

Has time been moving quickly or slowly for you? Do you need some newness?

Here is a philosophy I use to motivate and remind myself to keep on keeping on.

My Familiar Stranger Hypothesis:

1) You are not a continuous stream of consciousness, that is an illusion. Much like the Star Trek transporter beam, you could be ‘technically’ a different person each time you wake from sleep, with only the memories of the person who came before. Which means this may be the only true day of your entire existence.

2) What about the other yous? The Yous of Yesterday and the Yous of the Future; those are your familiar strangers. They have intentions, plans, and you have them too. You could waste this You- forget about those plans, do nothing to uphold the legacy of all of those past Yous, and be the weak link. Or, you can spend this You in the pursuit of the goals of all of You. If each of you plays a part, if no familiar stranger is wasted— imagine what you could all accomplish.

3) You are not beholden to the mistakes of the familiar strangers of the past. Their opinions, identities, actions. You are free. This is your only day, and if you realize that the overall direction is bad- what do you need to do to set up the future yous for success? What plans do you need to make now?

4) Do not be the weak link. Plans are in place. The stage is set. Your cue is waking up on this only morning you will ever have. This present moment is your only moment. Quickly now. How will you pass the baton to the You tomorrow? How will you be kind to the You tomorrow?