Lately I have been thinking about gravity. Not the scientific concept but the word-- how very grave so many things are in the world around me. I know that I've written a few blogs that have talked about the going getting tough, or about worry, and have ended those entries with some sort of sentiment about being more mindful or meditative or acknowledging a Human Sunrise. Today I don't have sunshiny answers, if I'm being totally honest with myself, which I said I would always be in this blogging venture. Instead I have questions-- with which I will end this entry. If anyone knows any of the answers, please advise.
The other day, a very dear friend of mine told me an absolutely horrific piece of news: her cousins- in- law (with whom my friend is very close) lost their 11- week old son. I don't know the details yet, but this very gloomily curious part of my brain always exhorts me to look up obituaries online any time I hear of a passing. I have no idea what seeing the obituary sates in me or even accomplishes, but I always feel a pull to see the story. And so today I googled the baby's name, and, bam, the obit instantly came up. When I clicked on it, the sweet child's smiling face was at the top of the screen. He looks like a typical infant-- endearing, gorgeous, loving and lovable, and just plain cheery. What an ironic juxtaposition-- this picture coupled with the dark news below it.
I can't get his beautiful image out of my head, nor can I release the idea of what his parents must be going through. I simply don't understand a world that allows such a thing to happen. I don't mean to insult anyone's religious sensibilities or faith, but how can these two parents in any way accept this death? How can they ever say, "God needed him"? Around the time of Newtown, I wrote about how things that we call "unthinkable" actually ARE thinkable-- we just don't want to imagine them. The pain is too sharp. But I tend to do this thing where I take other people's-- even strangers'-- worries or dealings upon myself and I obsess over how the people must be coping.
News like this is jarring and horrific, but the news on the TV every night has nearly become ineffectual. It's so sad, so dismal every single night, that it's hard to react anymore. But somewhere, the family of the guy who was driving the car that collided with a dumptruck yesterday is grieving. And somewhere else, the loved ones of the tortured and murdered girl are bawling their eyes out too.
When I come to work, I like to think I can leave behind my sullen obsessions, but they're there, too. The nonverbal autistic boy down the hall who shrieks all day long, the colleague whose 36- year- old brother died last week of a rare Sarcoma, the front office receptionist with ovarian cancer. When you reach a certain age, and the invincibility complex disappears, you notice and breathe in every tragedy within a mile of you. And then you start to wonder how and when it will befall you. Maybe I shouldn't write in second- person point- of- view there, because maybe not everyone does all this. Maybe I have some sick neurosis.
And while I'm being honest, on some days, my feelings get so desperate that I wonder why so many people keep going, keep having kids, keep at it-- when there is so damn much to lose. Now that I am a mom, there are types of loss that I know that, if I were to experience, I would not want to live any longer. I haven't really felt that way before and it's friggin' scary. Not only do I no longer have a bubble to live inside, but I don't even see bubbles in my adult radius.
I was reminded me of this whole facing- the- cruelties- of- life concept the other day when I was previewing an interview with Arthur Miller to show one of my classes, as they are reading Death of a Salesman. Miller expounds on the notion of life being sadness-- he says that "life IS catastrophe" ultimately. He wrote his works largely to expose his views of how average people cope when the worst happenings of humanity emerge in the lives of everyday folks. Miller's silver lining is that in between all the tragedy and the rubble from it, humans accomplish great things. Hmmm-- is this enough, dear Arthur? Argh, it still just sounds so forlorn.
So, I am not going to tie everything up in a neat bow today because I don't see the need. I don't have a way to do it anyway. When the gifts and wonderful things in life can so quickly and easily bring you your worst nightmare realized, how do we REALLY go through life cherishing people and keeping an optimistic perspective? Are there adults who see or hear awful news and compartmentalize it and then still say life is wonderful? I'd love to live in a more positive state of mind.. I just can't get there.
When for every great happening I witness in a month I can name four horrendous ones, how do you keep your eye on the great? It's true that youth is wasted on the young, because many of the kids I teach seem unfazed-- or, no, that's unfair-- they seem unscathed by other people's terrible events. I know it's the age they're at, but even all through my 20s I think I could do that compartmentalizing thing pretty well. Is this the curse of middle age? Living in fear?
I can't end an entry on that sentence-- I just can't. So I WILL say that I know that there is a lot of good in the world-- I do see it with my very eyes. The problem is that it's the good we so profoundly fear losing.
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