I’ve known that Gen Z is magic for a long time. Before yesterday, I could have told you that Gen Z has wisdom, brilliance, playfulness, and a commitment to envision and enact a better world. I could have said any of that.
But as of yesterday afternoon, I learned that Gen Z is magic in ways that are comedically precise.
When I was a kid, my friends and I used to play the game, “Guess Who?” Maybe you’ll also remember it from your childhood or from when your own kids were young. You each have a board and you have to ask questions to discover which card — i.e. which person — the other player has.
The Board Game, “Guess Who?”
We would ask things like, “Does your person have a mustache?” or “Is your person wearing a hat?”
Yesterday, I watched two of my most beloved Gen Z-ers play this game with questions like this:
“Does your person run a nonprofit?”
“Would your person get high at a natural history museum?”
“Is your person a member of the AARP?”
“Would you say your person isn’t in therapy right now, but is generally supportive of it?”
And they got the right answers again, and again, and again! How did they do that?
A bright, red strawberry, lying on the ground. Public domain image.
Happy New Year!
I don’t love to begin a new year with a post about mice and my house, but… I’ve had some. Yes, some, i.e. more than one. I suppose it’s not uncommon for them to group together like that, though I had no idea about multiples until I put out a live trap and caught two at once.
I’ve become a Mouse Uber. Now I don’t want you to think my house is just utterly infested or something. It’s not. But over the last few weeks, I’ve put that live trap in the car and taken a couple of trips to release mice at the park.
Mice have personalities, just like we do. A few weeks ago, when I opened the trap for these two, one of them stayed inside for such a long time. This mouse was checking out the scene, getting a sense of the open air and looking about in order to observe the features of its future park home. But another mouse BOLTED as soon as I opened the trap, and it super startled me.
A few days ago, I had the live trap out again (just in case, you know). I checked in the morning. While closed, I looked inside the holes to find no mouse. “Oh, good,” I thought. Just to be sure, I shook the trap gently, in case a mouse might have been in the corner out of view.
And then I saw it. There was an outline of a mouse. Time to go to the park again.
There is no money in being a Mouse Uber, by the way. But there I was, talking gently to a mouse as I drove down the street. “How long are you in town?” (Just kidding, I didn’t ask that, but I did say a few comforting things to that mouse).
Once I arrived in my destination, I pulled out the trap and put it on the ground, and because of that previously-bolted mouse, I was really scared to open the lid. I kept doing it just a little at a time. Eek! Ack! At one point, I looked down and could see enough inside.
I saw a mouse, staring up at me. I remember seeing its eyes.
“Hi there, buddy.” Eventually, I opened the trap enough and backed away in fear.
And… It was a strawberry.
Y’all, I took the bait to the park. I Ubered it down the street, talked to it gently, spent time flitting about in fear, and IT WAS A STRAWBERRY.
So funny. So sweet. (Also, literally).
We humans are pattern-seeking and pattern-making beings. Our brains do that for us. We often make meaning in this way, and we use this process to protect ourselves. Of course, this can create its own problems, too. We also often project patterns from previous experiences onto new situations and see our own fears. This is true when an outline of a strawberry looks like a mouse (I could have sworn it LOOKED up at me), or when we project our stress or trauma history onto new situations and people around us. We assume that people will feel, believe, or act in certain ways because of us. We expect situations to turn out in specific ways. We cast narratives, crafted inwardly but projected outwardly, toward circumstances that might not even be true.
We can be kind to ourselves about this (like a gentle Mouse Uber driver). Our brain is trying to protect us. But this pattern-making process can be limiting as well.
So we can pay attention, allow new narratives to form, and be open to experiences that expand us.
As we near the end of the year, I want to thank you once more for following Smuggling Grace. Thank you for connecting with content here and also sharing your own thoughts and reflections in comments. It means a great deal to me, and I have great gratitude for your presence.
I enjoy creating content here. I also hope to cull and curate content as well. So in 2024, posts will move in these directions:
— On Sundays, I will continue share nature photography. Alongside it, I want to extend an invitation for all of us to slow down and notice the beauty around us, wherever we live or travel.
— On Mondays, I will share content with a mental health focus. Over the last few years, I have done a deep dive into learning about trauma, healing through mind/body connections, attachment styles in relationships, family systems theory, mindfulness, and the power of social connections to ease isolation, depression, anxiety, and more. Alongside my own thoughts, I want to share resources. I will share videos, links, and quotes that may be helpful.
— On Tuesdays through Fridays, I will share my own written reflections, continuing to notice moments of meaning, beauty, and delight in daily life. After all, this blog is about smuggling such moments to our awareness and letting them impact us.
— On Saturdays, I will share an invitation to learn what I will call — for lack of a better term — neato curiosities. I’ll share my best smatterings of learning through podcast episodes, books, YouTube videos, and you name it. These are basically opportunities to share what has captured my interest, and I’ll invite you along with me.
