Let the Light In
I’m so filled with words (“I know words. I have the best words.” – Donald Trump) about what is happening and I really want to write something poignant about this experience, but I feel like the thoughts are all jumbled up in my head. I find it hard to concentrate lately and things start to feel like Groundhog Day after a while. So I have no idea what I’m going to write, but I’m paying for this website and I am fiscally responsible. We are very fortunate to not be worried about work or not having a home or food or what to do with the tiny humans they call children. We are beyond grateful, as I know there is a lot of suffering happening right now. We are on the same roller coaster as some people I think. We have good days and then complete meltdowns. We want the world to return to normal. Or maybe a better new normal?
I heard something on NPR this morning about the “Greatest Generation,” who were the people that lived during the Great Depression and World War II. They really powered through tough times and that shaped them into resilient people. Will this generation become resilient because of Covid-19? And of course there are the protests by such amazing people bringing awareness of racism and inequality in our country. Two such profound experiences happening all at once. How could the world not be a completely different place when this is all over? Or if it ends at all?
Will we step up and allow the change to take place or will we hang on to what is familiar out of fear and ignorance? I personally don’t care for change. It is uncomfortable and Lord knows I don’t like to be uncomfortable. But in this case, I am really feeling the lyrics from the late great Leonard Cohen:
“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
I think I can say for sure that there is a giant crack in the world right now and if you look around, you can see the light coming in.
I’ve heard wonderful stories of enormous generosity, neighbors getting to know their neighbors, siblings becoming closer, people discovering new things to enjoy (like power gardening!), strangers caring about the health and safety of others, people of all races proclaiming that Black Lives Matter, creative solutions for ways to conduct business, scrumptious bread baking, grandparents getting the gift of time to spend with their first grandchild, couples working through hardship, Golden Retrievers providing constant love and joy for their parents, awareness of the value of social connection, people having time to ponder what is important in life, and I’m sure the list will go on and on. I want so much for this list to go on and on. For the light to become so bright that it erases the darkness that so many people have endured for too long.
Not too many years ago, if someone had told me I’d get to spend a few months at home without working or any social obligations and I got to watch TV all day and eat whatever I wanted to and wear elastic pants on a daily basis and forgo the makeup, I would have been ecstatic. The only thing missing might be frosty alcoholic beverages, but that all seriously (and embarrassingly) used to be my fantasy. Now granted, I have spent a few hours here and there watching bad daytime TV. Did you know that Magnum P.I. is on for four hours a day??? Four hours!!! And I have found elastic pants to be quite a necessity. I am happy to say though that I honestly no longer enjoy a life absent of human connection and purpose. I need to feel like I am contributing to this world whatever that looks like. And I really want people in my life and I want to be in theirs. This transformation from wannabe hermit to productive member of society seems like a little bit of light to me.
There’s a scene in one of my all time favorite movies, Trading Places, where the Jamie Lee Curtis character, Ophelia, asks the Dan Aykroyd character, Louis, to give her his hands. She looks at his freshly manicured nails and soft hands and says, “Never done a hard day’s work in your life.” I won’t ruin the movie if you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t, this is a really great time to see it!), but Louis has lived his life as a very privileged man and makes a lot of money without doing much work. I feel like right now, we are getting a really good lesson in priorities and what our society values. A doctor goes into tremendous debt plowing through med school because she wants to help people only to discover that in order to make any kind of living, she has to see 50 patients a day for about two and a half minutes each and is constantly at war with insurance companies who only want to pay about 37 cents per visit and reject every test she orders and she lives in fear of being sued for malpractice because she doesn’t have time to actually treat her patients. It’s no wonder we are running short of doctors and during this health crisis, we are in danger of not having enough staff or equipment to treat all of the people who are sick. Then there are the teachers that we paid a pittance to educate our children while we all worked at our jobs (well not my children because I just can’t imagine having children, but that’s another story). People can’t really go back to work or effectively work from home if they can’t send their children to school. And then there’s the guy who invents an app that makes fart noises for every occasion and he makes a million dollars selling it to a large tech company. Is a fart machine on your phone more important than doctors and teachers? Our healthcare and education systems are broken. We do not place value on them. We take them for granted and think we shouldn’t have to pay for them. I think we are getting a glimpse of the importance they play in our lives. Maybe that’s another bit of light?
When Trump was elected in 2016, I cried. I don’t cry over politics. I understand that Hillary was an undesirable candidate and there were people that wanted change in the government after Obama. I had just thought we were on this really lovely trajectory of progress. Of course that was the progress that aligned with my values and I’ve learned that not everyone shares my values (and that’s OK!). I cried though because this was just such an awful man. Not long ago, the Republican Party touted themselves as the party of family values and then that was all just erased and Trump could do no wrong. I don’t care if he’s been married three times, but his rhetoric is so filled with hate and divisiveness. He’s lied maybe 18,000 times during his presidency and no one seems to care. I feel like the little boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes yelling that this guy is buck naked (isn’t that a horrid thought) and no one hears me. On June 15th, the Supreme Court ruled that people could not be fired from their jobs for being LGBTQ. With Trump’s court pick Neal Gorsuch writing the opinion! I know that there are people who have religious issues with people who are LGBTQ, but it is just not their job to police where those people work. I guarantee you there are people who don’t want to work with bigots either, but those bigots are certainly protected by the Constitution. And I know that Trump isn’t listening to the protestors and hasn’t addressed the Black Lives Matter movement, but I don’t know many other people who are not listening. There is something happening there and my hope is that finally, change will happen. It really must happen. I don’t know what will happen in November, but I am seeing cracks everywhere in this Trump presidency. And that’s a whole lot of light coming in.
I hope when all is said and done, that we can be called the “Next Greatest Generation” in future textbooks (or I guess on Wikipedia since I don’t even know if they will have textbooks in the future, hmmm…will they even have Wikipedia? What about donuts? Will they have donuts in the future?). Let’s really work on that shall we?
