Existential Helplessness

There were some moments this morning – getting coffee and settling in to write – where I felt optimistic and… light. Ideas nudging the edges of my consciousness in such a good way. And then, they’re gone. Like a magic spell in a movie when the swirling elements drop like sand to the floor.

It’s okay. Like some movie trope, it’s just the cue to try again.

Sometimes the world moves in on you – for you. People come when you need them. And we really hope: when they need you.

I think that our social vocabulary is limited. Love is such a big word when it’s spoken in earnest. “I care for you,” is a beautiful phrase, I think. The honest description of real empathy and fondness without necessarily transgressing a sphere of intimacy. But in conversation? I don’t know. I think I get associations of bald people in flowing robes and a kind of patronizing distance. I care for you the same way I care for the tadpoles at the edge of the pond in spring. Lofty. A chilly warmth that somehow makes it all about them – those them trying so hard to make it all about nothing/everything.

Where’s the comfort in that?

I am fond of you? Archaic. I am out of words.

Another person that I care for, of whom I am fond – a person I “click with”, admire, and look forward to having a long and loving friendship with – is ill. And I can’t find the appropriate words. She’s an ocean away, so I can sit and drink tea with her and just be.

It makes me sad. Flat. It’s as though I don’t know how to pull myself together and make a difference.

All this, this past year, has brought me a new kind of helplessness. Or at least a new comprehension of existential helplessness.

I have definitely entered a new phase of life. Where people I love, from 25 to 70 are grappling with mortality. And there are people, too, whom I do not love, but featured in a few revenge fantasies. I’m seeing how poorly written my fantasies are, how unrelated they are to real emotions. Thin storylines with hollow characters.

The wonderful – literally wonder-filled – thing about this is that I see how unfinished I am. It’s like I have opened the door to a new world. Moved from black and white to color, from a sunset projected onto flat walls, through the doorway to the “real world” which is too big to take in, and too immediate to ignore.

I want to hold someone’s hand, get my feet wet, and listen.

I read the chat messages in a quiet moment. I pay attention to the few songbirds that have overwintered near the lake. I almost wrote, “lonely songbirds”. I figure if I can learn to stop projecting, I can better see the world as it is: its brooding, its illness, death, and its love.