It’s smokin’ hot outside. End of August, usually cooling down by now, a bit. The Amazon is burning. On August 18th Iceland held a funeral for Okjökull glacier, its first to disappear due to climate change. It’s hot outside but not as hot as next summer or the one after that.
And yet, life continues. The stock market makes the news. Presidential hopefuls discuss health care, taxes, tariffs, and sometimes the climate. Babies are born. Kids start school. We drive and eat and cook and camp and make things and go to work because, what else can we do?
The iceberg had been hit but we are all still on the boat and so the band plays on.
I planted a garden in the spring and, besides watering daily, proceeded to mostly ignore it. And yet, it grew. Chard, kale, tomatoes, basil, beets, and carrots. So forgiving.
How to stay engaged when it is all so big, so staggeringly big and important? What to do when it seems there’s nothing to be done? Small choices. Unplug your plugs. No more beef. Grow veggies. Hang laundry to dry. Use a ceiling fan. Ban plastic.
Lately I spend more time with young children and their parents than ever in the past. They have an optimism, out of necessity, that I latch on and cling to. No time for cynicism.
Keep going. Nature has a way of balancing and renewing. In this case I don’t know what that will look like but, don’t give up!
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I have to say, at least I still make myself laugh! Like that time I moved to LA in large part because I saw 40 approaching and was totally freaked out that it would arrive to find me in the same house, city, and career I’d been in since my mid twenties. Or that time I moved back from LA into that same house, city, and career and breathed a sigh of relief that they were all still there, two years later, patiently waiting for me to realize that none of those outward things had anything to do with inner peace, contentment, or joy.
I was recently granted one of those rare opportunities to step back into the past for just long enough to see how much everything has changed. As Zora Neale Hurston wrote in her book Their Eyes Were Watching God, “there are years that ask questions and years that answer,” and, after so many spent in the question phase, it is a relief to feel and see answers popping up all over my life.
I am currently in the midst of that classic first Monday in January activity…sorting last year’s receipts. In a strange trip down memory lane, my desk is covered with piles of small white pieces of paper which recount all of the groceries, car repairs, restaurant meals, home improvements, dates, shopping trips, hairstyles, and donations made in 2018. Looking at the piles, as I tally up totals, I can’t help but realize how much of the money was spent out of a desire for connection rather than for whatever it was I was purchasing.
Another year almost complete, cookies everywhere I look, twinkle lights, car accidents within feet of each other near the mall, the frenzy is upon us! How to stay present, sane, and joyful in the midst of traffic, lines, and expectations (most often self imposed)? It’s time to practice all that we’ve begun throughout the year, returning to morning routines, meditation, slowing down to breath and to laugh. And making lists helps too.
smagik 