Fascination

The side street I wondered off on while exploring joy.

“People fascinate me.”

I nodded in agreement, a plastic smile painted on my face. I worked hard to keep my features neutral, avoiding the urge to scrunch up my nose, dip my head, look out over my glasses, and release my natural cynicism. I might have succeeded publicly, but in my head, an internal monologue of questions pinged my frontal lobe.

Do they? Do they reeeeeaaaally? Why? And what, exactly, about them fascinates you? What is fascination anyway? And why didn’t I get a second glass of wine?

It’s a grumpy pants reaction because the statement is an adage that I just can’t quite believe. Or, at least, when it’s applied globally, the insinuation that all people fascinate this one woman. I mean, Maya Angelou fascinates me. In college, I had the privilege of watching her deliver a masterpiece of a soliloquy and then helped physically escort her off stage because she was utterly exhausted. My skin tingled from her touch, and I stood mesmerized long after her physical presence left the room. So I can attest that some people fascinate me. But my crazy neighbor lady? The barista who can’t spell “Jess” correctly? That asshat that cheated on my best friend? Come on…

THIS fascinates me…People? Not so much.

And yet, the less and less I understand the country I live in and the rhetoric of its leaders, the more and more I’ve become curious about the thoughts, feelings, and personhood of those around me. What do they think? How has this America affected their life? Why do they hate their jobs? What would they do instead? What would they say to someone who was, for example, fascinated by them?

I’ve had more inconvenient conversations in the past six months than maybe ever in my adult life. Inconvenient in that they are the conversations I would typically avoid because I am racing off to somewhere else, something else. The conversations that reveal, clarify, and create connection. I love those conversations, crave them in fact, but historically, I have rarely invested the time, breath, or the trust required to have them. These days, I find myself elevating the import of those conversations above my “should” list. They seem…necessary, an invitation to feel something other than despair or anxiety. They offer a tether to humanity, a connection born of the shared vulnerability of our stories and the relief at being able to release them.

Boxing out space in my life for human connection has become the antidote to my worrying. I’m nothing if not selfish with my time and attention, and I typically guard it carefully for those I am closest to. But since those I am closest to typically agree with me on politics, money, sex, menopause, homeschooling, LGBTQ+ rights, and almost every other potentially controversial topic, this practice runs the risk of keeping my world small, and my mind stagnant.

I want to be fascinated. To my own ears, even saying the word, “fascinated”, it sounds like bullshit. Kinda the way I used to hear the word “joy.” Context is important, of course. I mean, I’ll give “fascinating” to the Northern Lights, maybe. The top of Everest, okay sure. But people are more apt to piss me off or perform predictably than to elicit some nebulous reaction that I associate with the world’s greatest wonders.

But, lately, I don’t know. If “to fascinate” actually means to stay with you, to make you think, to alter your perspective, to incite wonder, to make you feel alive, it’s possible that I could be wrong about the bullshittery of the word.

What if, like joy, fascination is not another term for toxic positivity after all, but something more simple, more fundamental? A microexpansion of the brain, the heart, the lungs, the crevices between the organs, and the crooks between the toes. Spaces that, however small, stay once they are shaped. I’m not even sure that it’s the spaces themselves that are so fascinating but what can happen when there is space.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I’ve been trying to figure out what in the fuck to do with this Substack. I’m not sure it’s possible to exhaust an exploration of joy, but I’m finding fewer and fewer crevices we haven’t explored. And when I look at where my energy is these days, when I’m not in an anxiety spiral over the world or attempting to unspiral the anxiety of my kid, I’m reaching for these spaces, a never ending game of Person, Place, or Thing with fascination.

So, since this is my Substack, and I’m the judge, jury, and executioner, we’re going to move to an “and/both” format. I can’t abandon joy, but I believe any time you get serious about exploration, you’re bound to wander off in a direction you didn’t expect and couldn’t foresee. I certainly couldn’t have predicted that I would become fascinated by people, and yet, here we are.

I don’t know how this is going to go. I’m nervous, to be transparent, which is why you’re getting all this lead up. I’m also committed to letting it come, to develop as it does, to show up in pieces until it becomes its own whole. So, I’m taking steps behind closed doors to capture the fascination. To talk to people whose words make me wonder, and then actually ask those questions. The ones that ping my frontal lobe, even if they are cynical.

What am I finding?

Fascination isn’t nearly as loud as I wanted it to be. In fact, when I feel the tickle that tells me its near, I do not whip out my phone to take a selfie or jump in excitement or squeal. Not that I would ever do that for anything, squeal, that is. I find the opposite, actually. I get quiet. I want to listen harder, think more, talk less. The fascination builds because what I am hearing does not sound like my own thoughts, and so I must focus far more acutely on what is being said. When the conversation is over, I can feel the small spaces it has created, and that feels like fascination.

I want to share all of this with you. And I will.

But first…

Let’s play a little game. Person, Place, or Thing, what is your most recent experience with being fascinated?

I’m so curious! And I can’t read your mind, so drop a comment below so I can share the space with you.