(Photos of the camping trip of incredible mountains, trees, body of water. And on the right, I created a piece inspired by the view with watercolors and charcoal - I used the water from Lake Louise for the watercolor.) [ Scroll to the bottom to watch the visual version of this post ] In September 2016, I went on a 10 day camping trip with friends through Glacier National Park to Banff National Park…it was so epic. We pitched our tents at a new location every night. I remember waking up to the scent pine trees, forest dirt, and fresh rain. The smell was intoxicating. Love the rain, but it’s hard to set up camp during rainfall and it’s not really fun when you’re cold and wet. It was way colder than we expected, and I was unfortunately a little unprepared for that part. On top of that it was kinda rough to depend on park showers and bathrooms every single day. But it was so worth the adventure being amongst such awe-inducing nature. (Photos of me making art in my apartment soon after that trip.) Something I revisit weirdly often is the euphoric experience when I got back. The first 24 hours back in my studio apartment were out of this world. It was like I was high! The first hot shower in a clean bathroom. The first night in my fluffy warm bed. The first change into clean clothes. The first skincare routine not from travel bottles. The first day without having to talk to anyone. I was having an out of body experience. Pure bliss. The novelty of my being at home was so visceral for me that I can almost feel it right now 10 years later. In that same era, I learned about hedonic adaptation (or treadmill), which is the human phenomenon of always needing to “up” our experiences to get to our previous level of enjoyment. For example: the first time going to the lake was so magical…I felt like I could do it every day and not get sick of it. So the next time, I brought my favorite chilled drink and loved it, but sitting there, I already knew that I wanted to bring a camping chair next time. So then, I do that…and then it would be cuter if I also had food. So suddenly, the magic of being by the lake without anything doesn’t exactly have the same shimmery feeling, because I need the other elements. There’s nothing wrong with bringing a drink or snack to the lake, but it demonstrates how fast our sense of awe or gratitude can evaporate. Another way to see it is this chase for novelty, and by definition, novelty can’t really be experienced in repetition. The only way to combat it is to create a contrasting experience. In this example, to not go to the lake for a while, and enjoy level 1 again. Or go back to level 1 and intentionally invite the feeling of gratitude and awe. Back to my camping trip, I felt euphoric in my apartment, because I was experiencing novelty. My norm for the past 10 days was setting camp in the rain, really cold uncomfortable nights, a hard sleeping mat, dirty bathrooms, cold showers, and constant socializing. So coming home of course felt like heaven. I moved my baseline. I think our bodies, our nervous systems, our psyche, are always looking for a balance of safety through routine and novelty. We want to feel settled in day to day life and not have to use our executive thinking all the time, because decision fatigue is so draining. AND we also want to feel like we are alive and can use our agency in experiencing new things. For some of us, we might gravitate towards seeing the mundane as dangerous…like it’s a sign that we are getting complacent in life. The repetition of life could almost feel like our agency is taken from us. That is especially true under capitalism when most of us are forced to labor in order to have a roof over our heads. So much agency is stolen from us with that piece alone. It could feel so suffocating and depressing. While for others, we might see novelty as threatening to our safety. Taking risks and experiencing the unknown could feel completely outside of our capacity. When life is already so unknown, it sometimes doesn’t feel worth shaking up everything without a certain outcome. This could play out with big life decisions, but it can also show up in small ways. Like saying yes to hanging out with a friend. Or finding a new hobby. This could induce feelings of anxiety and wanting to hide away. Either way we are always doing the math on whether something is worth it or not (mostly subconsciously). If the balance is off, our bodies will feel off. It’s so hard, because arguably for all of us we carry a physical and spiritual lineage of data…of what is safe versus dangerous. I carry what my maternal great-grandfather experienced when he was here on Turtle Island when the railroads were being built. I carry what my paternal grandmother experienced under my abusive grandfather in HK. I carry so many stories that are unsaid that it both haunts me and gives me unexplainable strength. So as I’m figuring out how to live with integrity while