Wondering: What do I do when all I have is wondering?

#9

With my last ‘wondering’ essay – that misguided eff-fest, circlejerk of a lost and angry cry into the night, that clear illustration of the battle between my desire to love and my anger and fear that only divides (I read somewhere: manage your reaction but not your emotion, and in that essay I managed neither) - I’ll close what is suddenly, unexpectedly, inexplicably, in my mind Part One. I’m leaving that final wondering (was it even?) as an uffda. Own my stuff. Because we all have it. Today, I’ll do my best to move into Part Two. Full disclosure? I did not see a Part Two coming, and have literally no idea why there is a Part Two or what it will bring.

What is it to wonder when all I have is wondering? 

Because life has stepped in. And as a result, I’m faced with wondering that, no matter how I turn it upside down, I do not have answers for. Sick with that pneumonia and isolated, I’ve had much time for contemplation, and yet in many ways I’m still where I started, or even deeper into not knowing than when I began. Yah, I do have little occasional thoughts that appear wearing capes and serving as fractional answers, and these little caped things sometimes even help my heart (or at least lay a cool hand upon it), but mainly I’m at sea in an ocean of I don’t know. It’s the most at sea I’ve ever been.

I do not for a moment believe I’m alone.

What do I do when the old tools don’t seem like the right tools?

I’ve always been able to figure out what to do next. At least I’ve always been able to figure out the first action in what I know will turn out to be a long unfolding series of what to do nexts. But now? This is a time where I simply do not know. I do not know.

Pausing

One of my favorite quotes is from Toni Morrison, 

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. (...) We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

(There’s more to the quote, which I’ll attach at the bottom because it changes things some, but this piece of the quote is bandied about a lot.)

Another is from my dad,

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

They’ve both been sort of heart mantras for me. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken issue with them. 

Yes, some folks I know have already dived into a buffet of getting-going options. To action, to blame, to analysis, to optimism, to love, to community, and even, I s’pose, to active escape. 

And yet, while I have paused ever, EVER, so briefly at each of these stations, mainly I’ve returned (if I’m to extend this metaphor) to sit, often intentionally alone, at my table with an empty plate. I’m not pouting, I’m just sitting. Because I just haven’t been ready to eat. Nor, with a few exceptions, have I been ready to eat with other people.

Here’s what I’m trusting: I’m in a time where this is necessary. We are in a time where we all need to listen deeply into our own hearts. Some of us, like those above, have been hearing clear and definitive answers from the get go, and that’s ok. But many of us, often for the first time, find ourselves totally and completely lost. 

And that’s ok, too.

I mean it isn’t. What’s happening isn’t ok. Sometimes I want to howl it at the moon: this is not ok. 

And yet, here we are. Ok or not, here we are. And my friends? I would never ever wish this feeling of utter lostness on my worst enemy (whoever that is). 

So, what I mean is it’s ok to be lost right now. Because while we’ve been told the last few years what’s coming, and so it’s not hard to do our fair share of imagining forward based on what we’ve been told, it’s still more than probable we’re headed into territory we simply cannot truly imagine, no matter how hard we may try. And to draw a map too soon is to rely on data (literal and figurative) that simply may not work. And to draw a map before we’ve done the important work of experiencing being lost, and our loss, and how we navigate that, and then what it brings us, well, premature drawing may hand us an unreliable pen.

We are in an in between

Though my insides see it coming. Every now and then, and this is the only way I can describe it, I turn my head slightly to the side and there it is, a huge silver train bearing down on me. Us. It’s at least two stories tall, shiny metal, bright headlights, and it’s bearing down on almost everyone I know and love and almost everyone I don’t know but also love. 

This train is coming, and it’s coming at us fast, and when that vision happens, I gasp. I freeze. A cold wind rushes through me. The terror living in me exists in real time. And then I try to remember to breathe.

And then, because I’m human and because this train is still approaching the station, it passes.

It can happen any time of day or night. The night is the worst.

I know I’m not alone. I know so many of us right now are terrified, despondent, despairing. It’s what the anger’s covering up. It’s a set of feelings that I wonder and wonder what to do with, and I just don’t know. That first week after the election? I have never experienced what it must feel like for something deep within you, something vital, to give up.

Who are your people in this moment?

At different times in life, I’ve learned different people feel like the right ones to join me in my moment. There is no right or wrong here, as long as I listen and trust.

That first week, when I was sick literally and metaphorically, I did not venture out. I had no interest in venturing out. The only venturing I did was to the lake boulder with my girl. But I got the doorbell ring, the text I’m standing at the end of your road, the calls and emails and messages. I had nothing for anyone, but all those anyones were there, and especially when I look back, I am so grateful for that.

A couple weeks into the beginning of this upcoming reality, I reached out to my old (meaning former, not old, unless you think I’m old and then, well) and beloved therapist. Oh how quickly we un-graduate. Here’s what I wanted to know: how do I navigate a time when I have no hope for the future? How do I navigate a time when I have lost faith in humanity? What are the tools? Where do I find the toe holds, so I can take the next step? Which are the age-old voices I turn to?

She’s twenty years older than I am, give or take, though honestly age is a construct, and she and I feel the same to me, peers, though one is wiser. (and it’s not me) (I’m not self-denigrating, it’s ok, she’s a star). 

In our long conversation where she turned off the clock, here’s what she said. Well, here’s one of the things she said:

It’s ok to not know right now. 

