I have a tendency to be short-sighted.
Lately, my life seems stuck, caught in a trickle of details that matter little. Events are careening across the planet, unsettling the ground and stretching reality. I want to do something to stop the chaos and cruelty, but I feel small and numb. How can I help push us toward sanity, even a smidgen? My choices do not seem to matter.
But then, that’s me. When fear grips me, I tend to catastrophize and lose track of the larger cycles I am part of. To gain perspective, I have to step back. Way back.
It’s true, of course, my life has been a series of choices. Decisions I made in school, work, and romance, the interests and passions that rose and faded, were all forks in the road, taken or abandoned. I’m here because I knocked on door two instead of door three, answered this ad and not that one. All had consequences. But it’s a mistake to think the choices were mine alone. If I lift my head from my current worries, I see a line of ancestors stretching into the distance who have been making choices for a long time.
My family came to this country almost three hundred years ago on a three-masted ship called The Crown. They huddled in the squalid cargo hold for two months with five hundred other people. I don’t know why they left their homes, but the fertile river valley they lived in had been in dispute between warring powers for centuries. The times must have seemed desperate. And my ancestors further back? Ancient Europe, the caves at Lascaux, the plains of Africa? Who knows, but I doubt life was easier. I’m sure they all faced hardship, and yet their courage and perseverance brought me to this moment.
I feel their presence, as if they are watching me, waiting to see how I will act. I don’t need to know the particulars of their lives to know they wanted to be safe, to flourish, and to nurture a future where their progeny could do the same. However limited their options, they took small steps in the direction of hope so that tomorrow might be brighter than today.
From this perspective, I realize I have more choice and face less danger than any of my ancestors. I am here because of a long line of choices by people who cared. Don’t I care too? Why am I complaining, whining myself into paralysis? I hear their voices, “Stop quibbling; act yourself into the future; take your own small steps that continue the work of creation; make us proud.”
Photo by Kate Kasiutich on Unsplash