also finding some equilibrium in my body, sometimes I feel lost. Intellectually, I know all the things…how important it is to take care of myself and to witness and grieve…and my body feels wobbly. Compared to a year ago, I have come really far in finding stability mentally and emotionally. And I never want to take that for granted. AND there are days like today when I’m bleeding heavily, I’m feeling tired, and my body feels shaky. This round I feel like crawling into my bed and not wanting to experience anything novel for a bit. I came across this tiktok of the late Andrea Gibson reciting a few things on their bucket list: To see through the lens of my spirit, and not the bruised and clouded eyes of my wounds.To wear my heart on my sleeve, and never grow out of that shirt.To be what Mary Oliver called a bride married to amazement, and to not file for divorce from amazement when my life is hard.To know exactly what parts of me are comforted by other people’s approval and comfort those parts myself instead.To know shame can’t live in the light, and let the light fall wherever I am hiding.To reckon with my trauma until it is a poem no longer written in blood.To love my body as if it were my soul’s silhouette.To break the vows I have made to my suffering.To interrupt my judgments, criticisms, blames knowing they are almost always trying to distract me from my own pain.To be guided by giving instead of getting.To live in a bungalow of kindness.To know every leaf, every river, every sunrise is a child saying, “Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!”To live like I’m kissing the universe on her temple. That feels like the novelty I want to embody more. There’s a sense of awe that is woven into the most profoundly simple things. There is novelty in the bravery it takes to truly meet myself. There is novelty in being soft enough to receive kindness. There is novelty in having my arms open for the possibility of deeper love. Capitalism has instilled in our collective intuition that the easiest way to satisfy our novelty craving is to spend money. And oh baby am I sucker for retail therapy. The hit of buying things after a breakup feels healing lol! But the truth is…that kind of novelty is so cheap. A vacation, a fun night out, a splurge isn’t wrong. But the question is: have we been intentional in carving out feelings of novelty? That helps us heal from capitalism. To help us be reminded we have agency. To give ourselves the jolt of excitement of what is possible. To provide the relief that we aren’t stuck. (an image of a very cute wholesome breakfast spread from pinterest.) I want to find novelty in having a slow abundant breakfast with coffee with my honey. Even if it’s every sunday morning. (a gif of baby peter rabbit being tucked into bed by his mama after a sip of something warm.) When it comes to finding safety in the familiar, we all need a base of predictability to feel safe in our bodies. When we can find patterns, it’s easier to know how to move. Even if the predictable is somewhat harmful, our systems eventually adapt. Like how our attraction could be based on undesirable traits of our parents, because it feels familiar and predictable (even if the behavior is toxic). In this corner, surprises are a big no-no. Trauma is something that happens too fast and too big for our bodies to process and digest. It is a shock, a surprise, an unconsensual experience. It makes sense that sometimes we want to crawl into a hole and close off our senses. Everything feels like too much. Where it goes wrong is when we accept that our window of tolerance is small…and don’t try to expand it with patience. It goes wrong when feeling safe all the time becomes the goal. For white people, I see this way too often, and it’s infuriating. Keeping their peace becomes very very dangerous for Black and Brown people. And any attempt to call out or in…white people’s tears, anger, guilt becomes the center. Their dysregulation becomes the center. It’s exhausting. How we interpret our body’s signal for danger is KEEYYY! People like saying (aka I like saying) things like “trust your body” or “trust your intuition.” And truuuee our bodies do have alot of wisdom and we do have valuable intuition, but ONLY if we interpret the sensations accurately. Most of the time, our feelings of threat aren’t us physically being in danger. They probably come from the fear of betrayal, feeling shame, being isolated, or playing on a worst possible scenario, forgetting that there are a thousand steps for that to happen. And a tiny percentage of the time, our feeling of danger is right on. Because I have a history of being serially cheated on, my partner could turn around to walk to the kitchen and my spidey senses would go up. And see it as a “sign.” My brain is so good at coming up with scenarios and predicting the future from one trigger. So then my wiser brain needs to turn on, and talk to my lizard brain…an
