Intellectual Survival

At 41, my “bodymind” is the site of a slow-moving, dizzying hard pivot, not unlike a car taking a drastic turn during a chase or a deep, slow, extended interlude on an electronic dance track. It’s fuzzy, weird, uncomfortable at times. Not unlike our current political moment.

Professionally, I’m at a strange crossroads. As I feel my being morph and change (and for all you men reading — it is really quite drastic. Be prepared to watch your sister/partner/whoever go through midlife), I feel a pull between GO BIG, JENARA! START THAT DAMN PODCAST! and chilllllllll Jenara, enjoy your quiet life. This is it. Keep your head down and write. Travel. Be in your body, and be with your family.

There is also a professional loneliness in what I do. I have always existed between disciplinary lines, and right now is no exception. I find that the political spaces are incredibly noisy and yet the psychology spaces are a bit too “nice.” I lean more toward the psychology side, in no small part because I love analyzing the mind and human behavior, but also, frankly, because the people are friendlier over there.

I’ve been thinking about what I could call some kind of in-between-space…something like IMPRESSION SENSING. There, I coined it.

Impression sensing is processing real world information (like political news and information) but doing so via our emotions, like sensing into our feelings and our bodies to carry out conversations (and possibly debates) to engage and share. I think we all do a bit of this anyway, especially women, but I am thinking about how to do this on a wider scale….hence my podcast wonderings. I guess my question is if there is a big enough audience out there that values the result of such engagement. It’s tough because I feel like people either want hardball politics or they want analytical concepts and self-help. But what the fuck is going on in our world right now and don’t we all need to, like, process the shit out of it? Together?

Would you listen to a podcast where guests from both sides (politics and psych) try to process on an emotional level? And here’s the harder part — DO YOU THINK PEOPLE FROM BOTH FIELDS WOULD AGREE TO HAVE SUCH CONVERSATIONS? I don’t know. Let me know your thoughts.

A reminder that I will be doing some of this virtually with Heterodox Academy this Thursday at 1pm PT (it’s free but you have to register) — and then see below for another event announcement that is IN-PERSON in Mill Valley next Monday June 2nd at 6:30pm (also free but requires registration).

Oh, and the other thing I’m thinking about is expanding this work way out to go global. Many of you know I got my start as a reporter in Asia (and I grew up with all Asians and my husband is Asian and I’m basically Asian — cancel culturerrrs, I’m testing you), and I’m moving back there for a while. As I shared with Lee Fang (you can listen to the recording here), my understanding of the world was drastically impacted by watching Al Jazeera and the BBC everyday while living abroad and sipping chai while reading the international New York Times (formerly the International Herald Tribune). I’m so Asian that the new slogan in my household that I made up is ASIAN SUPREMACY and I am considering that as the name for my podcast. (Did you know there’s a whole chapter on the psychology of humor and neurology of comedy in Trust Your Mind? And that stand-up comedians might save our species? Humor and laughter are realllllly important for lubricating social interactions and creating ease and connection. So LIGHTEN UP, EVERYONE!)

But seriously, when you have spent as much time in Asia as I have over the past two decades, there is zero doubt that the future is largely there or is at least being driven there. (In fact my friend Parag Khanna wrote a whole book called The Future is Asian). I feel it in my bones when I’m in Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, or Nepal. (Singapore is obvious). I want to talk more about these global shifts (because they deeply impact us psychologically), and I hope to do more of that when I’m back over there.

Can I mix all this together? Is the world ready? IS MY BODY READY?

-Jenara