I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and churning recently – more, even, than normal. You might know me as extroverted and enthusiastically sincere, and that’s true – sometimes. What’s also true is I’m a brooder. And it’s brooding season – here in fall, and here in the United States.
What I want in my life is, I think, pretty common: I want to live a long, relatively happy, and meaningful life. I don’t aspire to be famous, which sounds like a double edged sword particularly in the age of 24/7 and social media. I don’t need to leave an indelible mark on the world beyond whatever my one humble life adds up to as part of the sum of so many lives in a changing world. And I don’t need to be rich. Secure, yes. Generous, yes – but that’s a choice I can make no matter what I have, whether it’s time, money, or just being a good, kind human when I have the opportunity.
My ambitions in life are rooted in this pretty basic wish to happily live out my years here on earth. I find that I need to spend time being active and outdoors, express myself (hello, painting and writing), and feel a sense of connection and belonging with people. My life’s work is seemingly figuring out and creating the conditions to optimize the likelihood that the above can happen. As everyone knows, that work – and its internal/external demands – ends up comprising most of my waking moments. So, in a way, the ongoing pursuit of creating my life is my life.
I have it pretty damn good. By any earthly measure, I am obscenely rich: I have access to electricity on demand, running water, cheap and abundant fuel, nutritious food, and endless Real Housewife franchises at my fingertips. I paint landscapes that inspire me, and am lucky enough to call it work. I have enough time for hobbies like, oh I don’t know, training for and running an ultra-effing-marathon. If that’s not a luxury sport in terms of resources required to implement it, I don’t know what is.
I also feel this squeeze, like a vice tightening. Food, rental, and other service costs are going up and staying there while the money I make stays about the same. Healthcare is a black comedy. I recently got a bill for accepting a phone call, and have invested hours fighting it (it’s not resolved). Dental isn’t a thing. Work feels quite volatile, with uncertainty for everyone looming – and, for Wes for example, a reality with the government presently shutdown while his work is often guiding in National Parks.
And there is chaos, ineptitude, and vengeance at the federal government level where wrecking balls at all levels have been and continue to swing, but I – and many – have this dreadful foreboding that the full impacts haven’t hit yet. Not nearly. The impacts are being felt first by those who are most vulnerable, but you already know the “first they came for…”. You already see what is happening to free press, due process, and speech.
What I want, again, is humble yet maybe also audacious: I want to live a fulfilled life, defined by what that means specifically for me. And something I believe at a deep, I guess you could call it spiritual level, is that my fate is bound up in the fate of others’. I know the adage about none of us being free unless we are all free is true, at an elemental and, frankly, practical level. What good is my life and existence if it relies on subsuming or ignoring others’? The world gets better when we have a lot of Allis out there doing their thing to fulfill their own lives; not when the individual ability to do so is criminally, and often at the institutional level, uneven. (Also, just a little btdubs: removing these barriers is how we find a cure for cancer. Not by imprisoning vast swaths of the population who might find it, or crushing people in impossible situations. Not by lifting up those with the loudest, angriest voices and putting them in charge of the country.)
So: what, exactly, do I do? Contribute my piddling dollars to organizations and funds; call my members of Congress? Stock up on bagged rice and beans? Materialize money that we don’t have to create a nice solar-powered bunker? What about the people we love – what will they do, and what can we do for/with them? The unknowns of what might happen next are overwhelming and feel like a loop that quickly shorts itself out, in terms of time/resources needed to fulfill any meaningful sense of security or change. That’s fatalistic of me. I know something is better than nothing, but this is how it feels.
I don’t have the or even a complete answer. What I have been doing is my usual. I take one step at a time. I give time, money, and artwork. I pay attention. I talk, I agonize, I listen and try to understand. I facilitate meetings to help people doing good work move forward. And I straddle this daily bizarre existence where the dread and grief constantly hums, while I coach myself to breathe and enjoy the process of creating a sky on canvas. I run my long runs and feel, during those grueling hours, so focused that not another thought can really linger in my head, and I am wonderfully free. I embrace these and moments like them, because any life is short and we all deserve joy.
What I would love is your help in sharing any of your perspective, advice, or resources right now. What about what I’m saying lands with you or more importantly, what additional perspective would be useful? What are you doing to cope during these times? What are you doing to prepare for what comes next/the unknown, if anything? What are you doing to live as fully as you can?