I find myself despondent and unable to make my peace with my place in history. I decided to write to clear my head and hopefully stumble on some truth.
Saturday, September 14
Do the things that give you joy. Don’t do the things that make you sad. Now, here is the hard part. Most things are not pure joy or sadness. Most things that give you joy come with a price. Most things that make you sad usually have some allure and give you some kind of emotional reward in the beginning and only make you sad once that wears off.
Do things that are worthwhile. Life is short. Don’t waste it. My life has an
hourglass that I can see. I see the sand sliding through the tiny hole in the middle of the hourglass. I am pretty sure that the small opening is THE PRESENT. The sand in the top is THE FUTURE and the sand at the bottom is THE PAST. The present is fleeting and quite compact. It moves. The sand of the future is always falling through the hole of the present and into the past. It’s important to pay attention. THE PRESENT is the only time and place that life actually happens. It’s the only thing over which you have any control.
It’s hard to do only things that are worthwhile. It’s not the doing of the thing; it’s finding the thing that is worthwhile that I can do given my age, health, skills and abilities. The best possible thing would be to find something that gives me joy and is worthwhile. It’s hard to find. I know because I’ve looked. Nevertheless, she persisted.
“Worthwhile” for me has a precision about it. Worthwhile tasks have to be operative/effective in accomplishing something worthwhile. Worthwhile also has context. What is worthwhile at some point is useless at another point. At some point rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic had a point. The day the iceberg was dead ahead was not that day. It is important to locate yourself correctly in space and time. There are defining moments in time when great things are possible or horrible things can be prevented, or something can be written, painted, sculpted or discovered that will stand the buffeting of time and still be worthwhile in the future. It’s important to know what is real and what is illusion, what is diversion, what is an outright lie, empty hope and promise, wishful thinking, and especially, what is just plain old self-deception.
Reality as it really is has to be discovered. That is good news for me, I happen to like reality. I like looking at the movement of events in context and trying to figure out the clues left behind and their meaning at this point in time. Example: are we actually watching our democracy torn asunder or is it just politics as usual? Are we witnessing climate change that is caused by us and can be reversed by us and will kill us if we do nothing? Or, is it just a lot of rain and wind, sound and fury signifying nothing?
I like reality so much that I took a vacation that included visiting C.E.R.N. in Geneva where they use their supercollider to look at the guts of stuff to find out what stuff is actually made of; the stuff of which our universe is made, the stuff of which reality is made. On the tour of this magnificent machine, my only question was, “why do humans worship such puny gods. Why isn’t this, all THIS universe enough?”
Nevertheless, I know that finding worthwhile and joyful things to do is what will make me happy. My search continues. What am I looking for? How would I know it if I saw it?
Like all humans, I want to be heard, noticed, and visible. We all need feedback to feel like we really exist and that our lives matter to someone. The most desperate feelings must be generated when we all just walk passed homeless people like they are invisible. There is a reason that #BLM was created and named Black Lives Matter. There is a reason that people keep diaries. Some people keep them because it is a joyful experience. Sometimes those diaries become worthwhile to others who read them.
The home of Anne Frank is the most visited tourist destination in the Netherlands. Really, it is just the home of a 13-year-old Jewish girl who has been dead for almost 70 years. She kept a diary. She chronicled her life as a teenager living in hiding in an attic in a time of great danger and a time when accomplishing great things was possible. She wrote about her reality. She was 15 years old when the Nazi’s took her to Auschwitz then to Bergen-Belson where she died one year later. Her diary has been published in 60+ languages. Even now Anne has her own Facebook page. Children from around the world write letters to Anne as if she is their friend.
Then, Anne got lucky.
Someone rescued her diary from its hiding place after the Nazis took her family to the death camps. They kept the diary until they found Otto Frank, the only survivor and Anne’s father and gave the diary to him. He decided to publish it after he read it and was moved by her insight and her hope.
I believe that Anne did what she loved, what gave her joy, she did the thing that gave her a voice even in hiding and she found her place correctly in the shifting sands of history. She changed her diary to be a book. And then she just got plain lucky.Her diary was like a message in a bottle. But, there were people who came after her death and they understood the message in the diary.
I think I have a handle on my despair. It has been building in all of us who are fully human for at
least 2 ½ years. I feel powerless. I feel and believe that there are children weeping and crying out for their parents who are locked in cages or have been sent to who knows where to be in the custody of who knows who. I believe that our democracy hangs by a thread and that all our institutions and checks and balances, ALL our political parties have failed us.
I believe that each day brings more judges appointed for lifetime terms who will rain cruelty on Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, the disabled, as well as immigrants, homeless, the poor. And my biggest problem is that as a former Christian, current atheist, I still believe in the Sermon on the Mount, I still believe that I am my brother’s keeper, I still believe there is redemption if we repent and own our transgressions. I still believe that when “you do this for the least among us you do it for me.”
Matthew 25:40-45 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.42 For I was an hungry, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
My despondency arises from the fact that I know now that I can’t live in this country. I can’t live in this reality. I can’t live in this time because I actually believe that what is happening is real. Only those who believe that it is ‘fake news’ or that Trump is ‘the chosen one’ can live like this. I can’t.
I have asked myself for the last time, “is this what it felt like to be a ‘good German’?” I know the answer. Yes, this is what it feels like to sweep the ash from the crematoriums off your front porch each morning and then just go to work. I used to think that it mattered if you knew where the ash came from and agreed that it was the ‘final solution’ to the problems for the of the homeland. But, if you knew what was happening and said that this is not what moral people do, this is not what Jesus would do, but went along anyway, what difference does it make? Those people are dead and history has rendered its verdict. The German people voted Hitler in. Six million Jews and several million others were murdered by the man they elected.
This is my reality. My soul is at stake. I won’t go along. What can I do that would make any difference? What do I owe myself and what do I owe humanity? I’ve had five heart attacks and I really do see the sands of time slipping through the hourglass. I don’t want to fritter away opportunities to play with my grandchildren. But, what do I owe my country? What do I owe my species? Is this a time I should find a way to rise to the occasion and stop whining that I don’t have a voice; that there is nothing I can do? And, if I did find something that could or just maybe could, or even just has a tiny chance of being of value and worked to accomplish that thing, would it give me joy?
Yes.
I’m thinking that I enjoy writing. Thats the “joy” part. I don’t know that it will be of any value to anyone but me, but Anne Frank didn’t know that either. She took what was available to her and made the most of it. And then she got lucky.
So. I’m going to write. Please be honest. Is this just vanity? Have I fallen in love with my own voice? I’ve written a lot of things. I have a journal of a 58 day vacation through some of the most interesting parts of Europe, including the Dalmation coast. Travel changes how you see the world. It changes who you are. I have a journal about managing meals-on-wheels for Los Angeles County in South Central and being the only white girl in the joint. Wow. I learned a lot about how hard it is to be white and not be racist even when you try really hard. It is so much a part of our American culture. Anyway...I’m going to write to try to save my soul and hope I just get lucky.
Good luck to us all.