Walking in the downpour and hoping we don't slip
Living Happy
This week has been a week. My daughter, Em left for a new job in DC and it felt super real and true: She’s a grown up. She’s done with the Army and graduate schools and she’s out there.
This is so silly because she’s obviously been grown-up for a long time, but it just felt so real.
School starts next week for Xane and Xane is super anti-school, so that’s a lot. And yesterday, Shaun had one of those check-ups where a doctor searches his body for more cancer. Only one biopsy this time, so maybe he’s stopped overachieving on that. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, last night, we walked through pouring rain into town to have dinner with friends. With each step into yet another puddle, we got wetter and wetter. Despite rain coats, the slant of the rain hit just right, sending rivets of water down our faces. The only places that were puddle free were in the center of the roadways.
With every footfall through the dark streets, heading toward Bar Harbor proper, I thought, “Will we ever get out of the rain and into the warm restaurant?”
Because that tiny act felt of walking into town last night felt so full of questions:
1. Will there be a table free at the restaurant?
2. Will we have to wait in the rain?
3. Will our friends bail at the last second?
4. Will the rain ever stop?
5. Will I fall in a massive puddle, slipping in my soaked-through slides and everyone will see?
Spoiler: I didn’t actually slip until I was leaving the restaurant, right at the lip of the doorway, which made me look like I’d drank 27 sidecars. So, yeah. That happened.
Anyway, there is so much chance and so much randomness in what we do . . . maybe? But in order to have some semblance of mental health, I have to believe that there are choices that we make that allow us to craft some of our future despite the systems and circumstances that somehow seem set against us.
I could choose to laugh that I did actually end up slipping. I could choose to sulk about it. That choice happens in the moment even when I bog myself down with questions and worries about the possibility for hours.
The New York Times’ Dennis Overbye recently had an article about the giant question mark in space that was caught on the Webb Space Telescope.
An optical illusion?
A great truth?
A couple of dust clouds that astronomers have named Herbig-Haro 46/47, which sounds a bit like a clothing line and size.
In that Times article, Overbye writes,
“Still, there are times when it’s worth stepping back to listen to “the music,” as Einstein once referred to the beauty and mystery of the cosmos. You are free to consider that question mark as alien graffiti, a comment on both their and our relation to existence. Point being, we’ve barely begun to know anything — that’s why we build telescopes.”
I’ve been delving into stoicism a lot lately, maybe just because I want so badly to believe in ethics and virtue, to believe that we have to live our lives with a look toward nature and a big emphasis on reason even as we walk in a brutal, cold rain. Maybe I should start delving into alien graffiti. Maybe they’re more closely related than I thought.
Those stoics believed that justice, wisdom, moderation, and courage are the virtues you should focus on. And they also believed that some things we can control and some? Eh, not so much.
Seneca thought that living in the present moment was key, to embrace the rain and the puddles and don’t worry about whether it will stop or if there will even be a table at the restaurant. Epictetus was all about just focusing on what you can control. Zeno was all about free will. And Marcus Aurelius was all about living in harmony with nature.
What does all that mean when you’re walking in the dark through puddles, not sure what’s going to happen next; when there’s a giant question mark in the sky; when you worry about things like cancer and poverty and storms; when you worry about your friends and family and the community thriving and joining together in love and kindness instead of division?
It means that you have to suck it up, get your hands dirty, work toward the answers that you want for those questions in the distant universe and right inside of you. It means that you can stumble at the threshold of a restaurant door and dwell on it, or stand up straight, laugh it off, and march back into the rainy night.
You can walk in the downpour that is life and hope that you don’t slip. You can do everything to stay solid and stable and upright, but sometimes the water makes you lose your grip on the ground and sometimes? Sometimes that can be a blessing because it gives you a new perspective and a new opportunity to act with kindness, acceptance and a bit of grace.