Get Outside
There are twenty-one days until the 2024 election. Looking at the last seven days of our lives, four of them contained crying. Wait. Make that five. We are doing our best to hold it together despite living within the eyewall of political and environmental upheaval. Too much college school work, dropping a pan filled with grease, Google Chrome crashing and losing saved open tabs… these are the reasons given for the tears, but the truth is it’s so much deeper than this. We try to remember to breathe and step out of the blast radius as best as we can (goodbye social media), but where once we were floating on the surface, it now seems we’ve transferred into a submersible.
Parenting in 2024 is like trying to camp during climate change, but realizing you only packed a light sweater. Smartphones, social media, COVID, global warming, hysterical election cycles, gender identity issues… there wasn’t one discussion or guidance office pamphlet that prepared us for how to navigate any of this. Sure, I grew up during the Cold War and the television had to ask my parents if they knew where their children were, but despite the bootstrapping resourcefulness of our generation, our lack of preparation for these times is a fist clenched gut punch. There is no, “Well when we were your age…” anecdotes to help us understand how to navigate. The closest we have is the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 when my grandmother slept in the dining room with her father and brothers, but even then there weren’t politicians telling them the pandemic was a hoax.
My best solution is to kick everyone outside and into nature. There are forces much bigger and older than our idiot selves reminding us that the balance of life is a constant process, and thankfully, they are the actual ones in charge. Standing in a grove of trees or at the ocean’s edge there is a powerful, comforting quiet which holds us. Breathing comes easier and if we give ourselves the space to tune in, past the currents of fear, we can access the subtle sense that we are putting down something heavy we’ve been carrying for a long time. Perhaps for generations. The best way to access all of this is in silence, breathing deeply and preferably holding hands.
I love that we are a family of creatives who engage with the world at an intimate level. Our superpower is carefully observing what happens around us, recognizing patterns, then combining our observation with the divine creative force to transmit a unique artistic creation. But to do so, we must stay finely tuned to what is going on around us, even when that channel is playing way too loudly and filled with a cacophony of pain. The secret is to remember we can always change the station.
There are twenty-one days until the 2024 election. If we are all going to get through this, we must get outside, breathe and bend at the knees. Polls be damned, we have no real way of knowing what is coming next. But whatever happens, we will be better able to navigate it with lungs filled with sea air and the sound of the wind in our ears. When we get in nature and listen for the quiet voice of the Divine within, we will find our way.