With What Are You Resonating?

Red Rocks Park // Morrison, Colorado

Sometimes when I’m scanning the news headlines, I actually feel myself sinking into despair. Which is why I’m reading the news less these days. Not to bury my head in the sand, but in a careful attempt to take care of my mental health. Too often, I find reading the news quickly spirals me into helplessness, because I feel I have no ability to positively impact the world in which I live.

Which is why I was intrigued to recently read a profile about a very unique experimental school called Deep Springs College in California. There are only twenty-six students at this two-year liberal arts college, and the entire college experience on a working cattle ranch is completely free. The students are essentially self-governed and self-managed: they prepare the food, they clean the property, they work as volunteer firefighters and they serve on the board of trustees. They do it all.

The students there experience a very high degreee of resonance - a concept that seems important and timely for all of us. Resonance has four related meanings:

• In physics, resonance happens when system vibrates most strongly at a particular frequency. The input matches the system’s natural frequency.

• In music, resonance refers to the richness or amplification of tone.

• In psychology, resonance describes something that “rings true” and connects.

• In communication, resonance describes emotional attunement and mutual understanding.

The common pattern is a strong response and amplification that happens when something is in sync with something else. Resonance happens when we experience ourselves as part of and connected to, a larger system beyond ourselves. We can connect with people, or our environment, or ideas. I resonate when my body and mind are attuned to and connected with something beyond myself.

Which is why I think Deep Springs College is onto something important in these uncertain times. The students living there are strongly interconnected; they are part of a collective community and their actions have an immediate impact on each other. As one student explained, “We all, technically, legally own this place.” That sense of responsibility is incredibly empowering.

On the complete oppositive extreme, the rest of us can live happily independent from each other, having our groceries, meals, and household supplies delivered right to our front door, any time of day. We can mostly exist without any messy and complicated interdependencies, without being in sync with anyone else. In the same online profile, Deep Springs is constrasted with other college campuses, where students frequently take their meals to their dorm rooms and then dispose of everything, including ceramic dishes and silverware, in the trash can. Because it’s easier for them to throw it all away than to walk back over to the dining hall to return them. Those students are completely disconnected from their environment and feel no obligation to each other or to their university.

I suspect this widespread lack of resonance is a large factor in our mental health crisis. As humans, we are wired for connection, we are designed to live within a tribe, where what we say and do matters within the larger system. Our bodies and minds function best when we experience resonance.

Which is why social media has the potential to either help us or harm us. Social media can either help us connect with each other, or leave us feeling alienated and disconnected. It all depends on how we use it.

I’ve been using Instagram for the past three years to post a (mostly) daily photo of anything from my life, no filters. Someone recently expressed amazement that I’d kept up this daily habit for so long and I found myself explaining this feels easy and fun. Because no matter what else is going on in the wider world, I can choose where I direct my attention. I can always decide what I pay attention to — and what I don’t. I want to feel connected to the world in which I’m living, the environment, the wildlife and the people. I want to stay aware and notice everything. Posting a daily picture helps me resonate with this place called earth where I’m living.

Which brings me to my current dilemma. As someone who recently finished a book I intend to publish, I need to figure out how to use social media - as an author. If you listen to any experts, your social media platform matters more today than ever before. So which ones do I want to use, how often, and for what purpose? Which also begs the larger question - why do I even want to write any books at all?

I want to write and publish for resonance - to feel connected with a larger community of readers and writers who value the power of stories to help us live meaningful lives. I’m not writing for fame or glory or money or ego. I’m writing because it’s what I feel compelled to do, to make sense of the world, to metabolize somewhat disparate experiences into coherent stories. Writing helps me feel connected to myself and publishing helps me feel connected with the world.

I don’t want writing or social media to feel like an annoying chore, I want it to feel fun and playful. And I want it to increase my connection with real people. Especially now, while we’re all adjusting to AI, I want to connect with living breathing humans. So here’s my tentative plan:

1. I’ll continue using this substack newsletter to share ideas and research that energize me. With a thematic focus on neurodiversity, creativity and transformation.

2. I’ll continue to post my daily photo on instagram here — and yes, you can keep track of where I am in the world by following those posts.

3. I’ll start using my writer instagram here - to post my visits to libraries and bookstores and book events and to share book reviews and inspiring art.

4. I’m not resonating with LinkedIn or Facebook or TikTok, so I won’t force myself to use those.

5. I’m undecided about YouTube so nothing there for now. And I don’t feel pulled to use BlueSky or Threads.

True confessions - I’m frequently sad and frustrated because I can’t impact the current funding challenges for libraries and I can’t eliminate so many stupid book bans. I can’t do so much I wish I could do and there are so many ways I feel powerless.

But I can highlight the libraries I visit and I can share the books and art I love. I can shine a flashlight of attention on the places and things that inspire me. I can build resonance with the broader community of readers and writers. I can share the energy of all the things I love and I can lean in to social media to build connections with real people.

I think all of us want to feel connected with a larger system where what we do matters. Where how we spend our energy and our time and our money has an impact in the broader world.

I suspect we all want to live in ways where we feel connected and powerful in our own lives. That’s what I want for me and what I want for you. I want resonance and mattering for all of us.

Brand new baby elk // Evergreen Lake // Evergreen, Colorado