A Skeptical Moment

Indulge me a moment of skepticism.

Some of us have suffered catastrophic loss in the past year.

For others, myself included, the limitations of COVID have reawakened us to what really matters in life.  Disaster has compelled a humbling reset.  Life is better, we say, without the hurry, the endless scheduling; without needless trips to Wholefoods, or the thousands of distractions once essential to our well-being.

We’ve changed, we tell ourselves.  We can’t go back to the way we were.

I wonder, in this moment of skepticism, if we aren’t fooling ourselves.

Have we really changed?  Or has the “fire-drill-turned-into-endless-recess” induced by a pandemic that hasn’t touched us directly rather obscured the reality that the same pressures and internal expectations have only gotten less obvious for a season?

With increasing numbers vaccinated, we must ask this question before it is too late to turn ourselves around.

The truth may be closer to this: we were happy for the extended loungewear phase — the never-ending pajama party — but our deepest habits and proclivities haven’t changed a whit.

Here is my limited store of evidence:

Traffic in my part of town has returned to its Indie 500 Speedway pace (and lack of civility).  Crosswalks be damned at rush hour.

My meeting mates find themselves double booking zoom sessions, and growing snappish when those around them can’t shift around their amped up “needs.”

This past weekend, I had to rush a young relative to the emergency room after a panic attack.  Racing heart and tremors.  The result, the doctors said. of too much stress.

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We’ve become more snarly of late.  We are dashing around with masks at half-mast.  We are gathering when we have been warned not to do so.

Illusions quickly go south.  I fear that the sustainability of our new-found “mindfulness” may be such a mirage.

The new Ken Burns documentary about Ernest Hemingway can be a cautionary tale for us today.  Following World War I, which wiped out a generation of men in Europe, eviscerated British culture and set the stage for the Holocaust that would follow in 2 breathlessly brief decades, Paris erupted with the pent-up energies of the survivors — artists, writers, musicians, hangers-on, wealthy Americans looking for something new.  This was not the white-knuckled, competitive culture of scarcity we live in today, but the energies of diffuse and destructive excess ought to be a warning to us a brutal century later.

Resets only work if we are able to manage our course forward into vaster and rougher seas once we leave the protected harbor.  Anyone who returns to “normal life” after an extended retreat knows this.  The hardest and most hazardous stage of the journey is the re-entry.

I offer my small bits of “evidence” as skeptical seasoning, a goad to you, my friends and readers, as well as to myself:

if we can remember our fragility and vulnerability, and the deep “rightness” that we have found in a more human-scaled pace, more intentional relationships, we will go forward with the tools we need to begin to mend our wounded world.  We will continue to drive more slowly, be kind and patient to one another, do one thing at a time, and say no when the demands (even our own) start bossing us around.

I have begun to collect the very small feathers of the black-capped chickadees and finches once again crowding my feeders.  It started as a whim, but I have now a small gathering of these exquisite, delicate objects.  Together, they make a statement that a single one probably wouldn’t.  If this year has taught us anything, it is that nature is more fragile than we’d imagined.

The feathers speak to me of whimsy and hope, but also of the fleeting, aching sweetness of a life lived well.  We can do this, if we so choose.

Namaste.