Jed Wolf

Cowardice and carelessness once shaped my nature like a sculptor’s hasty hands, leaving rough edges where definition might have been. I let fear whittle away at possibility until withdrawal became my art form. But sometimes, retreat opens unexpected doors.

Since the election, I’ve been detoxifying from years of political addiction. Though I won’t avoid news completely in the future, I’ve vowed to stop staring at it. For now, each morning without it feels like stepping from a smoke-filled room into clean air. No longer allowing myself to be baited by inflammatory headlines or trapped in endless cycles of outrage, I’ve found refuge in an unexpected place: the expired copyrights section of Audible, where classic novels wait like patient teachers offering timeless wisdom.

Ironically, it was our new… president who drove me here, though not in the way Republicans might have intended. Their victory didn’t crush my spirit – it freed it. In my self-imposed exile from current affairs, I’ve discovered a different kind of citizenship in the republic of literature. Blind in one eye and uncomfortable with printed pages, I let audiobooks guide me through new territories of thought.

Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” found me the day after the election, its free-with-membership status a small mercy in these costly times. As I tended my subtropical garden, her frosty tale of creation and abandonment wound through my headphones like winter wind through Alpine valleys. Her words scattered insights across my consciousness like frost across a window, revealing patterns I’d been too close to see.

Shelley’s genius lies in making monsters of us all. Or perhaps it’s just me, recognizing in Victor Frankenstein’s obsessive ambition my own desperate need to create something meaningful from the raw materials of trauma. The novel’s florid nineteenth-century language, far from being a barrier, serves as a clarifying lens for examining our present moment. Through it, I see how we’ve all become Dr. Frankenstein, cobbling together ideological creatures from dead ideas, then recoiling in horror when they lurch toward us demanding love.

After eight hours immersed in Shelley’s world, I’ve learned to suspect unspeakable horrors behind every political bush, yet her message cautions against the reflexive urge to destroy what frightens us. Every monster we create and demonize – every political movement, every social media mob, every demonized opposition – deserves the consideration we’d want for our own abandoned creations.

When friends share nuggets of current events, I no longer engage in ritual denunciation. Instead, I listen with the same attention I give to Shelley’s creature pleading its case on the Arctic ice. What wounds drove this creation? What rejection turned it hostile? What humanity persists beneath its frightening exterior?

This isn’t the cowardice that once constrained me. It’s a different kind of courage: the willingness to step back, to listen, to seek understanding rather than victory. In my garden, surrounded by growing things and guided by long-dead voices, I’m learning that withdrawal needn’t mean surrender. Sometimes it means making space for wisdom to take root.

Where once I might have been ashamed of retreating from the political arena, I now recognize that every monster needs its wilderness. Every creator needs time to reflect on what they’ve wrought. In this voluntary exile, I’m not hiding from our collective creations – I’m learning to see them, and myself, more clearly through the lens of literature’s enduring truths.

The phantasmagoria of my true nature may still frighten those who demand constant engagement with the news cycle’s latest horrors. But in this space between withdrawal and witness, between past wisdom and present chaos, I’m finally becoming what cowardice and carelessness once prevented: a thoughtful observer of our monstrous times, finding humanity in the creatures we create, and courage in the choice to look away from spectacle and toward understanding.