Precarious
I have been musing over the fragility in our lives, not in an oh-my-gosh death-is-coming sort of way, but more that life in general seems to be fleeting and cobweb thin. A very precious gossamer holding us together.
Sometimes this tender feeling physically seeps in as I move my body through the filtering autumn light. And yes, ok, sometimes tenderness comes from work in the garden pulling weeds and moving gravel. But more importantly the gauziness is infiltrating from the world around me: hearing personal stories of massive life changes, friends with suddenly altered circumstances, local businesses upended.
The bigger political world seems a fragile place too, with precariousness reporting in from every part of the world, no matter how often I stick my fingers in my ears to keep it out. The government structures we relied on in the past to take care of these things aren’t working; traditional fixes are no longer fit for purpose. Support and even empathy for the less fortunate seems to have gone missing, or put up vacancy signs. The feelings of fragility wave over me as I question our future.
Then this week I learned of the sudden passing of a long-ago classmate with whom I had recently been in touch. We had contacted each other after many decades, and meantime, she dropped dead. I was stunned.
Even though we weren’t best buddies, past or present, her death hit me. We had travelled a similar path for a few years in our teens and I was looking forward to learning about her interesting life over the intervening years. She had just moved to a place in the world we visit often and love to just be. I was looking forward to spending time be-ing in that place with her; a place where undulating hills slope steeply on an angle to the sea. Golden grasses colour the hills, valleys interspersed with fog that flows up the canyons summer evenings. When you put your feet down, you can feel the ground holding you still and quiet.
Recently reconnecting with several of my long-ago classmates has been a way to knit back together some of the forces pulling apart my view of the world. We were a tiny class in a small school nestled in a close-knit wooded valley. We spent four years together in a pressured container of academic excellence. We formed a super ball of adolescent and teenage energy, cramming everything from ancient history to chemistry to singing and navigating rules of behaviour into our bouncy and absorbent heads. And then we burst out of the small confines of our school and narrow sliver of the continental coastline into the big whirling world beyond.
Finding these long ago colleagues has been like tracking the rays of light coming from a small star exploding. Each ray has spun her or his light into crevices of the world we didn’t know before. Illuminating life lived in a distant valley over the mountains, mastering a field of study unbeknownst before - and making a healthy living doing so. Who knew? Lives thriving in cities around the world, artists creating magnificent spaces, others supporting and maintaining healthy families over decades. Or maybe doing all of these at once along the paths of light these individuals have created in the world.
And so our many paths have diverged and taken harder or easier routes; friends have connected and reconnected, lost their way and found their way back. Each and every one of these people has shared their gifts with the world: it was the foundation of what we were taught those four years together. We were given this privilege of education, we were expected to give back and serve our communities along our way.
This attention to service was honed during the many days and hours in company learning to work together. Working together was as important to our lessons as our individual achievements. In the evenings we memorised poems to recite out loud for class, while in the early mornings we hiked up the nearby mountain to enjoy sunrises with shared fruit and singing. Creating theatrical performances for the community was balanced with taking college-level course-work and exams. We learned vocabulary and foreign languages so as to better understand our world.
In a few cases the rays burnt out quickly, and far too early. We remember these classmates with love and tenderness. We look back on photos from long ago with a smile and recall a funny story that fills in our memory with shading and colour. On a day when we see the bright sunlight, we wonder if they had been able to stay a little longer, what else could their rays have illuminated?
Maybe it is this feeling of fragility that makes the chance to knit together long-ago connections so fulfilling right now. Maybe firming up connections will strengthen the weave of life’s fabric in general, and give some sense of resilience once more.
Back during school, on Friday mornings before classes started, the senior girls would gather arm in arm and sing a variation of this song at the tops of our voices:
“I love those dear hearts and gentle people
Who live in my hometown
Because those dear hearts and gentle people
Will never ever let you down…
I feel so welcome each time I return
That my happy heart keeps laughing like a clown
I love the dear hearts and gentle people
Who live and love in my hometown.”-Bing Crosby1
Next year we are hoping to reunite as many of these dear hearts and gentle people as possible. I’m excited to see how much light will shine in one place again.
Thanks once again for reading! I hope you all aren’t as affected by these precarious feelings as I am. If you are, what are you doing to help keep yourself calm? What activities keep you sane and calm your soul? Does seeking out friends to firm up connections help you? I’d love to hear from you!
Meantime, Happy Autumn (on Sunday) here in the Northern Hemisphere. Enjoy the changing angles of sunlight no matter which way they are going, and hold your loved ones close. Always.
xoxo Sabrina
All photos are by the Author, top to bottom: Plymouth, UK; Aljezur, Portugal; Ventura, California; National Fireworks Championships, Plymouth UK; Fête des Lumière, Lyon France; Seattle, Washington; Ventura Harbor, California.
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If you want to hear Bing Crosby sing his song, you can click on this link:
Thank you, Sabrina, for that heartfelt expression of your commitment and connection to our high school friends, and to fellow mortals generally. I share your sadness and your hopes.
Boy, did this piece ever bring up a lot of stuff. It provoked sad and, fortunately many more, happy memories. I too often think about the precariousness of life. Here one minute and gone the next. Everytime I read about someone in their 60s or 70s dying, I calculate their age compared to mine. Not fun. But it helps me realize how precious every moment is and how this is the moment to treasure and live.
I treasured reading the part about our high school community and how much we meant and did for each other. We were young, sometimes foolish, but at the same time I think we were wise and grateful beyond our years. That song we sang in the quad (of course I listened to Bing Crosby sing it) says so much about how we cared for, respected, and admired each other. Having a tight group of friends from high school has meant so much to me both then and now.
When I think about the dreadful state of the United States and the world, which is often, my friends and family bring me the most comfort and peace. We were and are so fortunate.