As you know the “theme” of the Tuesday post is transformation, thus it’s the day when I write about all things related to “dramatic” change. Professional, personal, societal, whatever. If it’s moving, it’s fair game.
For me it’s been an extended stretch of time when the continual change is both perpetually palpable and puzzling, and it’s definitely got me a bit off kilter…looking over my shoulder (stiff neck, ouch!)…waiting (with dread) for whatever other shoe to fall, etc. etc. There are more days than not that are downright disorienting, leaving me with only the loosest sense of time or place or space. That’s not to say that there aren’t other days or pockets of time that feel as comfortable as an old pair of slippers/cozy sweatpants/old baseball glove/big bowl full of warm soup. Of course I still have those moments; it’s just that currently I feel those times with far much less frequency than I prefer. And I realize that probably is the very nature of the transformative property of life itself—we don’t get to orchestrate when and how the details unfold or what the details even are) so sometimes the constancy of change is invigorating and exciting while other times it’s the scary monster under the bed…and very rarely in an evenly distributed, keep-the-scales-in-check, 1:1 ratio kind of way. I know, rationally, that this time of imbalance is a fairly standard life cycle. But just because it’s relatively common doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Moving right along…
We’re lucky that we have some friends who live year round in a gorgeous-yet-cozy lakefront home just over the MA border in NH. It’s an easy 90ish-minute drive away, and for me it’s like going to a B&B for the weekend, minus the awkward chitchat with strangers. Saturday morning they asked us to join them for some football watching and since we had no plans we seized the opportunity. Our time was great—fun, funny, relaxing, etc.—as expected. When we headed up the hill to start the trip home Sunday evening, the snow looked pretty, the light was unique, and so I snapped this picture:
I post it here because it perfectly captures in a single frame much of the conflicting “stuff” I’ve been feeling in the same “frame” lately, namely:
Lightness and darkness
Speed and stillness
Clarity and a complete lack of focus
Looking at this picture with all its “conflict” helped me sort through some of my own internal tangles, helping me realize that it is perfectly ok to have single days (or moments, even) when I alternately feel the weight of world on my shoulders, like I am walking on a cloud, and as if I am sitting under all of the unbearable lightness of being. Sometimes the differences between these states is barely discernible (think being at the eye doctor and being asked “1? Or 2?”), and other times the space between them is a chasm that feels impossible to cross. But then the picture also reminds me that when the conflicting “stuff” comes together, sometimes the results can be unexpected, and unexpectedly beautiful.
So there’s that.
In general, like a distant drumbeat (one that inconveniently grows louder as it moves from my subconscious mind to my conscious one typically right around the time I am on the precipice of falling asleep), I’ve been hearing this tired-but-true old line: the more things change the more they stay the same. Consider this social post that was shared with me recently:
As I fought my racing mind as I tried (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to fall asleep Sunday night, it hit me. The more things change, the more things do stay the same…AND…the more they change, the more they change. Which often means regression disguised as progress…life is one giant sleight of hand…yes, change is a constant, but change is not always synonymous with positive, forward progress.
The internal turmoil I’m experiencing of late is exacerbated by some current events, so I’ll share some of the world affairs that have been contributing to my feeling out of alignment, from the perspective of “we’ve come so far and we’re so technologically advanced and we think we’re better than everyone else and as a society we think we are above reproach so why then has life become a bad meme wrapped in a sh-tshow wrapped in a clusterf-ck?” (And yeah, I’m heated about this stuff…I have a lot of sh-t simmering below the surface and plenty boiling over…I’m frustrated and uncertain and maybe even a little bit worried, on several levels.) But anyway:
Politics. I know. Things are so polarized that even typing the word seems like throwing a grenade. But I’m here to make a small case for unity, using one example. Trump had classified documents. He was a petulant abrasive baby about it. Biden has classified documents. He’s being an arrogant arse about it. Now we can easily do the partisan thing and say “but Trump…” or “but Biden…” and plenty of people are doing that. Intent and circumstances aside, why aren’t we coming together as a nation to demand better process and better controls over our country’s deepest secrets??? Look, the Tufts Library in Weymouth can track down an overdue library book like a bloodhound on steroids yet classified documents can be mixed in with the laundry and—“whoopsie”—taken on vacation to FL or put away for safekeeping in a garage next to the Corvette? We should demand better protection of ourselves through better protection of top-secret info—stop making the symptoms a partisan problem and address the root cause. It’s not glamorous—process improvement rarely is—but it’s necessary. Stop the film-flam and start the hard work.
Priorities. This may be an unpopular opinion but I’m comfortable standing firm with it. Damar Hamlin suffered a catastrophic cardiac event during a football game, and it was horrific, for sure. We quickly learned that Hamlin would survive, then that he was neurologically intact, then that he was back in Buffalo, then that he was in a box watching the game. And that all is great. Meanwhile, while he is stricken and recovering we have (in no particular order) another hostile event that gets the standard “mass shooting and a yawn” coverage (11 people killed in CA), then yesterday we had another 7 in CA and 2 in IA…plus another six people in California getting killed with only a small AP blurb at the bottom of page 2 of the Globe about a week ago (allegedly gang-related, so what?), 12 people in Baton Rouge getting shot in an alleged targeted attack with barely a mention (because no one was killed?)…and then the kicker (for me) was the 6-year old boy in VA who shot his teacher (after saying he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die AND who was supposed to be accompanied by his parents at all times…but they took a day off and will regret it for the rest of their lives (of course)). And those are the ones that come to mind as I watch the morning news and type this—I am sure there are more and I am also sure I wouldn’t have to look very hard to find them. Anyhow while I think it’s great that Damar Hamlin is alive and the nation rallied around him in the form of feel-good stories galore and with massive contributions to his Toys For Tots drive, the nature of the coverage and conversation in response to an awful incident in a violent game that people are paid multi-millions of dollars to play has been dramatically disproportionate to the reporting of and response to the real chilling stories of the day. We grow immune to everyday tragedy and our obsession with celebrity has us over-investing in hero-worship stories with happy endings. And it’s f-cked up.
Profits. The financial state of the US is befuddlingy upside-down right now. For such an advanced society with such “smart” people in office on both sides of the aisle, it seems incomprehensible that we’re banging up against our debt ceiling. But here we are. Where is all the money? We reward the wrong things, to an extent that we are making it impossible to solve some of our root national problems (say poverty, for example). We’ve got an unequal distribution of wealth (and almost everything else) on a global scale. People have more money than they need, many of whom are imploding on the daily (e.g., Elon Musk)…yet these so-called smart people in DC are doing nothing. The problem is multifaceted and multidimensional (thus complex but still solvable) thus many people are feeling the squeeze in a 360-degree way. We create and complain about the problems that will plague us until the end of time—unless we get out of our own f-cking way and do something about them. And the fact that some people are squeezing so tight to maximize profits (and maintain a lavish lifestyle) while others are squeezing so tight trying (in many cases unsuccessfully) to stay alive is infuriating at best.
Thanks for being here, and especially so if you’ve reached this point and endured my quasi-rant—transformation sometimes is hard.
I just saw a funny t-shirt on Instagram that said “Have the day you deserve.” And while I love the sentiment and am a big fan of Karma, I guess I’ll put it this way—hope you have a great day because a great day is the kind you deserve. 🤣🤣🤣
Hope you’re enjoying the days getting longer—I know I am.
Love you too.