I didn't need to open my eyes to see the blacked out alarm clock or nearly dead iPhone that should have been charging. My shivery skin told me the snowstorm had knocked the power out while I was sleeping. As if life couldn't get any more bizarre these days we had also lost heat, electricity, and worst of all, WiFi. I did the thing where you lay there quickly assessing options while trying to develop a plan of attack for the moment your feet hit the floor. Things that went through my mind included:
1). Pulling the covers over my head and declaring Monday cancelled.
That's pretty much it. That's all I could come up with. I knew I had to go out to the barn to start the generator. I also knew I had carelessly left "old gas" in the generator which had likely separated over the winter rendering it useless. I also knew I don't really know how to start the generator on my best day.
I wanted to outsource reality. I wanted someone to peel my orange for me. I wanted a man to do it. (Yeah I did. I said it. Worst feminist ever.)
I wanted to run but I didn't. Or more accurately, I wanted to run but I couldn't.
I got up and did the things. I went out to the barn and fought with the generator. I turned on the fires. I cried the appropriate amount of tears and then pulled my shit together. The power came back on, the coffee got made, the week began with a sigh of relief and a blanket of perfect white snow. It was okay.
The power outage isn't really the point...the facing it is. We keep ourselves so busy that we somehow manage to live life while simultaneously avoiding it, don't we?
We start new jobs, put on additions, coach the kid's sports teams, have dinner parties, have affairs, get on airplanes, join committees, join gyms, buy houses, sell houses, advocate, socialize, volunteer all the while numbing ourselves juuuuust enough with a little bit of (*fill in blank with substance of choice*). We run and run and run and run.
Then one day there is a germ.
And in what feels like an instant the universe places a hand on each of our shoulders, firmly applies pressure and whispers in our ear "sit the fuck down".
No more running, no more distractions, no more avoidance. Just all of us, in this incredibly vulnerable and human time, face to face with the incredibly human and vulnerable aspects of our lives we may have been trying our best to turn away from. I understand completely why in Mandarin the word "crisis" is composed of two characters, one for danger and the other for opportunity. This is a reckoning in every sense. We are being asked to return back home to ourselves and tally things up.
Scratch that.
We are being given the chance to return back home to ourselves...and we are fools if we don't take advantage of the CTRL+ALT+DELETE life has offered us.
Now is our time to sift and sort. Now is our time to be together in an entirely different way. It is our time to sink deeper, listen to our knowing, care for the people we love, and emerge changed.
The things that are happening right now feel so intensely personal and global all at the same time don't they? We are going through all of this together but more separate than we have ever been. The dichotomy of it all is almost comical.
But imagine this.
Imagine we all just collectively take a seat for a bit.
We all take the time to sort and sift.
We all do the individual work for the benefit of the greater good and we all emerge better, braver, more resilient. The aggregate impact of that kind of effort could be (play on words fully intended) just what the doctor ordered for us humans.
Big six-feet-away hugs friends. I hope whatever is happening under your roof includes moments of pure joy, unplanned play, singing, snuggles and the kind of tears that remind you how lucky you are.
Pull up a chair kids. We are all in this together.
xo - juli
