{Echo Returns} What comes next: gratitude and grace or garbage?

“I want to feel relief, I want to feel the sun on my face, everything feels so close that I fear I’ll miss the instant when this is over — that one day I’ll look around and find the moment of catharsis never happened because life isn’t a movie and it just chugs along with its assortment of thrills and sorrows and longueurs and I’ll have to wrest that big moment from looking at lines on a graph, lines I yearn for with all my soul but can’t actually feel in my body. What if the pandemic ends and I’m just my same little garbage self? What if I’m no better than I was?”

Lydia Kiesling, “The Return of My Garbage Self”, The Cut

---

Writing (and some of life) still feels… meh. 

I’m sitting in my writing spot this morning—not writing. Scrolling through emails and articles. (Thank god for The Ann Friedman Weekly.) Questioning what, if anything, to write about and when to write and publish it (I usually schedule my reflections for the 7am hour, but we are past that, so what does it even matter?) Looming on the edge of one of a hundred mini existential breakdowns I’ve had over the past year about the meaning of life, why we are all here, and what the hell we are even supposed to do with ourselves. I manage to keep it together by continuing to read articles. If I focus my attention on other people’s words and ideas, I keep my own at bay. 

Then, I come across an article in TAFW linked with these words: “On meltdown and freakout in the post-pandemic age.” Ah, now someone is speaking my language. I’m looming on the edge, remember. I click the link. It takes me to an article in The Cut titled “The Return of My Garbage Self.” I’m definitely on the right track.

It’s cleverly, wonderfully written, as if her consciousness is streaming onto the page (this reflection may or may not have been inspired by it) and she’s saying lots of things I can relate to. Except the stuff about kids. I don’t have kids. 

My favorite part is when a long paragraph with very little punctuation leads with the line, “Like, what if I’m pushing my cart in the grocery store and someone is standing smack in the middle of the aisle and they are texting and immovable and wearing a shirt that says “Fuck you very much”?” Already, I can imagine myself there in the grocery store, frustration rising, contempt beginning to gnaw at the edges of my mind and mouth, debating whether or not to be a bitch about it or to go to another asile and she brilliantly captures what I’m certain will be oh so close to what goes through my mind. 

She questions “Will I be like, I’m alive with joy because thousands of people aren’t dying every day…” or “Or is it going to be more like, millions of people died and in my country, they died so gratuitously… and side note I look like shit and now I’m here in the grocery store with this asshole…”

Which one will it be? 

Will we be able to maintain our gratitude for all that we still have and know that the small things that used to drive us crazy really aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things? Will we have grace and empathy for others because we will recognize that we have no idea what they went through or what they lost and maybe they are just having a bad day? Or will we go back to being annoyed at every other human who doesn’t behave the way we think they should, verbally assaulting them (in our minds) with words of vitriol and disdain, assuming they were sent by Satan himself to ruin our lives? 

Will we be better people once this is all said and done? I have no idea. 

I want to have hope that could be the case, but I also fully recognize the state of our country and our world. We might pull together (generally speaking) in the worst of times, but we always find ourselves right back where we were before—indulging our garbage selves.

---

Add your Echo:

Do you find you are more gracious and forgiving in the (almost) post-pandemic world or the same as you were before?

(Reply or tap the heart to share your thoughts)