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Two delicious coffees
If you’d like to support or amplify connections to this space, there are also a number of ways to do that:
— Subscribe: Do you know someone who might enjoy reading and learning with us? Feel free to pass along the link, and you can invite them to subscribe. You can also share to social media any posts that have been especially meaningful or intriguing to you.
— Patreon: Would you like to support Smuggling Grace on Patreon? If so, you can do that for as little as $2 or $5 per month. I will be sharing exclusive content to Patreon supporters as well in 2024. I use these monthly funds to build connections and provide support to neighbors in my town through shared meals and coffee. Thank you for helping me do that. If you want to become a Patreon supporter, you can visit Patreon here.
— Coffee Gratitude: Would you like to offer a tip? If these posts have been meaningful to you in 2023, and you’d like to help me provide shared meals and coffee with local neighbors and friends (see above) you can also give in a one-time way: Help Renee Share the Coffee Love
And your presence is a gift — Thank you! —Renee Roederer
The word ‘lan-guage’ as an entry in a dictionary. Public domain image.
One of the most transformative and empowering acts of care we can offer is an invitation to tell a story. When people can put their experiences into words, they connect meaningfully with others, and perhaps most significantly, they make meaning of their own lives. People remember who they are and become crafters of narratives that convey some of their most significant experiences.
Trauma researchers have written a great deal about this; healing often comes with the ability to share narratives and make meaning out of challenging experiences. We never want to inquire about trauma experiences in intrusive ways, but when people begin to open up, and we sense that they want to share, an invitation of, “Would you like to tell me more about that?” can be remarkably transformative.
Likewise, invitations to share stories of positive experiences can be just as transformative, especially when people are feeling down, sad, confused, or burned out. At the right time — and it is important for it to be at the right time — have you ever asked someone to share about their own resilience? Or about a moment when they felt joy? Or about a time when they felt really engaged and alive in what they are doing?
As we share, these positive memories of the past become present, physiologically speaking. These stories flow through people’s bodies as they tell them, and the act telling them changes how their bodies are feeling in that moment.
One of the most transformative and empowering acts of care we can offer is an invitation to tell a story.
The cover of, “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption”
It takes courage to see what is purposefully held out of view.
In addition to making targets out of particular human beings, abusive, unjust systems have ways of keeping that harm out of view. Very often, the broader community is kept from knowing that harm, either because it is held in secret, or because it is removed quite purposefully from the rhythms of their daily lives.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to hear Bryan Stevenson speak. He’s the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justiceand Redemption. His book is difficult, powerful, beautiful, and challenging at once. As I read this, I recognize how much I am not seeing. And I know I do not look often enough or advocate enough.
I would like to share some quotes from this book today. These are found on pages 15-16:
“When I first went to death row in December 1983, America was in the early stages of a radical transformation that would turn us into an unprecedentedly harsh and punitive nation and result in mass imprisonment that has no historical parallel. Today we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world. The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today. There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.”
“Some states have no minimum age for prosecuting children as adults; we’ve sent a quarter million kids to adult jails and prisons to serve long prison terms, some under the age of twelve. For years, we’ve been the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole; nearly three thousand juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison.”
“We have declared a costly war on people with substance abuse problems. There are more than a half-million people in state or federal prisons for drug offenses today, up from just 41,000 in 1980.”
“Finally, we spend lots of money. Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today. Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to create new crimes, impose harsher sentences, and keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety, reduce the costs of mass incarceration, and most significantly, promote rehabilitation of the incarcerated. State governments have been forced to shift funds from public services, education, health, and welfare to pay for incarceration, and they now face unprecedented economic crises as a result. The privatization of prison health care, prison commerce, and a range of services has made mass incarceration a money-making windfall for a few and a costly nightmare for the rest of us.”
Of course, we can say that it takes courage to see what is purposefully held out of view, but the greatest courage is found among those who are directly impacted and those who are pushing for criminal justice reform.
What is being kept from view among us? Can we see it? Can we see the human beings impacted by it? Can we welcome this vulnerability? Can we make ourselves vulnerable to change?
When I was 9, I heard about a white elephant gift exchange for the first time. My friend’s Mom was having one. I no longer believed in Santa, but for about two weeks of my life, I sincerely believed my friend was about to receive a small, white elephant as a pet.
And because I was over there all the time, I was about to receive a small, white elephant as a pet.
I was so very excited. And sadly… disappointed.
I still enjoy white elephant gift exchanges, but this one had the cutest expectations.
To all who celebrate, Merry Christmas! You are all loved and cherished. In light of this holiday, I thought I’d share this Christmas poem that I wrote several years ago. Have a great day and a good week as we finish 2023. — Renee
Smuggling Grace 