Hello friends,
Oof. We needed some strategies this week, didn’t we? How are you doing? I am writing to you from a little nook inside Kwench, a coworking space I am trying out in an attempt to hang on to some of the momentum I gained over the past month. I was drawn to this booth because it reminds me of the tiny breakfast nook in the house we lived in from 2000-2008, when our kids were small, where we had so many meals tucked in together, where I crouched on the floor to tie up the skates of a child who was perched on the edge of the bench, eager to get outside onto the backyard skating rink, where I sat late into the night working on school assignments and putting together my first cookbook compendium. It’s been hard to beat that nook for productive workspaces, but I have a feeling this one might do the trick today.
It’s a partly sunny Friday in my neck of the woods. I wonder what it’s like where you are. When I woke up on Wednesday morning the world seemed so much darker. It was hard to get out of bed and when I finally did, it felt like all hope had been sucked out of the atmosphere and we were facing the stark reality that life as we know it will only get worse. Worse for everyone, but significantly worse for members of any and all equity seeking groups. I heard that little voice chime up inside me, the one that seems to work overtime to help me keep going, always trying look on the bright side or provide perspective: “You’re not even American”, the voice said. “This isn’t yours to grieve. Imagine how much worse your American friends are feeling today.”
I wanted her to shut up. “I am feeling this in solidarity with them”, I wanted to respond. “I am feeling this in recognition that these election results will have global ramifications. Just let me just feel this.”
Arguing with myself is exhausting.
I sometimes remember Sarah Palin when I walk to the top of my street and look south. How we all laughed at her saying she could see Russia from her backyard (some quick Googling reveals she didn’t actually make this exact claim, it was Tina Fey who said the famous line in a SNL sketch based on something Palin had said about being able to see Russia from parts of Alaska, which isn’t actually false. Gosh Tina Fey was funny as Palin, though. And wasn’t Maya Rudolph funny last Saturday night, back before so much hope had been sucked out of the world? Part of me wishes it was still last Saturday night when we were still feeling so much optimism.)
I really can see the United States from my house, though. I’ve lived all my life in parts of Canada that are geographically south of the famous 49th parallel, but in my current home, if I look out from our attic window on a clear day, I can see the Olympic mountain range in Washington state, across the Juan de Fuca Strait. It’s all so close and so familiar. We like to tell ourselves it’s very different there but we know it isn’t really. The differences that we take pride in and that we value most we will need to work hard to maintain, to protect. We will need to be vigilant. We are not immune to the energetic sweep of extremism here, that much has become painfully obvious.
There’s an optical illusion I love that happens when we’re driving into the city, when we crest a hill that overlooks Victoria and the Olympic mountains suddenly loom large and dominate the horizon. Then as we drive down the hill they seem to shrink; they look smaller and the horizon fills with more sky, less mountains. “Look!” I tell anyone who’s with me in the car. “The mountains are getting smaller!" It truly looks like they are.
For long stretches in the rainy months, when the mountains are completely obscured by cloud, it is possible to forget they are there at all, and then a clear day comes along. Much like a chance encounter with a friend you hadn’t thought you’d bump into that day, you’re pleasantly surprised. “Oh! There you are!”
At work on Wednesday it seemed like we were all moving slowly, and there was a gentleness to our interactions. It felt like everyone was feeling tender, everyone was taking extra care. In the afternoon, I was pulling books for a grade four class that would be coming to the library the next morning and the teacher had let me know they had a unit on matter coming up. Crouched down in the kids’ non-fiction section, I pulled books about atoms and elements. My fingers swept across the spine of a book called Our World is Relative, by Julia Sooy. It was next to the books about matter and I knew it wasn’t quite right for the class visit, but I liked the title and pulled it off the shelf to look at, for myself more than anyone else. In the very simplest terms, the book explains the theory of relativity. The first two pages tell us “Something that seems big… can also seem small.”
I felt so much better after reading this children’s book (bonus strategy: when feeling low, look at picture books, there is so much hidden wisdom and comfort to be found within them, often unexpectedly.) Perhaps it was the permission to shift perspective that I found particularly helpful. Last year a Buddhist friend of mine quoted some Thich Naht Hanh to me, words to the effect of “things will emerge from the store of consciousness. Like sprouts in a garden. You can tend to them for a while, and then allow them to retreat again.” We do not need to be tending to everything all the time. Things can seem big - indeed, these are things are unequivocally big. But you can allow them to be small sometimes.
I will confess that my understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity remains pretty much limited to what was explained in that short book aimed at 5-8 yr. olds (though it has sparked an interest that wasn’t there before, and I may have to investigate some further reading, at a slightly more advanced reading level. Now I want to know more about relativity of simultaneity!) I believe the theory applies mostly to the physical world, but I am interested in how we might apply it to philosophical, ethical and political realms as well.
I hope you have a restful weekend; that you are also able to let the big things seem small for a while.
Sending love,
Rebecca
xo
Wonderful - captivating - relating to my own emotions