This is for our grandchildren, the ones who’re starting school mostly in front of a screen.
Rather, this is for all of us. Those of us who’ve watched, for example, the entire video of a raccoon who got a can stuck on his nose and ran madly around while a young man threw various covers over it to hold it still, finally gave up, drove away, came back with wire cutters, cut the can off, and watched the terrified raccoon scramble off into the woods. I’m writing this for those of us who’ve devolved, who listen to a whole concert played on a contraption made of 2,000 marbles. And for those of us who’ve watched for maybe five minutes a Facebook friend’s two new kittens crawl darlingly over her face.
You know who you are. And you know what I mean. I have analyzed this at length. I think humans are a giant mechanism—the music-playing marbles?-- that require others for energy and focus. When that disappears, we have nothing to push against. The music slows, the music stops.
Dear grandchildren who have to get up every morning and stare at a screen when what you need is the live energy of your teacher in front of you, telling you to quit staring into space. Asking you to repeat back what she just said. You are missing a lot. You are missing the live energy of humans. You are missing what comes through the skin as well as out of the mouth. We give each other much more than we think. We give each other energy, intention, modeling, and personality. A lot of this comes through the air to us. As do viruses. Which is why you’re sitting in front of your screen.
My thoughts: first of all, it can be really helpful to keep in mind all the others who are sitting as you are right now, trying hard but getting distracted. And then expand that thought to those who’re really suffering and dying from the virus. Whose homes have been swept away by fire. Who aren’t able to study. And those who don’t have the tools you have, your nice computer, your understanding parents. Not to compare yourself, but to feel your connectedness to the whole troubled world!
And all those people you think are doing great, while you can barely keep your head on straight? How do you know they’re doing great?
Every time I’ve had a really hard time, I’ve tried to remind myself that nothing is permanent. This trouble will pass. And—sad news, but true—I will also pass, and so will you. Given that, as the poet Mary Oliver wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver
Don’t take that as a command to charge forth and change the world. Don’t take that as an admonition not to waste time. I would never write a line of a poem if I weren’t pretty good at wasting time. What seems to be necessary is to have an intention.
What I mean by intention is to have some sense of the person you wish to be. I don’t mean anything about your grades, or your successful completion of your degree. I mean, maybe, what would you like to say about yourself at the end of your life? I’m a lot closer to that than you are, so I speak from some authority. I don’t mean what others might say about you. That will matter less and less, the older you get. I mean what will YOU say about yourself?
Just keep that in mind, tucked away in a corner, and when you’re feeling lost and unfocused, bring it up, look at it, remind yourself. Go back to playing games on your phone for a while, but also remember your whole life, what you hope for it, how much room there still is to become.
I could say the same for myself. And do.