In this time where we’re facing both the sheer number of people who chose what they chose (including the fact that these choosers largely look like me), as well the quick impact of what they chose - that our entire governmental structure is primed for action with almost no checks and balances and it’s intended direction, destruction, of itself, of anyone who doesn’t look or act like it, of our environment, has been made profoundly clear - it is ok to not know yet what to do.

She said, I know a lot of people who are home, paused. She said, it’s ok. She said, Amy, this is huge.

But what do I do?

But I’d called her for a reason. I was throwing her a lifeline I needed her to throw back to me in some form. I already knew I needed to pause, and though it was a huge comfort to hear from her that it was beyond ok to stand still, to get my bearings in the enormity of what’s happening, I also knew my dad and Toni Morrison would eventually guide my hand to the map, and there was a blank space leading up to then.

Pausing in the unknown and knowing what to do are a paradox that requires trust, aren’t they? Because taking time to reground in this specific time is critical for our ability to move forward in any meaningful way, and yet the clock is also swinging all of its hands in circles, forward, forward.

As we talked, each of us coming from where we were in this lost time, I realized we all must navigate our lives alone. At the end of the day, what we do is up to us. It’s true. And yet. I also knew that at the other end of the line was a human I trusted, and though, yah, in many ways we’re alone, we also are not, and sometimes we have to put on our Big Momma pants to push to create and claim and mine our connections. And that sometimes this is an active and vulnerable choice we must make if it’s going to happen. And it may not.

So I said, but how do I begin to navigate losing my hope, my belief in our ability to evolve as a species?

And here’s the first thing she offered

She said a possible way to navigate this moment is to not think of time as linear. She held out her left arm horizontally. She pointed to her fingers and said, This is the future. She pointed to her elbow and said, This is the past. She said that lots of people are talking about this time we’re in right now in terms of the future and the past and how each and both impact where we are and where we’re headed. 

But then she put her arm perpendicularly into the air like this (but without all the magical lights):

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

She said, This is the Buddhist way of thought, or one anyway: We are here now.

She pointed at the length of her whole arm to illustrate its perpendicular mark in time versus the continuum of before.

All we need to know right now is what we do in this now.

She didn’t mean to be passive or escape or hide. She didn’t mean don’t prepare or don’t plan. She didn’t mean anything specific in terms of response. She meant, Amy, inhabit this moment right now, as fully as you can, and navigate it the best (and most Amy-like, my words not hers) you are able.

I understood from this moment’s arm that tomorrow was the next arm. And then there would be the arm after. And, inhabited fully, each day would dawn in the way it would dawn, and I would, if I let myself, wake up to it and do my best to inhabit it. 

It made me think of a saying my old pastor loved. It was meant to be spoken aloud. 

Be here now.

Be here. 

Be. 

As we navigate this in between, do we even matter?

To be, truly be, helps with this next part, I think. Perhaps you, too, have been wondering what in the world matters? How what you do matters. Or if it matters. I don’t mean matters in an egotistical way. Ironically, considering where we are, the time for ego is behind us. Instead, I mean matters in the deepest of ways. The heartest of ways. The this is what I feel truest for the world ways. 

With one election, our country has made the choice that our government and all its extensions will turn away from the marginalized and the environment. The train is coming, and after all so many have worked to do in terms of humanity and love, the people of this nation in their majority have chosen this. So the question, does what we do matter, feels real to me. While it could be self-pitying, that’s the ego again, it also can be despairingly real.

Have you been wondering this, too? 

It’s a debilitating wondering in the face of what’s transpired. And yet, to move forward in a way that sustains, I wonder if this wondering is critical. If we must grapple with it until we and it are on the ground, like the story of Jacob with God, and we make our way through the metaphorical night to wherever that grappling leads us.

I don’t have an answer yet.

What is here right now?

One of my heartest of ways to be here now, especially these last eight years, has been my writing. When I was younger, I wanted to write The Great American Novel and go on book tour and all that stuff. Now, though I still want my writing to find its home, this desire comes from a very different place, one I don’t have much of a role in other than moving my fingers, listening, wrestling, learning, repeat, moving my fingers. 

Over the past years, I’ve been involved in projects that felt like they kept tapping my shoulder and not the other way around. I often said no, thought with not much success. This writing has sprung from my deep support for our shared desire for love, and my deep belief that if we engage in this work, we birth the ability to see and support one another as whole and equal. 

So, of course, over the last couple weeks I’ve wondered, if that hasn’t mattered so far, how does it matter now? 

I do not know.

Aside from that one largely unhelpful eruption a couple weeks ago, the question has brought my writing to a standstill. To a pause that has felt like it might be forever.

But be here now. I have no idea who, but someone in the recent past told me, with the kind of energy I listened to, that I must read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. So it was in my hands these past few weeks. In it, Gilbert says that our projects want us to complete them. I have sat with that.

And so, with my arm up and down and the possibility that our projects want us to complete them, what I know right now is I’ve decided I will do my best to see Wondering through to wherever it leads. 

To do this, I’ve had to set my timer for 20 minutes a day. In a life where I normally write for many hours, twenty minutes is like a heartbeat. But it’s helped me get to the computer while I pause with all of the earlier wonderings of why and what and how and if. 

I’m going to let it lead me. I’m going to be. here. now. You may come along with me or not, I’m always glad of the community and grateful. But this is a very personal time for each of us, and it’s ok either way. Really. Just know that everything I write is both a personal exploration and also an offering to open whatever door might feel alive and now and be and here for you.

Really. 

***

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And here’s the entire Toni Morrison quote:

No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge—even wisdom. Like art.

(The Nation)