It's December.
It's the month my mother died, two years ago tomorrow.
It's the month after the 2016 election.
I'm having trouble sleeping except when I have trouble waking up. I spend intense, loving hours with friends and family all the while desiring nothing so much as solitude and silence.
The house is decorated for the holidays. We are re-creating the traditions of the family Christmas. The familiarity of rituals and food brings continuity and soothes my psyche.
At the same time, I feel a jarring sense of impending doom, of urgent actions I should take in order to stave off Armageddon.
Welcome to my world.Two years ago, while Mom was lying in her hospital bed in the front room, the Christmas tree dazzled, music played, the scents of the season wafted through the house. My world had shrunk to that room, that bed, the woman who no longer ate or drank or opened her eyes. The woman who had given me birth and life and without whom I couldn't imagine being in the world. But time does go on, just as they always say, and I am still here and she is not. There continue to be good times and difficulties and so many things I want to tell her about.
Now, two years later, I open my computer or the newspaper in the morning and everything I see and read shouts of imminent destruction, chaos, and loss. It doesn't read to me as if it's something far away and not connected. It hits like action that I must take or all will be lost. The entire election season felt that way, and since the election of Donald Trump it has heightened to enormous proportions. I have lost my perspective. I have allowed myself to be seduced by the very fear tactics I so decried over the past year and a half, no actually, for the past 8 years.
Fear and Loathing in America.
Maybe what is needed most is for everyone, including me, to chill out. Take a breath and then another and another. This constant fever-pitch opposition is not only exhausting but dispiriting. I feel my life force draining with every headline, every new outrage, every single threat. And where does that lead?
Right now, it's leading me, incrementally, to abandon what was once quaintly referred to as "current events". There is only so much I can take without destroying my own spirit and affecting the people I love. I can't let it go all at once, cold turkey. But I can certainly cut down and replace it with other activities: reading books (actual, physical books), walking dogs in the woods, meeting friends, meditating. If the lure of electronics gets too strong, I can even listen to/watch TED talks.
Regardless of what is happening in the outer world, I am still responsible for my own reactions and perspective. I learned a lot about that during the years of taking care of Mom. Now I need to recalibrate and use what I learned in order to contribute something positive to the world at large, rather than continuing to raise the anxiety level.
Namaste.
