I'm feeling pensive this evening so yet another post. (I was stymied in doing what I wanted to do over at work today; the Integrated Taxonomic Information System webpage was down - I hope just for routine maintenance - and I couldn't do the checking of species names I planned on doing).
I was thinking more about the eclipse. I wish we had things like that more regularly.
Now I'm thinking of this week's Pony episode - it was another "sisters' camping trip" - a callback to an earlier season. Anyway, early in the episode, Apple Bloom is so excited and says she wishes they had a yearly camping trip every week. Which is a normal child (or even childlike adult) reaction to Good Things: the "Christmas Every Day" effect. Applejack gently reminds her that first, a weekly camping trip could not be described as "yearly," but, more importantly, it might be less special.
And that's true. But I think a lot of us have a shortage of accessibly-"special" things in our lives. I've written before about how I would rather have 300 very small pleasures than one gigantic one.
And now I'm thinking of that (rather depressing) Simpsons' episode where they went on a cruise, and it was so very much better than their mundane lives they never wanted it to end - and at the very end of the episode, it's implied that it's the one good thing that ever happened in Bart's life. And I don't want that. I would rather have the smaller moments of joy - getting to band butterflies (what I think of as the "one good memory of 2016"), or seeing the eclipse, or getting to meet up with Laura and just hang out and shop for a day.
But yes. Thinking about the eclipse and how it was something to look forward to, something different....
I get "The Week" magazine. It allows me to keep up a bit more with news without having to actually WATCH a lot of news. (I wish I could find a website I liked as a news-provider, one that neither went the soundbite/listicle route, nor had forced autoplay video, nor that heavily emphasized celebrity or other "grabber" news over things that are probably actually important).
Anyway, in the most recent issue (came today), the editor writes about the eclipse. And notes a couple of things:
"It is good to feel small...that beyond the mundane lies a great mystery." And yes, I think that was part of the wonder of the eclipse for me; a reminder that there are bigger forces out there at work than whatever geopolitical thing is going on in a given week, and that no matter how much humans may mess things up, there are still things that go on - if, in fact, North Korea had had a lot of nukes, and we had all wound up annihilated week before last, the eclipse would have happened. Maybe only the whales in the ocean and cockroaches on land might have seen it, but it still would have happened.
This is also similarly why I get myself to church each week. It doesn't always happen for me there but I do sometimes get that sense of wonder and of larger forces (and also, as the editor hopefully closes his letter: "Light defeats darkness. This, too, shall pass"). It does also make one feel smaller, in a way - you are part of something much larger than you are, and I find that comforting, in a weird way. I suppose it is that I cannot screw up the whole, no matter what boneheaded mistakes I might make in this life or what selfish things I might do.
Ironically, though: in at least most flavors of Christianity (at least, the ones I am familiar with), there is sort of a dynamic tension: you are small and insignificant, and you are no more important than any other person out there*, and yet, at the same time, you are very deeply beloved and are actually important to a Force far beyond yourself and beyond humanity.
(*Which is why I think if one takes one's faith seriously, most forms of "-isms" and "supremacies" are abhorrent and unthinkable.)
I do find I think a lot about the "insignificant as a gnat/and yet utterly beloved" thing a lot. I admit more of the time I tend to feel insignificant than otherwise.
But yes. I would like more wonder-inspiring things. I'm sure they are out there and I need to look for them or make an effort to go do them (I hope they do butterfly banding again this year). I would like more things that make us forget whatever horrible thing some person said, or whatever has currently taken over Twitter, or the bullies in our lives, or, for me, the anxiety about what I have to get done and if I am doing it well enough.
Another thing discussed in this week's "The Week" was how the actor Aziz Ansari has apparently deleted the internet from his life - gotten rid of his social-media accounts and even removed the browsers from his computer. And yes, I'm not discounting that part of this might be hype and puffery*, but I look at that and I wonder - if I did that, would I read more? knit more? But then I also think: it would be easier for someone like Ansari. I don't know much about him but I presume he lives in a city, and (maybe?) has a romantic partner and probably has a lot of friends around, and probably lives somewhere where socializing is relatively easy? For me, socializing is hard. I have my friends at church but they tend to be at very different places in their life (much older, or married with children at home) than I am, and so it's hard to socialize outside of church activities. And there's not a whole lot going on in town here if you're not in your 20s and interested in hanging out at bars, or are into fishing and hunting, or have kids in school activities. A lot of my friends, my main contact with them is online - there are a few people I might get to see once or twice a year but other than that, it's virtual communication. And I would miss that. I worry about certain people when I haven't heard from them in a couple of days.
(*apparently he still has an "official webpage," managed, I guess, by a publicist.)
And I don't know. I don't know now how I'd navigate an internet-less life here, where there's not even a knit night to go to and (in the summer especially) I might go days without more than brief communication with others. I suppose I'd FIND a way if I had to....though given how closed some groups I've tried to join have seemed, I might not.
I don't know. Sometimes I do wish I had more time to do stuff like volunteer work and that there were more different opportunities for things with a GROUP. (Picking up trash alone off a roadside might be valuable, but it doesn't give the human contact I'd need.)
I do fear that with an internet-less life I'd probably watch a lot more tv (instead of reading more) and maybe just be a lot lonelier. (It is hard moving far from family and everyone you've ever known - even as I've lived here 18 years, it's STILL hard being far away from relatives some times.) Part of the problem is I guess I just never found my "tribe" totally, or maybe what constitutes my "tribe" doesn't have a lot of representatives here. (Or I haven't found them, though I'm not sure where I'd look).
But for a few minutes last week, I felt like I was part of something bigger, standing out there in the back parking lot with a couple of colleagues and a group of students, and passing around welder's glass and eclipse glasses and monitoring the progress of the moon across the sun. And now I'm hungry for more things like that, but don't quite know how or where to find them.
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