Watching the news recently has been hard. If you engage intellectually and emotionally with even half of the stories, it’s more exhausting than usual. There’s so much vitriol, pain, and callousness; tuning into it makes a wave of negative feelings well up in me. Staying afloat feels hard to do when engaging with the news means taking on water.
I’ve also been sick lately. Nothing major… but a cold, an ear infection that won’t go away, and a broken rib and sprained muscle… I’m sick of being sick and feel tired every day. It also makes me feel isolated and lonely. Keeping your head above water feels hard to do when it feels hard to handle the basics and you aren’t sure when it gets better.
Still—there’s loving myself enough to patiently let my body heal,
the indulgence of a good book and a long steamy shower,
my friend coming over armed with VapoRub and Advil and sleeping on my couch the night I called her crying…
There’s sitting in the grass, on a beautiful Chicago day, next to my dogs—all of us enjoying the sun, the wind, and watching leaves fall.
There’s the smell of flowers in my apartment when I wake up in the morning,
a sweet text exchange with a man I met in Paris,
the excitement of the start of another school year…
There’s how elegant and beautiful the moon looks in the sky at dusk,
the soothing feeling when a hot day breaks into a cooler evening,
thoughtful posts from friends about tricky topics,
getting lost for a little bit in a favorite song, on repeat,
the joy that pops into me when I open my door at the end of the day and see billowy clouds through my apartment window.
Last weekend, I felt pretty overwhelmed. People were angry about people kneeling to protest racism and it broke my heart. I let myself plunge into an internet wormhole and it left me drained. When I took my dogs on a walk, I saw homeless people on almost every block and wondered why people weren’t angrier about homelessness. I wondered whether homelessness would ever get better, whether racism would ever get better. I wondered whether change was possible. I started to feel a lot of despair. I stopped and gave a man sitting on the street some cash. He looked at me and said, “Are you OK?”
It caught me off guard and I said, “Excuse me?”
He repeated himself, earnest and clear, “Are you OK?”
“Yes,” I said, and gave him a little smile.
“Good. Got to keep it together. There’s a lot to do.” He smiled warmly, “Thank you for this. Have a good night.”
“Thank you too. Goodnight.” I smiled again.
And we went our separate ways. It’s amazing how tiny acts, small things, and brief interactions can lift us up and buoy us against the onslaught. His kindness during our exchange staved off the rising tide of hopelessness I was feeling and gave me peace. Calm washed over me as I walked away.
There was grace there. There was power in the exchange between us.
