Boats Against the Current

 Los Angeles, California

I think that I expected things would be ok after the election. Don't ask me why I thought that. I'm not the eternal optimist by any measure. But I do this thing. I set this point in time ahead and decide that everything will be ok upon arrival. Sometimes I even think that everything will be... perfect. And, I never seem to learn. In this case, I waited one-hundred days. I made a pretty, colorful chain of one-hundred paperclips which I hung on a hook in a convenient location. Each day I removed a paperclip, knowing that at the end would be November. The summer felt relentlessly long as I went through it more or less in isolation. And I was longing for the fall season. And for the election to be over.

Additionally I celebrated a birthday. Well, actually I celebrated a birthday week. Joel had a six-day vacation from work. After work, on his last day, he got a Covid test and his negative results came back the following morning. During the week, we watched the Dodgers win the World Series, we cleaned my garage (my requested birthday gift), and on my actual birthday, we drank champagne and danced salsa and bachata. We didn't get out together away from my house. But for a Covid birthday, it was unexpectedly stellar.

I took down my last paperclip the morning of the election. Four days later when Associated Press called the election for Joe Biden, my neighbor texted to invite me to their front yard for champagne. It was my fourth gathering (if a gathering is defined by 2-4 people) in the past eight months. They are a lovely couple with 2-year old twin boys. While the twins napped, we sat outside, socially-distanced. We drank champagne, and talked about the awful situation in our country that we would thankfully be leaving behind when Trump left office, and about our elation at the change that would be coming. While on the same color, we were clearly not on the same square of that life's chessboard metaphor I used in the last post. They had been supporters of Elizabeth Warren. I had not. But we shared an intense desire to see the acceptance of the hatefulness and deceitfulness in the current administration become something that can never, ever again happen. But, for now it continues.

The day after my paperclip chain disappeared, I made a new one. It was comprised of fifty-nine paperclips of multi-colors, the last thirty-one alternating red and green, representing December and the season of Christmas. I cannot even remember when Advent starts. I haven't been to Mass since February, and I do very much miss it. The end of that chain will be January first. Where will we be on January first? They are reporting that Pfizer has a vaccine being readied. Hope. But meanwhile, things have not really gotten better. Yes, the Dodgers are still world champions. Yes, my garage is still clean. But the news from Washington is unprecedented. Did we expect statesmanship from this creature and his clan? Yeah... I admit I kinda did.

We're in a mess. So many people in our country impacted by this pandemic. Can you start a new business after you've lost yours as a result of this? Maybe. Can you survive the loss of a job? Barely. Can you find a new job when this is over? Probably. Can you replace a loved one who died? Absolutely not. I have feared that we were creating a populace where all that mattered was money and success. I loosely connected this to the deemphasizing of the importance of the humanities in universities. Yes, I am that simplistic at times. But the concept of higher education serving as job training, and in some cases a springboard to financial success, does not speak well to what the purpose of education should be. Training for occupations should be accomplished in graduate school, or in trade schools instead of universities. Haven't we somehow spun away from what a university education should provide, into a world where it is thought to be a conduit for a lucrative future, say, like in managing hedge funds? Maybe education isn't the offtracker, but when I try to figure out how we could have gotten to this place where our country finds itself, my eyes go to pinwheels. Thoughts rise to the surface, but nothing coalesces to really explain the complete breakdown of ethics that we have been witnessing. It can make you miss Nixon.

So, I go back to my own philosophy that I should concentrate on the micro: my health; my home; my family of friends; my neighborhood and community. But this requires a lot of energy and the effort to be mindful while in the swirling mess. The mess leaks in and has an impact. Life should not be as it is.

So we beat on, boats against the current... is from the last sentence of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. In literature, in fine films and in theater and opera, we find the experience of others; their struggles, their tragedies, their triumphs over adversity. Maybe you are drawn to the humanities because you already have empathy, and it gets fine-tuned through the syllabus. Or maybe it helps develop empathy which was lacking in you. In the 80s there was the common saying: Life is hard and then you die. And, life is hard, especially now with so many dying. But there are many other layers to all our lives, and to how we live together, that should not be dismissed as one-dimensionally hard.

I have had to turn away from the news. It is just too dispiriting. Do I think things will get better? Yes. I hope. Joe Biden is a good man. A kind man. It takes a lot of strength to be kind. It takes the strength of getting out of your own way; getting out of the way of your ego. Anyone can be tough, and the weakest of the tough are the bullies. Things will certainly be better with a strong and compassionate leader. And a vaccine may eventually pull us out of our homes, back into some semblance of the lives we used to live. We will shop in malls, eat in restaurants, dance again in the clubs. But, until then we will beat on, boats against the current, and though still yet hampered by the maelstrom of the Trumpian storm, at least now we are able to see the shore. Thank you for reading my blog. Breathe. We will get there.