Taking stock of the exhaustion of 2024

I did many things in 2024. Perhaps I did more than I should have. Exhaustion arrived in November, and along with it, a certain amount of sadness. Doing things doesn't help heal some of the pains that most people I know carry. They are pains caused by a diffuse, insidious feeling of loss, which sails silently through what we insist on calling success or victory. The pain is behind the posts on social media, which sometimes act as a breath of the oxygen balloon we're all using, sometimes as a microdose of morphine. Something has died; the world we thought we knew is over. It hurts, and it's terrifying. And it will continue to hurt, with or without palliative.

The Covid-19 epidemic is not over. One of its main symptoms is what they are calling mental illness. I've already written somewhere that I don't like the concept of "mental health." I don't like to see the dimension of the pain that manifests itself, for example, in depression, anxiety, and panic disorder, limited to the idea of health or the condition of the mind. I don't think these pains are illnesses. Perhaps they are a path towards the much-needed integration we yearn for, as we are deeply fractured. We need to learn to live in a world full of cracks, and more than that, we need to learn to belong to the abysses we resist. Bayo Akomolafe invites us to experience this: to inhabit the cracks. I'm very interested in this learning process.

Nor do I believe that the pain we are feeling and numbing is only mental. In the search for explanations and security, we cling to the mind, where we gather around recipes, theories assumed to be science, compendiums, pharmacology, titles, and anything else that brings us closer to the validation so longed for by those in power in the universe of white Western knowledge. I'm not sorry to say that this won't heal the wounds of our time. Generalized exhaustion is also the result of an unthinking attachment to the illusory security of this mental and rational universe. In this logic, no rest is enough; deep down, we know it. Proper restoration is of a different order: it involves reconnecting mind, soul, and body. As long as we continue to ignore and deny the dimension of the soul in the search for restoration and physical, moral, mental, and relational integrity, our efforts in search of rest and health will continue to be frustrated.

The path of integration and (re)generation that we need to follow is marked by the inner search, the curious exploration of the inner space of encounter and transformation, and the rediscovery of the dimension of the eternal in each person. It's not necessarily a religious quest - for me, this is a journey with no name or predetermined rite. I've heard many arguments that this is an individualistic path. What a misconception. Yes, it is an individual path and inseparable from collective transformation. The separation of these two universes—personal and collective—is one of the fallacies of the times we have left behind, which do not serve the moment we live in this liminal time.

Among the many things I did in 2024, some appeased me and reaffirmed the legitimacy of my longing for new perspectives. One was Joy Green's course, a systemic futurist who translates many of my concerns beautifully. In weekly meetings, Joy shared her deep conviction with a small group of women from very different backgrounds: that there is no separation. Part of our exercise as students was to excavate ourselves to enunciate our deep convictions and foundations. The beauty of the exercise was realizing that in our deep personal convictions, we are together—the convergence we saw emerge was delightful but not surprising. There is no separation.

In addition to the course with Joy, reading "The Third Unconscious" by Francisco Berardi has been an essential companion in the past year. "Everything needs to be redefined, especially what happens in the intimate space of desire, emotion, and fear," he says. I agree. Exhaustion also needs to be redefined. Perhaps exhaustion is a path to the transformation that needs to happen. I don't want to rest and return refreshed in the second week of January. I want to continue to be exhausted by what exhausts life—in me, my loves, and the planet. I want to continue to tighten the noose and live with the consequences.

The creation of the Toriba Institute is a consequence of this exhaustion and strain. It's hard work, but at the same time, it feeds the creative impulse. The work comes from the fact that I must adapt to models that I consider exhausting to do things differently. One of the paradoxes of the liminal space is that to sustain a new way of doing things, and it is still necessary to adopt an old language that has brought us to the apparent exhaustion of possibilities. Few things teach as much as a paradox. Speaking and listening to the old language tires me out in this learning process. Doing things differently revitalizes me. Realizing that what is announced as new is quickly appropriated and pasteurized by the machine that creates false relevance infuriates me. Expanding the internal space for fury revitalizes me and fills me with creativity. To genuinely create, you need internal space. The trivialization of the discourse on the power of imagination and the creation of futures is underway. But to turn words into worlds, you need internal space and containers to exercise detachment and the courage of ignorance.

That's why I decided to participate in N O R M A L S' speculative design and fiction workshop on Fridays in December, breaking my promise not to accept any new commitments in the last month of the year. There, I could be ignorant and detached from expectations of results. Delightful. I learned that it's necessary to decondition the gaze to create gripping narratives of the future, and to do that, it's essential to let go of certainties and see again for the first time. That's the true meaning of innocence.

I'm excited for 2025.

• The photograph that illustrates this article is from Evgen Bavcar