What’s New? Do We Want to Know?

When my electric mixer stopped working the other night, I offered to pick up a new one. Then I added “if they even have these anymore.” My husband wasn’t sure what I meant. He asked, “What else would there be?” The only response I had was a great big shrug. Because WHO KNOWS?

I couldn’t imagine—but couldn’t deny the possibility of—a whole new way of whipping cream or mixing batter. It’s an older-person thing to point out the world has changed so much, but I ask your indulgence. Cars that start without a key and are put in gear by turning a knob. A phone as a wallet. Streaming, not cable. (Or an antenna!) That’s the small stuff—all of which we navigate against a flood of unprecedented events and vast uncertainty. And that bigger stuff?

It’s Scary Sometimes

I grew up in Colorado, and still feel a connection to communities, landscapes, and people there. This enlivens my sensitivity to news of wildfire disasters, now larger, hotter, and more frequent. Living in river valleys in Vermont has made me witness to flooding—several times, catastrophic. Climate change is having its way with us and in terms of increased rainfall Vermonters have a front row seat. 

Within the last few years, smoke from fires in Canada has brought us days with air quality alerts and without long views. It is noticeably warmer. Last winter, the temperature never dipped below zero in Burlington. I remember more than once in my life leaving for work in the morning with the thermometer at forty below.  Memorial Day and Labor Day were in the past a good guideline for the timing of the last and first frost. All this is shifting.

Being older gives some of us first-hand/in-the-body knowledge about what is different and what we are losing. This knowledge is vivid and felt. Real, not hypothetical. It’s also sad.

Big problems require big solutions, largely outside the hands of one individual. Only small decisions are within one’s control. Voting matters! There are organizations taking on various issues, but slow change isn’t easy to perceive. 

Continuing

Being powerless is hard. There are times I get to the big fear: The future! Will climate catastrophes and/or political upheaval bring a bleak existence? Or an end to our existence?

That’s when I need to slow down. I witness my racing thoughts, nervous tics around my eyes, a sense of tightness in the muscles up my neck. My face wants to scrunch to block dark imaginings. I breathe in and out. Let this dissipate. And then—as often as I can remember—I continue to do the things suggested in this article.

That is the how of calming my nervous system and finding some joy in my life. The why is better explained by others. For one, Robin Wall Kimmerer. She wrote:

Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

Now the Good News!

There are still electric mixers. I can find delight in whipped cream on freshly picked berries.

I find connection with others through conversations (including those in the Gatherings). Through humor and touch. I marvel at my granddaughter and her wild imagination; am intoxicated by the smell of wet flowers in my gardens. These pleasures are life-giving. The words of Howard Thurman speak to me:

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Such is my aim.

—Susan McDowell

—more of my blog