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I have never felt a more empty nest in our home. Sentimental, I remind myself we are fortunate, that everyone is currently separated in some form, all for the common good. But I continue to wonder about my grown children's safety, and our own. I continue to wonder about the elderly, the sick, medical staff, grocery-store employees, the babies not yet held by their grandparents. Others. I remind myself to be grateful. For my health. For my job. Many have lost theirs, including some of my colleagues, callously informed via Twitter/Facebook this weekend, promised the opposite only days ago. I wonder how parents are coping, and their children, their mental health. Then I notice through the window two neighbourhood kids wrapped in colourful snowsuits playing in their backyard, simultaneously climbing and sinking into a snow-hill, and I tell myself, they are strong.
I tell myself I can learn a lot from children—an educator, they have been my constant teachers. Buoyed by their inspiring ability to adapt, I tell myself to get focused, get creative, seize opportunities, persist, and learn everything I can from this. Meaning is more found in the bad times, right? I'm reading Sapiens: a Brief History of Mankind. Confident and wise, Yuval Noah Harari attempts to answer life's biggest questions. Couldn't we all use some answers right now? I wonder if Harari's answers still resonate with him, in this new season of history, weighty and charged with us all thinking the same questions. And it continues to snow.
Yet I know for sure that the writers—the storytellers, the philosophers, the filmmakers, the poets—they have all asked these questions before, and so I tell myself Rilke's words: "Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going: no feeling is final."
2 comments:
Just yesterday my wife and I were looking through photos of springs recently past and this one is certainly taking it's sweet time. Whatever is happening, things getting green is a mood lifter for me. I continue to wait.
I'm torn about the thought of spring. I love breathing the colder air and walking in uncrowded streets but the snow is getting monotonous, and when it goes the brown grass and bare trees will be monotonous for awhile too. Our spring is slow.
The workplace for most everyone is in a constant state of evolving right now. Small businesses like my husband's are also at great risk. Government funding for 75% of payroll is some help, but there's still rent, utilities and other overhead to pay, too, and clients unable to pay for the work they are asking to have done. There are so many desperate folks right now.
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