My mother once recounted a story from my childhood. Just three or four years old, I had come across a dead bird, probably a sparrow, in our front yard. After examining it with earnest concern, I announced, “It’s lost all its interest.” She found that amusingly original.
Letting go
That sage childhood observation popped into my mind after my “Salon Group” discussed letting go. Four of us meet every three weeks, sometimes in person, sometimes on Zoom. This week someone mentioned that they find themselves skimming past New York Times articles that they had previously read with enthusiasm and interest. We all felt similarly.
Sometimes a person confronted with six months to live, perhaps with an incurable disease, finds they lose interest in anything that doesn’t more-or-less wrap up within that same half-year. This is not a rational conscious act. It’s just how the mind and body respond to the situation. Perhaps I’m reacting similarly.
Cutting Back
A couple of years ago I’d read almost every online New York Times article with great interest. Many were about the latest madcap activity of the previous guy. His outrageous behavior infuriated most of my friends, and for a while intrigued me. But towards the end of his presidency, I had lost interest. My rationale was that it was just more of the same, a new variety of outlandish escalation. I feel similarly about what is happening in politics today. The GOP’s behavior undermining democracy is madness, maybe even criminal, but I’m losing interest. That amazes me. Why lose interest in something so frighteningly dangerous?
The Serenity Prayer
This distancing is partly because it’s completely outside of my control. It’s that old saying, “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Do I feel so powerless about Washington’s mad machinations that I’m letting go? It’s not that I don’t care. Quite the opposite. But nearing 82 I’ve limited time remaining and want to use it effectively.
Donations have moved away from national issues, such as the environment and social justice, to local city and county groups, helping immigrants, the hungry, and the homeless.
If the federal government is not prepared to regulate giant corporations that are systematically wrecking our society and the planet for their impersonal financial gain, contributions to the enfeebled nonprofit resisters (The Sierra Club, Friends of The Earth, etc.) are pretty much money down the drain. After all, this isn’t David slaying Goliath, a person against a person. It’s more like Odysseus and Scylla, a person against an immense, immortal demi-god.
My Smalling World
With more focus, I can still think globally and act locally. My in-person volunteer work has resumed at a local school with second graders. Family visits are regular and we’re even planning an extended family reunion next summer. I’m a member of three small discussion groups and still lead a monthly Alzheimer’s Caregiver Support Group. I enjoy regular walks with several close friends and meet monthly with our local library book club (though I must admit I don’t always read the assigned book if it’s about cruelty and brutality).
Now I’m mulling the idea of writing a third book, this time as a vehicle to help me clarify and convey what I have learned about this amazing experience we call life, and about this mixed bag called American politics and culture. Perhaps it will become a summary and extension of this blog.
I’m content, wrapping up, slowly losing interest. At some hopefully-far-away-moment, like the sparrow, I’ll lose it completely.
Are some of you feeling similar, disconnecting from the bigger, very important but terribly distant and intractable problems of our country and planet? Is your world shrinking along with your remaining time? What’s happening?
Please let me know. I’d enjoy comparing notes.
Thank you for reading,
Barry
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