I’ve been thinking about the term “conservation” quite often these days. It bounces aimlessly around the corners of my mind like the “DVD” logo on an ancient, pre-2012 television.

“Conservation,” as in given the leaders that stand at the helm of the world, is it futile to leave no trace? To fight the urge to shove every wildflower I see into my purse; to not uproot every decades-old tree I spot and hide them away in my closet? “Conservation,” as in questioning why I am saving my youth, dispensing it out in careful doses when, in reality, there may be no world worth being a young person in? “Conservation,” as in worrying over too many precious items– the oceans, my pink Barbie slippers from when I was four years old that I was hoping to pass down, the lives of near-extinct animals?

Joan Didion writes the following in her novel Blue Nights:

“When we lose that sense of possible, we lose it fast. One day we are absorbed by dressing well, following the news, keeping up, coping, what we might call staying alive; the next day we are not.”

I finished reading this book three nights ago, and it too has joined the collection of items bouncing aimlessly from corner to corner of my mind. 

Not unexpectedly, a number of questions follow. Am I losing my sense of possible? How do I know if I have really and truly lost it? Are we as a collective losing our sense of possible in a world where influencers are promoting anti-aging serums one scroll after politicians– no, oligarchs– honoring Nazis? If I have lost my sense of possible, is anything I do really worth doing? Do I have any worth? 

I have two primary modalities with which I combat this existential spiral. One is to consult science– to return to what I know to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt. A fundamental principle of physics– and therefore, the natural universe– is the Law of Conservation of Energy. Within a system, energy is neither created or destroyed. It is only transformed. 

A ball hits a window. The window shatters. The energy of the ball is transferred to the glass. The glass shatters. A man orders immigration raids on people who look “different.” The community shatters. The energy of his hate is transferred to every individual. Does the tenacity, the resolve, the willpower of the individual shatter?

Perhaps that is how one knows if they have really and truly lost their sense of possible: when one looks at a broken window, and thinks “same.”

My second modality of combatting the existential spiral is to take refuge in the arts, as millions of humans have done before me, and millions of humans do along with me. I must say, dear Reader, that this is something that I am having a bit of trouble with at the present moment, and the primary reason for authoring this entry. 

If my body and my brain are consumed with the thoughts of impending doom, then where is my art supposed to come from? Where in my body is the space that creativity is supposed to flow from? For myriad reasons, I cannot seem to locate it, just as I cannot seem to firmly grasp my sense of possible. I know it exists in the vast somewhere– perhaps lodged in the spaces between my ribs– but I cannot feel it.

I am lonely existing in a space filled only by echoes. 

I am lonelier without my sense of possible, wherever she may be.

Is there something wrong with me?

I can only imagine the messages I will get if this entry ends up in the hands of individuals who do not share these particular opinions– most probably, that I should return to speaking about anatomy and leave behind these complaints. There is a significant part of me that agrees with this hypothetical critic. In keeping with this spirit, let us return to the body (some may argue that we never left this topic)!

How Do We Make Space in the Body? 

“Making Space in the Body” is one of my favorite phrases to consider. I imagine reorganizing a full, bursting refrigerator to accommodate the Chinese takeout leftovers from the night before. I imagine methodically taking out every organ until I am left with a skeleton, examining each one carefully before stacking them cleanly inside their bony frame. I imagine taking a marker and drawing a big, red X to mark the spot where that space lives. 

I feel the need to state for the record that you should not attempt to remove your organs. At least, not without consulting a doctor. 

From the months of February 2023 to November 2023, I became very depressed. Through this time, I danced sparingly, and only when I deemed “necessary.” Because of my abject lack of movement, my body changed in ways that horrified me. I physically felt the loss of space within my body. It seems counterintuitive, as one might expect the expansion of the body to correlate with the expansion of “space.” This wasn’t the case. Instead, I was filled with the by-products of my horror, overflowing with red-hot anger that was really just an ocean of unending sadness. And when that vast ocean finally overflowed– somewhere around the New Year– spilling out past the frame of my skeleton, I was able to see it for what it was.

Dear Reader, I will not tell you what it was that I saw. But I will tell you what I felt: a heart-shaped cavern right in the middle of my stomach. It was space. But it was space without joy. Space without joy is not a space from which creation can emerge from. It needs a glimmer of light, dangling in front of its nose like a carrot, to crawl out of whatever darkness it is enshrined in. 

What I will say now is not an original thought. It is, however, and was, an original experience.

Joy is resistance. Finding it intrinsically, cultivating it, making space for it in the body is an act of resistance. 

I realized then that the easiest way for me to find where joy was hidden inside my body was through exercise. I began practicing yoga and going for long walks, interspersing these habits with weight training, running, and pilates. As my body began to feel like “mine” again, I found that it responded to what I wanted it to do. If it was running multiple miles, it would do it. If it was hours of footwork practice, my body obliged where it would have once refused. In this way, I regained the control I had lost. Somewhere along the way, it became easier to recognize pockets of joy I had hidden inside myself. 

As I consider Joan Didion’s writing on the “sense of possible” now, I feel that it is perhaps synonymous– to some extent– with joy. When we lose our perception of joy, we certainly lose it expeditiously. It is the peskiest of senses because of its elusive nature. 

Perhaps joy, much like the Law of Conservation of Energy states, cannot be created or destroyed. It simply lives within us from the moment we are born, hiding until we have the strength to pluck it out and hold it to the light. Perhaps it is only transformed into something we cannot recognize until we regain the control to say: “I see you. And I love you.”

Joy is not contentment, nor is it happiness. Quite frankly, I am not sure if I am qualified to tell you what exactly it is. But as I understand it: Joy is the impetus of creation. 

It is for this reason that we must make space in the body for it to exist. Those spirals of existential questioning must be siphoned out– at least, in part. And you must follow whatever practice you need to follow in order to drain your body of that which suffocates you from the inside out. Only when you are empty can you see what hides. Chances are, it’s joy waiting to be found.