The Tragedy and Travesty

We wake up to news about hurricanes of historical proportion, a terrible earthquake in Mexico, and the ramifications of North Korea's nuclear missile tests.  Young immigrants who were brought here by their parents and have never known life elsewhere are being used as political pawns. There's word that Equifax, one of the largest credit reporting agencies in the U.S., was subject to a breach of public data jeopardizing security information of 143 million consumers, then kept it secret until managers could sell their stock. The Republicans persist in their efforts to sabotage and repeal health care, and it has been revealed that Facebook was selling ads to Russian trolls during the election, helping to pave the path to the presidency for the unhinged huckster from reality TV who currently inhabits the office like a parasitic infection.

Okay, that's called useless venting. But doesn't it all seem overwhelming sometimes? Is anyone managing to sleep at night? Sometimes I want to crawl under the bed and scream.But I am trying sooo hard to stay constructively engaged and not succumb to despair.

The other day, an eloquent person to whom I provided a little help wrote this: I am fortunate to have found in you such a lifelong friend and fellow miner of meaning in the face of the dark abyss of human predicament.A miner of meaning...that does seem to fit. A very minor miner of meaning, to be sure, and one who has not yet found the gold, but yes, the quest is real, and we recognize each other. I am so grateful for fellow miners of meaning, seekers of truth, doers of kindness, fighters for justice, all who keep hope alive in whatever ways they can.

My dear friend Jeanne wrote: We will somehow get through this current mess. I am looking at choices for the future, and wondering how to re-invent myself, a necessity at the moment. And I think she's on to something, because change begins inside of us.

Anyway, on Monday I'll be flying to England to visit my daughter, and I wish I were doing so with greater peace of mind, but I'm happy to be checking out for a little while.Rainer Maria Rilke wrote these words in a letter to a young poet long ago, and they seem right for the moment:

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Here's to patience, and living everything, including that perhaps.

(Anxiety Girl comic from Natalie Dee)