Seattle Heat Wave

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Temperature anomalies, March to May 2007

I’m currently living in the great Seattle heatwave. Seattle averages only 3 days a year over 90 degrees Fahrenheit and even then it typically goes down into the 60s at night. In the 11 years we’ve lived here we’ve never hit 100 degrees, and snever really been hot at night.

In fact, Seattle has experienced temperatures of 100 or more only three times since the late 1800s, when record-keeping began, and the all-time hottest temperature in Seattle is 103 degrees, set back in late July 2009. (And, as you may know, Seattle homes are less likely to be air-conditioned than any other major American city.)

Still, we have electrical power for our refrigerator, cold water available in the shower, and one of our kids has a/c if we get too hot. However, I must admit to feeling a bit more lethargic than usual and not motivated to think and write about the meaning of life. I’m thinking more of ways to stay cool! I’m guessing there’s a lesson in that; perhaps that concerns about life’s meaning arise only after our survival needs are met.

Yet this unique situation is kinda fun too. Sort of like went the power goes out. It’s so different that it gives you the opportunity to learn from and experience something different. Of course, I hope the power doesn’t go out because that would mean no cold water.

Life is mysterious, I’ll never understand more than a little of it, but I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve received more love than I deserved; I learned a little; and I’ve found joy in helping others. There are many things I didn’t love that I should have; many things I should have learned but didn’t; many people I should have helped but wasn’t able to.

All this makes me think of Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Robert. I have never heard it without being profoundly moved.

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not.