"Life is like that."

 

Allow Room for Not Knowing

“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of a new adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad, we call something good. But really we just don’t know.”

Pema Chodron (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)

          One of the most difficult things about this time we are in is not knowing when it will end. It feels like an endless free fall. We say we want life to return to “normal” but we know it never will, as someone said on NPR last week, “normal is done with us.” I had dinner with my friends Anna and Leslie last night for the first time in three years. We spoke about the difficulties of “real life” right now with the Delta variant hospitalizing over a thousand people a day in Alabama. Yet, there are those who steadfastly refuse the vaccine, and even the vaccinated have breakthrough cases—some folks are getting sick for a second time. It seems like a very dark passage we are going through.

          And yet, perhaps it’s the only way that people will take this virus seriously. Maybe having the illness for a second or third time will turn the tide. We are in the liminal state indefinitely, which we all hate. We like to know what comes next, what we will be doing tomorrow, and next week. Many of us had planned vacations for after the start of school, but those are cancelled, and who knows when we will be able to safely leave home. There is great disappointment, and a sinking feeling that this may never end.

          Here’s the good news—we are being given extra time and opportunity to decide who we want to be moving forward. Do we continue to be a world divided or do we want to change to a world in which we all pull in the same direction? Do we want to continue to fight among ourselves, or do we want to unite and fight this virus together? If we expect to remain as a relevant player in the world, then we must direct our attention to rebuilding, to solving some of our long-term problems, and to finding solutions that serve the greatest good.

China launched a new rail system recently—a train that goes 750mph. We are not even close—not because we don’t have the capacity or the need for it, but because we can’t agree with each other. We can’t agree on priorities, we can’t agree on funding, so we spend our precious time fighting each other while the rest of the world moves past us—at high speeds. We can’t agree simply because it’s not politically expedient for a handful of Americans who represent us. China doesn’t have that problem—they just do it.

Pulling together used to be a goal and it could be again if we would step off our personal high-ground and negotiate where and how we might move forward together. Here’s some wisdom from T.S. Eliot:

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language,

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

(“Little Gidding”)

          Let’s commit to making that one voice, together. Let us move into this new day hand-in-hand. Let that be how our story ends.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane