Remember

Resistance comes in many forms

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
~ E.B. White

Over the last month, I’ve started six new essays, and they all languish unresolved in a digital folder. I’ve gone back to them multiple times, trying to spark inspiration, but none have developed beyond two paragraphs. The topics are all over the place—peaches, knife sharpening, catfish bait, dogs, heirloom okra, Jesus vs. Buddha vs. oak trees. I started every one of them with solid intentions and high expectations, but after those first taps of the keyboard—those priming pumps that usually strengthen the flow—the trickle instead thinned to drops and then petered out. I can’t finish them. The topics seem trivial, unimportant—perspectives formed from a privileged viewpoint, as so many face dire circumstances.

I am paralyzed. I am overwhelmed and exhausted, and I feel guilty because I’m overwhelmed and exhausted as I sit here with a full belly and no immediate concerns of being bankrupted, deported, detained, or shuffled off to the front lines of another stupid war. I feel guilty because I enjoy the luxury—by no merit of mine, just pure dumb luck—of pondering such things, that “surviving” isn’t my top priority every day. The gloomy guilt puddles into futility. I feel worthless as a citizen and even more worthless as a scribe.

I keep thinking I can help by writing, but how can I even consider myself a responsible writer and reflect on anything except this world, as we know it, circling the drain—wars and rumors of wars, one-third of the Earth on fire and one-third underwater, false prophets arising like toxic mushrooms after a warm rain and poisoning so many of us, love for our neighbors waxing cold?

And what am I supposed to do with all of this horrible information encountered at every click? Is this really what I should write about? Should I heap more coals of angst and anguish on an already terrifying inferno? We can’t hide our heads in the sand, but how do I hold on to my sanity—to my peace—while grappling with crises of the directly existential sort for others and indirectly for me? How do I overcome my sorrow, despair, and sense of helplessness to do something positive? What is my role in this tumultuous time as someone with so little power? What can I write about that will matter?

First, I’ve got to go easier on myself, and you’ve got to do the same. This torrent of information we were never equipped to deal with—did not evolve the capacity to comprehend—has swollen into a massive river, flooding our minds with runoff. Our souls are waterlogged. Our hearts mired in muck.

Despite our aspirations of omniscience, we’re not supposed to know everything going on in all corners of the world. Our concerns were never meant to reach beyond blood kin and close friends. We evolved to keep track of about 100 other humans, the land we live on, the other living things we share it with, and the shifts of wind and sun dictating what food we would share around our fires.

But now we try to swallow and digest everything from the science of climatology to the pseudoscience of economics to the theatre of politics, and that’s on top of mastering the jobs we hold and keeping our houses in order. In striving to carry the weight of the world, we have buried ourselves. And in the process, we’ve lost the knowledge of who we are. We’ve traded our intimate relationship with the green beings and our animal cousins for proxy husbandry. We’ve forsaken a near-intuitive understanding of water and air because, let’s be honest, we just don’t have time to truly know them anymore. It makes me wonder if we are still human, because for most of our existence, all of the connections we’ve lost were all of the connections we had. And who we are is defined by who we know.

Seems like the central theme of pretty much everything I’ve ever written could be boiled down to recognizing and yearning for those lost relationships, remembering this great forgetting.

Maybe the forgetting is why we are where we are now.

Times such as these are not unique to us, though it feels like it. We’ve been here before, and so many souls have endured so much worse. Then, as now, I believe the best antidote—the best way to get back to some semblance of personal peace—is to remember.

This morning, I chose to remember.

A southeasterly breeze, warm and heavy with water vapor, nudged my cheek as I stepped off the porch. Piping whistles pulled my eyes skyward, focusing on a lithe winged form the color of woodsmoke—a Mississippi kite knifed through June’s hazy blue sky, intercepting early-rising dragonflies and late-to-bed moths.

I stepped softly to Christine’s herb garden and outmaneuvered the bees for a sniff of purple coneflower. The powdered-sugar scent reminded me summer is here, that our Earth still orbits our star, that to walk on damp green grass in bare feet, to feel sunlight caress skin, to share company with zebra swallowtails—these are the real reasons we exist. These are experiences worth sharing. These are topics worth writing about, now more than ever.

This great circle, composed of incalculable and often mysterious smaller circles—each linked and dependent on the other—is why I am here. And I’m reminded that despite the best efforts from the worst of us, the circle will be unbroken. I will write about this truth. As we’re whirled and battered by the hurricane of information, misinformation, and unease, I think I’m supposed to help us find solid footing. I think I’m supposed to help us remember.

Maybe E.B.'s inner tension stemmed from the false dichotomy he created, and maybe mine did as well.

Maybe the only way to save this world is to savor it.