Into the Blue: Feast or Flounder

Floundering: I imagine the moments after the fight, when the hooked silver fish is reeled out of the ocean, and dropped onto the glaring fiberglass, where it flops furiously, stenchy scales and blood flying, in the vertebrate's novel, wild, search for water.

Like the fish out of water, humanity is floundering. From where I sit, we're facing a recession. Political divides are so gargantuan, families refuse to feast together at Thanksgiving. Basic human rights have (once again!?) been stripped from women and transgender people. Parents are afraid to teach children about systemic racism and the gender spectrum. Remember my garlic cloves? Well, they're out there, sprouting like it's April instead of November. Earlier this fall, after an alcohol-induced fight, a man began shooting aimlessly into a motel where my college roomate and her young daughters were sleeping (they're OK...physically). My other college roomate had to pick up her children at their elementary school due to an online threat. Our collective mental health is in crisis with elevated cases of burnout, anxiety, depression and suicide. So...what was the hook that got us here?

I remember once inching forward on Route 93, wondering what what the hold-up was, worrying about being late to pick up our children. To pacify my angst, I empathised with fellow drivers as I imagined possible scenarios: maybe the man, two cars ahead, was about to miss his plane; maybe the woman in my rearview mirror was was due to give an important work presentation 5 minutes ago; maybe the two in the rental car next to me were on their way to see their dying mother. When we finally arrived at the scene causing the hold-up, there was a man, casually standing next to his car, taking photos of a rainbow over the Boston skyline. WHAT!? This rainbow-snapping was causing all of us to be late!? Surely this man appreciating a moment of beauty didn't realize his decisions/choices/actions were affecting every single person driving by and beyond. Did he imagine two toddlers wondering where their mother was? A missed plane? The consequences of an employee showing up late to her presentation? A dying mother waiting for her children? Likely not.

We've all been this photographer before: acted as though we exist in a vacuum. Everytime we text and drive, neglect to vote, don't show up for our town meeting, stay quiet when we hear a slur, compare our body to another's, mindlessly consume, fail to imagine putting on their shoes, avoid fixing our taillight, leave the empty can on the side of the road...we act as though we don't matter and deny our integral part. Hooked by the idea that we are separate, we land on the glaring fiberglass, divorced from belonging, purpose and meaning.

In Al-Anon, we often start our shares with, "I want to claim my seat..." This beginning honors our participation as essential to the group. Despite being educated at some of the most prestigious schools on the East Coast, it is in Al-Anon (age 36) where I rediscovered my part in the whole--where I learned that showing up as my authentic self is as important for the group as it is for me. Before Al-Anon, I was taught to suppress weirdness, mask vulnerabilities, and act fiercely independent. I was in the all-too-familiar rat race for success, prestige, money, and power. The success of the person ahead of me, or the well-being of the person beside me, not to mention the footprints I left behind, had no bearing on me except as pseudo motivation to push harder, and, in the words of my alma mater, "finish up strong.” But here's the hitch, which we all come to one way or another: there is no finish line...except that we are hooked, floundering in our separateness.

The wise Robin Wall Kimmerer calls our floundering a “species loneliness—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors." To end our "species loneliness," we must turn our energies away from the rat race and towards rebuilding our communities and re-establishing our connections to each other, our natural world, and beyond. Kimmerer advises us to look at the trees for inspiration, which "act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together."

The Earth is abundant even when she is wounded. It is our collective thoughts, choices, and actions that have created scarcity, fear, harm, and destruction....and it is our collective thoughts, choices, and actions that can reunite and heal us. We are not the victims, but the authors, of our floundering, and our feasting. In the words of the Hopi elders, "the time of the lone wolf is over." Let us unlace our running shoes and walk barefoot. Let us remember we are stewards, not owners, of this beautiful Earth. Let us take note of others, and wonder about their well-being. Let us learn to pause, look around, and ask, "what can I do, right now, to be of service?" even if it is as simple as picking up the can on the side of the road. Let us remember that we are all divine creatures AND we are all bozos on the same bus. Let us remember, above all else, that we are interconnected. Let us learn to be mindful of how each object we hold, each morsel we eat, each body we touch, each flower we admire, each experience we live has come to be through a miraculous series of interconnections. As John Muir famously wrote, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." Let us remove the hook that leads to our floundering, and embrace the truth that we are all hitched. Let us choose to feast together.

Happy Thanksgiving.

As always, thank you for reading,
Georgia