Precedented

My current mood, as captured in a brief exchange with my son:

"Dad, what do you want to do?"

"Sit around and be bored."

"Really?"

"I don't know."

His mood has been pretty bad lately, too. Extra clingy. Always complaining about being bored. Easily provoked. This morning was particularly bad. He simply woke up angry. Nothing satisfied or made him happy. He desperately wanted something to make him happy, yet everything he did undermined his desire. He made impossible demands, then when they couldn't be met he would yell and throw things and tantrum, which just raised the anger level of everyone and left him even more upset. It was a self-defeating cycle. Finally I just had to give him a big, long hug and tell him everything was going to be okay.

I just described the kid version of our current moment, but with a few little changes to translate into an adult setting I might as well have been describing myself. My anxiety right now is the highest it's been since this pandemic began in March. And all that anxiety keeps leaking out as anger. Each day it seems I find a new a way to express it that is somewhat self-destructive, causing new tension and giving me more reasons to be anxious. So I remain stuck in this funk of foulness and can't seem to find my way out of it, no matter how I try. Sometimes it even feels satisfying to do something intentionally self-destructive, just to give it a way to vent.

And I seem to have turned to this blog as a place to process, as a theme is emerging with recent posts. I keep hoping that expressing my weariness in writing will help me get past it. I'm sure finding a way to be creative, to create, would help. And more conversations with more people. And, as I wrote a week ago, more wonder. I just need to keep clinging to these thoughts in the face of the negative ones. Of course, the problem isn't knowing what to do, it's mustering the desire to actually do them when languishing in misery feels so much more natural and even instinctively right. It's what happens automatically, and anything more positive is so much more work. Feelings of happiness escape me right now. Attempts at diversion divert, but don't provide joy. All I seem to see and feel is the negative.

My attempt to illustrate 2020 vision

Row, row, row your butt

Gently toward your dream.

Warily, warily, warily, warily

Life will make you scream.

2020 motto: Please scream inside your heart

Oh, I'm sure I am screaming inside my heart. The problem is that the screams keep leaking out.

To move past this, it's important to also remember that this, too, shall pass.

Experiencing an emotion is kind of like going through high school: when you're in it, nothing feels more important. But when it's over, you're left wondering what the fuck that was all about.

Anyone who reads fantasy and fairy tales will be familiar with the idea captured in this quote:

Back then, the fay fold roamed the countryside freely, hiding from humans but still gleefully meddling in their affairs. . . . 

That was centuries ago, however. So many seasons had passed since. So much had changed. Humans had changed. They expanded, exploded, built vast cities connected by seemingly infinite stretches of road, crossing and curving like the veins on a leaf. They spread like moss on a wet rock, replacing forests with foundries, wildflowers with wheat stalks, wooded trails with iron rails. They created machines and factories that ate fire and belched smoke. They took to the mountains, the oceans, the skies. . . . 

The fay folk felt it, this sea swell, this shift. Magic and wonder began to drain from the world. The amount of dust produced by the fairy springs began to diminish. Before long, it seemed as if their entire way of life was in danger, foretelling a world where there was no such thing as their kind. . . . 

"There's no imagination anymore . . . No imagination, no wonder. No wonder, no magic. Simple as that. The humans have only themselves to blame."

― John David Anderson, Granted

It's the idea that things are worse now than they have ever been. In fantasy stories it means the magic is all gone, or nearly so. Things used to be better, more magical, happier and more carefree. Now it has all been nearly ruined and we face impending doom. This moment is unlike any that has come before, with the worst about to happen. That idea is woven into almost all fantasy stories I know, from Tolkien on. It is simultaneously a feeling of hopeful urgency and of despair.

I don't have an example at hand, but another idea that appears often in writing and thinking throughout history is that this current moment in time is unlike any other that has come before. Everything has led to this or we are finally figuring something out that no one else has. We are living through a time of greater significance than any other.

In the end, that belief always lacks perspective. It's human nature to overemphasize yourself, and always hard to see yourself within the big picture.

