On Despair and Spiraling Forward
It is Rarely a Straight Line
It was while we were playing a game, the silliest game, wherein a person leaves the room, and we decide what they do (collectively), and then they return, and then they must decipher what we chose for them to do - via claps and silence -
It was while we were playing a game, there in the deep snow and ice and woods, surrounded by kind and loving humans, laughing belly-deep,
That my friend turned to me - my friend I’ve known for a decade now, snuggled together on a big and cozy chair - turned to me and she said,
I think this is how we get through the next four years.
I let that land in me. It really did. I snuggled closer. I turned back. I replied,
I think this is how we get through anything.
How often I want to give you comfort, or hope, or some respite from this world, when I myself am filled with a fearful quaking. Of course - it has been a hard week. World wise, there is, in this country, a simmering despair. Despotism and pain and cruelty mind-boggling. Of course.
But I just went on a walk, did you know that? No, no, you didn’t (I assume). I just went on a walk, and I saw a parent cradling their smiling child. I saw other children, running. I saw the red of a nearby apartment and marveled at its hue. I went to visit the willow tree in my neighborhood of which I am so fond - and I said hello. I said hello.
So - there are also - those things.
I spend a lot of time, lately, thinking about deep time, and its implications for this present moment. I spend a lot of time thinking about the cycles of this world, and my ancestors (and yours), who have been through - so much. I think about the relieving impassivity of nature, and the forces that spiral through it. I think about spirals, and how healing is such, and we assume it’ll be a straight line or a path forward - but it’s not always.
I find comfort in life continuing. I find comfort in teachers who remind me: Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Prentis Hemphill, many, mryiad others. I find comfort in others.
Always, we return to that: find the others.
I call my senators. Is it a drop in the bucket? Maybe. But it’s something. It’s something.
I return to art. I return to heart. I return to friends, laughing on a couch, and how beautiful that is. How beautiful that is.
How beautiful - that is.
I’m not going to tell you not to despair; I’m not sure I have that power. Plus, despair is just a emotion like all the rest. Maybe even that, we let in.
But I am going to tell you to remember. To remember this earth in all its wide, wild, long, vast geology and time and history. To remember that there is so much we don’t know - that is an enormous mystery. To remember to witness nature and let her touch you, heal you, fill you. To remember to go to your people - go to your people. Let that be the miracle it has always been.
To remember, too, joy. I took a photo, yesterday, of light amidst the winter:
In the park, in Morningside Park. Because it’s there - it’s always there. I don’t know how - there are deep and dark times, things that hurt, terrors.
But there is always something. Even if that something is a single bird call, or just the knowledge that I, and you, and all of us, were incarnated on this earth, at this time, in this moment -
And that is some strange miracle indeed.
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