On Being Alive

This might be my favorite time of the year,  these early days of autumn. The mornings and evenings are cool--a couple of times, now, they've even been chilly--but days are still warm. And yet...the late afternoon sunlight is a particularly brilliant yet gentle golden, as though it's apologizing for the harsh summer months and trying to encourage us to soak up what little warmth remains before winter sets in. The crickets still chirp at night; not the loud clamor of high summer, and rather fewer of them, but they are still their, making their noises quietly and persistently as though saying, "We will continue our song until the bitter end."

It's a beautiful early fall evening right now, and I am reminded of a fall evening from my very early years. It must be one of my very first memories--I was three, or perhaps four. We were still living in Ohio. My mom was getting me ready for bed, and insisting I wear an undershirt under my nightgown because the nights were getting cooler. I remember looking over her shoulder at the open window in my bedroom, seeing the dark night beyond my cozy little world, feeling the chill night air, knowing she was right.

It's a beautiful fall evening right now, and for me at least, it is a beautiful day to be alive. And oh, how rotten I feel, thinking that. At least 59 people are no longer here to enjoy life on this peaceful evening. Their lives ended yesterday, their peace shattered. I wish that I could believe that they have never-ending peace, now, but I don't have any certainty of that. I know that we who are left have even less peace and security than we had before (and really, those were and are only illusions), and I know that many of us sit in our homes, and look out our open windows into the chilly autumn evening, and know that it's a dark night that lies beyond our cozy little world. And not all of us have the privilege of a cozy little world.

I'm sad, I'm distressed, I'm exhausted. I imagine most of us are--and probably for a lot longer than just the last 24 hours. I don't know what to do; I only know that I can close my eyes against this gentle autumn night and wake tomorrow and rise and meet the day with a desire to act with courage and a strong moral compass and compassion. Maybe that's all I can do. Maybe that's all any of us can do. Or maybe that that is the bare frickin minimum.

May we all retire to our beds tonight, safe and loved. May we all wake tomorrow to wrest whatever beauty we can from this chaotic world. May we all survive to see another beautiful autumn evening tomorrow. And may we rest our heads tomorrow night knowing we did all we personally could to set this world to rights.

The Mercy of the Fallen (1.10.16 Edition)

The other day I made a decision. It wasn’t one that I had come to lightly—it was one that I had been struggling with for probably a month or more. I wittered and dithered and waffled back and forth, I contemplated and pondered and thought I knew for certain what to do—until suddenly, finally, I knew what my choice was. It was a choice I made from a place of being tired of “doing the right thing” when the right thing only left me feeling tired, and lonely, and confused, and questioning what “right” even meant. So I made my choice, and I made it clear what my choice was. It wasn’t one that I would recommend others make, and frankly, my first instinct would be to judge others for making that choice. But oddly, once I “put it out there”, I felt okay.

And after all that, all the guilt and agonizing and desire and curiosity and craving, it didn’t matter. Because so often, choices are made with other people, and so it was in this case. Over the last month, I had been the ‘strong’ one, holding back, not pursuing this choice. And then the one time that I was weak (let’s go with human, okay? I don’t want to judge my friends with that word, so why should I judge myself?) the other person was the one who held us back, who said “no.”  

What an anticlimax, eh? 

In the great scheme of things, as North Korea tests H-bombs and politicians obfuscate and people starve and people are unjustly imprisoned and parents neglect their children and Syrians suffer while we do nothing, our potential actions probably don’t rank as major infractions. But while the great scheme of things goes on, so too do the little schemes—the schemes, the dramas, the routines of my life and your life, and the life of the people we know and don’t know, and love and dislike. And it’s so easy to rationalize a questionable choice as not mattering in the great scheme, whilst willfully ignoring the more relevant and present people and lives our choices will affect. 

I didn’t do anything. I absolutely would have—once I make a decision, I tend not to deviate from it—but I didn’t. According to the Bible, since I already committed the sin in my heart, I am guilty of committing it in actuality. Which is kinda lame, because I sure as hell didn’t have a chance for any fun. But I didn’t do anything, except perhaps imperil or undermine a long-time friendship. I turn in tonight with the same tired, heavy heart that has been pumping in my chest for the past year, but I also turn in knowing that at the end of the day, I am a human, with the capacity for compassion and selfishness and sin and forgiveness, of good thoughts and bad choices, with vulnerabilities and strengths, and all of it, sometimes at war with each other. 

What was the point of it all? Maybe to serve as a powerful, tangible reminder of my own frailty and humanity, and to take to heart what I try to say all the time:

“There’s the wind, and the rain,

and the mercy of the fallen,

who say they have no claim to know what’s right.

There’s the weak, and the strong, 

and the beds that have no answer,

And that’s where I lay my head tonight."

-Dar Williams