What If?

*Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 03.03.2021

Life is hard.The recognition that there are 7 billion little specks currently on earth , all caught up in their own stories, all the center of their own universes - that’s overwhelming. Why? Why all these specks? How did this scenario get to be and how will it play out? Where were those specks before they were here and where do they go when they leave? There are serendipitous moments that make me wonder if there is some master figure at the controls but the scenario is also so unfathomably large, the possibilities seemingly endless, that connections seem impossible. How could such a system be orchestrated?

I go about my days, often getting sidetracked by questions about life. I also know that I can be lead astray from those Big Questions by the daily drama. Relationships among humans are complex and the theater of everyday living can provide unintended distractions from wonder and awe. I know that attending to the everyday messes and stories allows me to turn away from the unknowable questions. It allows me to not absorb all that is unknowable. I silently (and sometimes not so silently) bemoan how hard life is. I know I need to look at the positives but that was easier and more natural when youth was on my side. It seems now as if the positives diminish and the challenges increase every year.

Sometimes I am convinced that I am not strong enough, that I am not able to withstand the collected tsunami of disappointment and sadness that is life. Some people are made to stand up to that but I think I was made to cave to it. The funny thing is that if I truly caved to it, I might more easily survive.

It feels like everyone around me tells me (essentially, although not in such direct language) to shut the fuck up. They urge me to adopt the current American way of being positive. They tell me that I should say all those positive things that make people forget (or ignore) the reality that life is hard. Look to the good, they say. Look to all you have been given, they say. Look to your “blessings”, they say. Those are all important things to know and say but there is also legitimacy in the very real truth that life is hard. Don’t ignore that.

Someone who matters to me suggested the other day that I do a short exercise to consider the difference between needing to know the answers to the Big Questions (standing up to the tsunami) vs not needing to know the answers (caving to the tsunami). First, imagine how it feels to have to know the answers. I don’t have to imagine that. I know how it feels. It is tight, intense, frustrating, a body folded into the smallest amount of space possible in order to protect itself from the onslaught of all that is oppressive and evil in the world. It is a body designed to survive a tsunami by being pure strength. What if you change that around and you decided to trust that the answers were all good and forthcoming? What if you opened your face to the tsunami, seeing the blue, the glitter on the water’s surface? What if you fully expanded your body, flattened yourself out under the sun and the moon and the stars and caught the wave? What if you rode the wave with exhilaration and curiosity, instead of being as tiny and small as you can be? What if?