What A Curious Life We Have Found Here Tonight

[eyesroll]

(a bit of self-indulgent cross-posting from my blog; lyrics by Neutral Milk Hotel)

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone...

Today, I played chess with a stranger. OK, that's not entirely accurate -- I got resoundingly beaten at chess by a stranger, but that is not at all unexpected when I play chess. I am an abysmal chess player. Not "the horsey goes where?" type of bad, but let's just say you don't want me strategizing your next war.

But still, for 30 minutes in a coffee shop, I attempted to play some chess. And in many ways, for that 30 minutes, that stranger and I had a perfect relationship. It served a purpose, we made a connection, and then, it was over.

I've been giving a lot of thought, lately, to the transient nature of relationships, and of life in general.

It's all ephemeral, really. Things we think are permanent, aren't -- in our own narrow worldview, when our marriages crumble, when our loved ones die, when life takes us in directions we don't expect, it's our sense of permanence, shattered.

These things never were meant to be permanent, anyhow. But it doesn't matter to us -- we want them to be with us forever. That's why, I suppose, we as humans are so focused on endings -- doing what we can to keep our world from unraveling and fearing what will happen as it invariably comes undone. We on the left fear what will happen when Roe v. Wade gets overturned, or when Social Security goes bankrupt. Certain members of the Religious Right simultaneously worry about and welcome the End Times.

We all worry, quietly, about life without our pets and our parents and our partners...but at what expense does that worry come?

I think we spend so much time fearing things ending that we forget what's going on in the moment. Sure, we're in some politically dark times, and many of us are going through personally dark times as well. But, I think, we're forgetting the light.

My worry came at the expense of connections -- my connections to other people, to the world around me. And we need connections, I think, to stay grounded in a chaotic world. Animals have their contact calls; even computers have their ping-and-reply scripts. They understand.

I've been focusing recently on rebuilding old connections, and starting up new ones. I'm beginning to connect to others not just politically, as I had been, but personally...be it through chess with a stranger or a long talk with an old friend I'd been neglecting. I'm connecting through music, which I'm not sure I'd ever done before. I'm connecting through just walking in the rain, as the cold drops and wind smack my flesh, but I'm still revelling in the feeling. There is much beauty in the world, even in all of its chaos and trauma, and I'm seeing much of it now, perhaps for the first time.

And, while I do have an eye to the future, and am trying to figure out what I can do to help fix the mess at least 49 percent of us realize we're in...I'm not going to worry about endings anymore, because everything does end. Life is too short to fixate on the what-ifs and the fear and even the happy endings...but especially the endings that just are. An ending I once feared came to be, and I found the fear was far worse than the ending itself.

No. I'm not going to fear anymore.

I'm going to connect.

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see...