Omnipresent Violence
Something I'm thinking about ever since hearing the phrase
As far back as I can remember, my best friend Abbie and I have been drawn to certain words and phrases. Words all of a sudden strike us as particularly apt, illustrative, or brilliant.
Abbie and I met when I was fifteen and she was sixteen (we are now 44 and 45 respectively). Those mid-high school years were a time of rapidly increasing vocabulary. Our books and movies were shifting from kid and teen to adult. At the time, sure we could search through a dictionary for looking up things we heard but didn’t yet understand. But mostly, I’m betting we just stayed in wonder, using context clues in order to understand as best we could.
When I phrase or new-to-me-word captures my attention, I try to jot it down on the nearest by paper (for example, back of an envelope or grocery list) or jot it in the notes app of my phone.
Currently, in my 2025 life, I keep one bulletin board above my desk. Pinned to it right now, in the lower right hand corner is a tiny - one inch by one inch - highlighter colored post-it that reads:
“Drifting
between
Requirements”
1.28.24
- Abbie
“Drifting Between Requirements” is a phrase I scribbled down from something Abbie said innocuously during one of our run-of-the-mill catch-up phone conversations. If I recall correctly, it was Abbie’s off-the-cuff response to me asking, “What has life been feeling like lately?”
As soon as I heard her brilliantly evocative phrase, “Drifting Between Requirements,” I reflexively retorted, “That would make a great band name!” And she laughed. Feeling like we are perpetually “drifting between requirements” really captured a feeling and way of surviving, I thought. I jotted it down so I wouldn’t ever forget.
Fast forward to last week. I was in the middle of listening to a podcast while doing something with my hands - probably dishes, and I felt startled by what I had just heard so I pressed pause, rewound, and listened again:
Omnipresent violence…
Omnipresent violence is understandably difficult to grapple with
moment-to-moment and
day-to-day.
“Omnipresent violence” is a direct quote – the rest is the summation of my memory, which I believe captures the context.
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about, feeling about, and wondering about as of late. The awareness of the reality of omnipresent violence.
Violent words, violent actions, violent systems.
And the strange, alive juxtaposition of the co-occurring existence of omnipresent beauty, omnipresent generosity, omnipresent creativity, love, and miracles.
I type into my Chosen Family group chat when I don’t know what else to say about the weirdness and near-unbelievability of our daily unfolding realities, “What a time to be alive!?” It’s what I can muster.
It is a wild thing to know that this is the “safest” time, by all known measures, ever for human beings. And yet we have never before had access to an IV drip of photos, videos, and stories of human suffering.
Scientists, farmers, and innovators have figured out how to make sure we have “enough” (food, housing, vaccines, etc.), and yet the distribution of resources is so wildly out of whack that on a planet ripe with abundance, scarcity and lack still predictably permeate those people and families thrust to the bottom of entirely made up race, religion, gender, and class caste systems.
The global economic system is not currently built towards the common good, it is built towards profit and wealth hoarding (which is fixable, by the way - not easy, but certainly not impossible).
The scale of suffering is incomprehensible. The hope in a shared future that is beautiful, expansive, and globally communal feels almost too vulnerable - emotionally dangerous - to dream about.
I’m going to keep mulling this over. One phrase at a time. “Drifting Between Requirements.” “Omnipresent Violence.” Meditating on the words and their meaning. Praying that whatever ruminating I’m doing can help me contribute to next wise moves – striving to live in closer alignment with our values, thinking expansively about the future of a functioning global economy, and staying curious about how on earth we are going to reconcile this many distinct worldviews.
Lots to ponder. I appreciate you pondering it with me.
What do you think?