What is life about, anyway? What is it for?
I’ve had so many aches and strange little things going on with my body lately, I keep wondering what the deal with a body is. Why the knee that tweaks, the mysterious skin infection, the allergies. The disintegration.
I went shopping with Coco yesterday at a store filled with beautiful, expensive clothes. While I was there I got a video from my fiscally conservative, restrained partner, cruising Lake Tahoe roads with his kids in a white Mustang convertible. He was clearly having a lot of fun.
I came away wondering … shouldn’t we always wear cashmere and drive a convertible, while we’re here?
I went to a workshop on the preservation and use of sacred spaces where we pondered the questions around fewer people attending church and what we’re supposed to do with the buildings. It seemed silly to debate whether or not we should remove the pews so we can square dance on a Friday night because no one is coming on Sunday morning. It felt like we were trying to find micro solutions for a macro inquiry.
Why are we here?
How and where do we find or create meaning?
The workshop took place over two days in a big, old former summer home that’s used as a wedding and meeting venue, on Lake Champlain. I didn’t think it was beautiful, I thought it was creepy. It felt old and oppressive. It made me wonder why we cling to the past with such tenacity, especially when it costs a lot of money to keep shoring up its relics.
I noticed people drank a lot of wine at dinner, maybe because it was free. I went down to the beach and sat and watched the sun set. I found the most perfect almost-square rock! The next morning I got up early and sat in the sun for a while. I don’t do well around a lot of people, especially when they’re debating things that mostly miss the point. My friend, Angie, whose name is a derivative of angel, arrived with a handful of bursting pink peonies to have coffee with me.
I came away wondering … shouldn’t we pay more attention to flowers and rocks and clouds and less to buildings and bodies that will (and should) crumble and return to ash one day anyway? Why are we so resistant to change when gorgeous, captivating change is happening around us all the time?
I do know that we should definitely spend more time with people named for angels.
The other day a famous man, former actor Treat Williams, who lived a few towns away and was known locally for his humility and kindness, Tweeted in the afternoon about the wonderful smell of grass while he mowed his lawn. A little later he went for a motorcycle ride—it was such a lovely evening—and was hit by a car and died.
Everything is a temporary construct: our bodies and our buildings. Shouldn’t we worry less about those extra five pounds, creaks and blemishes? Shouldn’t we always take the time to smell how great the air smells on a summer afternoon, après lawn mowing?
We are such itinerant wayfarers, moving through this place for so brief a time. Why do we fight? Why do we hate change? Why on earth do we have coasters, thirty two different kinds of shampoo, enough mugs to open a café?
Who the fuck cares if the table gets a water mark or our hair has more volume? The peonies are blooming! The hummingbirds have returned! The strawberries are in season!
Why are we always focused on all the wrong things?
Why can’t we accept what the new generations are doing or not doing? Have you seen the new Apple goggles? Test driven ChatGPT? In a few years life will be radically different than it is today. How dare we bemoan the lives of our young people, tethered to technology, when we created it and we handed it to them so we could fold the laundry and get dinner on the table and enjoy the drive to the mall in silence for once!
We did this. We did all of this.
Who cares if young people don’t want to go to church? How about instead of twisting ourselves into knots trying to figure out how to trick them into coming, we just let church naturally evolve into whatever it is that this new crop of humans wants and needs? Which very well might mean letting church die. Maybe the old ways just don’t make any sense in the new way of living.
If we sit around all day wringing our hands over whether or not we’re allowed to move the furniture inside a church we’ll miss the part where no one is coming and no one cares.
But I do know that humans are hardwired to find meaning in life. I do know that we do care, we just don’t, in 2023, care in the same manner, with the same rituals, that our grandparents and parents cared. And that is OK. That is totally, totally OK.
I care and my kids care and their friends care. About each other and the world and the creatures in it. Caring about life, trying to find meaning, trying to figure it out hasn’t ceased and never will.
Loving life, having fun, being kind, being playful hasn’t ceased and never will.
What is life for?
Is there a lesson embedded in every challenging situation? Does every pain in the ass person come custom-made with a small package of opportunity for our grow? When someone dies or is dying shouldn’t we stop for a while and ponder the implications? Rather than turn away in fear.
Why are we here?
I don’t know, there are lots of things changing right now. Graduating, moving, babies, weddings, work. Maybe all these aches are me molting. Maybe I’m getting rid of a bunch of stuff: ideas, things, habits I don’t need anymore. That’s probably it.
In truth I don’t want to sit around and talk about how we can cling to the old ways of doing things. I don’t want to have endless community forums around the use of old buildings in our towns. I want to talk with curiosity and joy about what’s coming. I want to be grateful for all the things people are doing right now. I want to live in the present moment, in everlasting awe of all of it, and I want the young ones to teach me what’s happening and I want that to inform my understanding of what’s going to happen and what should happen.
That’s all I know today.
Thanks for reading.
I love you, xomo
Please come up this way!
Well said. I live with "The peonies are blooming! The hummingbirds have returned! The strawberries are in season!" Creation is all there is and where it is evolving. We all must let go of physical attachments and be free. Flutter like a butterfly.