strange sister

URSULA K. LE GUIN x RENÉ MAGRITTE

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (1975);

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.