I will not confirm or deny that I had anything to do with this phrase in popular vernacular appearing on the sidewalk in front of my kitchen window.
With the heavy rain we had yesterday it is no longer there. Now we have flood warnings. Yesterday when I was on my way to the gym there was street flooding and a bit of hydroplaning. I was so grateful for my rain pants. There is just nothing quite as miserable as soaked thighs. Luckily it warmed up.
The day before it was just a few degrees above freezing and also rain, though a much lighter rain. I was walking downtown to the bus stop where I get the bus out to hang with the guys. In this doorway near the University there was a man sitting in a pile of wet blankets in a doorway with his stuff. An adult, eating a hamburger, a Black man, he looked like someone who maybe worked in government or was a bus driver, a person you would see in a good solid job.
I walked by him. I got a few steps further on, and I stopped dead in my tracks. I backed up and looked at him and asked if he would like me to give him some money. He say yes, quietly. So, I did. And he thanked me. Then I started back on my way and a few steps away I just burst into tears.
This is wrong, this is just so fundamentally wrong.
This feeling was so strong and overwhelming. We are all responsible for this man and this doorway, and this misery. Ugh.
I brought it up later with the group. We all feel this way. It was good and at the same time frustrating to talk it through. One wants so much to do something.
Of course I am doing something.
But it doesn’t feel like it, like enough, like anywhere near enough. Ugh. I seem to be hardwired to not be able to take in a sense of accomplishment. I strive and strive and then if I hit some target or goal I am like, okay, that’s nice. Next!
I am not sure this is a balanced approach to a life.
What I do know is that it is tiring. I was toast yesterday. And because I was tired not a lot got done. And I am a person with things to do.
One of the things I did do yesterday, walking by the building I used to work in, looking at the room I used to teach yoga to my managers in. Looking in from the outside and thinking about how unhappy I was at that job and how I used to walk during my breaks on the same sidewalk and try to imagine a life outside of and beyond that unhappiness.
And I made that life. I built it with the help of a lot of extraordinary people.
Now I am imagining a life beyond my current overwhelm, at least I am trying. Things were bumpy there for a few years after I left the job. There was striving and events outside my control. And I expect that will happen again as I transition next year out of the parts of my responsibilities that I am not suited for and do not enjoy. But I am not going to get there unless I can imagine it.
Writing, the garden, the apartment, strength and mobility, companionship. These are all areas I have ideas for.
I hold these thoughts and wonder with the way things are going out there in the world and this country I was born into if any of these things are possible now.
Who knows?
Most certainly, not me.
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