A word that has been on tongues and in headlines regularly the past six months is "unprecedented." The belief that we are seeing things and doing things never done before. Yet this is not the first pandemic. It's not the first time schools and businesses have closed, not the first time people have worn masks and avoided contact to stay safe. It's not the first time society has been asked to band together to take drastic collective action for the sake of self-preservation. It's not the first time we have had vehement, tumultuous disagreement about measures like them. And it's not the first time we have tumultuous, violent protest and conflict about race.

The landscape feels overwhelmingly difficult and menacing at the moment, so it's more important than ever to remember that this is not all there is.

Magic still exists. It has not gone away or diminished. Just sometimes it gets particularly hard to see.

Another example of a wasted wish--though still better than a sloppy kiss. The problem with world peace was that it never lasted. Yes, if you wished for it and your wish was chosen, the Granters would make it happen, but for a fleeting moment only, and then the world went back to its usual routine. The last time that particular wish was granted it lasted for all of forty heartbeats (and fairy heartbeats at that, which are considerably faster). Less than a minute with no war, no bloodshed, no beating or bullying. Nobody really noticed.

― John David Anderson, Granted

"Humans are . . . " He struggled to come up with the word.

"Dangerous?" she offered. "Unpredictable? Totally insane?" Maybe all of the above?

"Complicated," he concluded.

― John David Anderson, Granted

Record Numbers of Americans Try to Buy Guns

The new coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing movement to defund police are bringing in new buyers worried about their personal safety, according to buyers, store owners and gun experts.

Gun sales began rising to unusual highs in March , as coronavirus cases began surging in the U.S. and government-ordered lockdowns led to the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression. The Federal Bureau of Investigation processed 7.8 million background checks for gun purchases from March to June, according to National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group.

In June, background checks for firearms were up 136%, compared to a year earlier, according to the trade group, which gives the best proxy for gun sales. Background checks in June for civilians seeking a license to carry were the highest since the FBI began conducting checks 20 years ago. . . . 

Dealers estimate that 40% of sales are going to first-time buyers, an increase over the normal average of about a quarter, according to an NSSF survey.

During most big sales increases, buyers tend to be gun aficionados or Second Amendment supporters. But this time, sales of handguns, which are used for personal safety, are the strongest. . . . 

That worries political leaders who are struggling to quell a recent surge in violence in cities around the U.S. Murders in Milwaukee, Chicago, Kansas City, Mo., and New York are on pace to see their highest levels in years, or even decades. . . . 

Among the new buyers are people who say they never thought they would own a firearm and were previously critical of those who did.

Yet one more reason to be anxious, this response of others to their own anxiety.

I need to get mine under control.

Perspective.

And, really, things aren't so bad. We have our jobs and house and stable life. We're not in the midst of war or famine. The climate change apocalypse is coming, but hasn't hit yet. As my son is fond of quoting from the PBS Nova episode Killer Volcanoes: "The worst could strike again." Things have been much worse in the past than they are now. Things aren't so bad.

Perspective.

Some wisdom from the Teacher, Ecclesiastes:

1:9-11

What has been is what will be,

   and what has been done is what will be done;

   there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,

   ‘See, this is new’?

It has already been,

   in the ages before us.

The people of long ago are not remembered,

   nor will there be any remembrance

of people yet to come

   by those who come after them.

4:1-3

Again I saw all the oppressions that are practised under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed—with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power—with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead, who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

9:7-12

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favour to the skilful; but time and chance happen to them all. For no one can anticipate the time of disaster. Like fish taken in a cruel net, and like birds caught in a snare, so mortals are snared at a time of calamity, when it suddenly falls upon them.

Cheerful nihilism?

If I was a superhero, my name would be Lonerman. My superpower would the the Existentialism--a ray I could shoot out of my hand that renders people powerless to face anything but their own personal pointlessness in an absurd world.

― A.S. King, Dig.

Only when you open your eyes to the full potential of poetry will you get solitude