Today's the day

The 584-million-mile journey

Me and my mom, from a birthday a very long time ago.

Let’s jump right in, shall we? It’s my birthday! Though I’m not the type to want a lot of fanfare, I (obviously) don’t avoid sharing such news. As far as I’m concerned, completing a 584-million-mile journey around the sun, at roughly 67,000 miles per hour, is worth celebrating.

But I have to be honest: this year’s trek took it out of me in ways others haven’t. Sometimes it feels like I’m moving at orbital speeds, and I’m not just referring to how time seems to accelerate as I get older. I’m talking pulling Gs, the ongoing sensation that I’m pinned in place by a preternatural force while all the blood is being pushed out of my head.

Despite a generally optimistic disposition, I am not invulnerable to the drone of looming crises, and if there is a soundtrack for the movie in which we are all currently cast, it’s dreadful. What will become of us? Can we adjust our course in the coming year? Are we our own worst enemies?

As humans, we arrive on the scene with generalized existential terror knit into our bones, and we dodge uncertainty for the rest of our days. Time was, we were on watch for predators shaped like lions, and tigers and marauding hordes. Now, it’s anything and everything we can’t predict. What we don’t know might hurt us, and we’re terrified!

You’re already aware that in response to the perception of ever-present threats we manufacture stress. That’s the g-force feeling most of us have experienced, the one that pushes the air out of our lungs and leaves us feeling both panic-stricken and immobilized.

What you might not know, however, is that another result of our unease is a tendency to seek greater levels of certainty by becoming more entrenched in our opinions. Looking for control, we oversimplify. Whatever it is we believe, we believe it harder, renouncing more nuanced thinking. Authoritarian ideas become attractive, and in our desperation to identify someone to blame for the chaos, we may even be more likely to latch onto conspiracy theories.

Sound like people you know and are still trying to love?

There’s a birthday connection I want to come back to now. (You didn’t think I was done reveling already, did you?) Happily, it’s not just related to my occasion, so you can get in on it, too.

As suggested in the concepts above, most of us are attuned to the downsides of stress. That it can generate physical and emotional damage is undeniable. In fact, though, there are two types of stress: debilitating distress and motivating eustress. The latter is what drives us toward a new personal best at the gym, what walks to the podium with us when we make an important speech, and what generates that excited anxiety when we start a new job. It lacks the overwhelm of its more detrimental cousin.

It occurs to me that this kind of tension exists at the dawn of everything—an idea, a seedling, a relationship, a presidency. Any emergence is preceded by a period of suspense, a time of anticipation for what this new creation might become. Will it wither or thrive? What will it ask of me, and will I be prepared to give it? What do I expect from it? What am I investing in now, before it’s born?

Fear is maladaptive when I give it more power than it deserves. Dread knows little of opportunity and snuffs out aspiration. Does my world immediately implode if tomorrow or the next day, I unclench my jaw, lower my shoulders, relax my assumptions, open my ears, exhale?

In the first two weeks of this month, I’ve found myself unexpectedly coming to terms with the loss of three friends, people I went to school with, worked with, laughed with, learned with. All were, by modern measures, too young to die, though I recognize there really is no standard for this. My heart longs for one more conversation with each of them.

A few days ago, a 20-year-old man was killed by Secret Service agents after attempting to shoot a former president of the United States. His aim untrue, he instead took the life of a young father. I’m sure both sets of parents long for one more conversation with their sons.

We arrive earthside impartial and with an apparent willingness to believe in the goodness of those around us. The longer we live, the more we are taught otherwise until at some point, we become the ones who impart the lessons. What are we teaching? How does our intransigence inform our future adults? Is it possible, like I want to believe, to learn something new?¹

I ask questions as a way of opening the door to possibility, of giving the light a way to get in. We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

We live in tangled times, but some of the threads are golden. The seasons move along. People we love arrive and leave, leave and arrive. Today, I will refresh the water I keep outside for the creatures that need it. I will have the privilege of working with a fabulous team in a new job. I’ll send cards of remembrance to families in mourning. I’ll bury my nose in the flowers on my table, send their incomparable scent into the tender places inside, then let it all go.

~Elizabeth

The deeply fragrant blossoms of a potted Plumeria plant given by a friend, as a simple cutting, a long time ago.

1. As a springboard to thinking about the human condition and the polarization of our perceptions in new ways, please consider taking time to watch the following three TED talks:

3 Ideas for Communicating Across the Political Divide | Isaac Saul

A New Understanding of Human History and the Roots of Inequality | David Wengrow

Why we are stuck - the attraction of a polarized America | Peter T. Coleman