October 19, 2020
Kelly Corrigan is a brilliant writer and thinker who is conducting thoughtful interviews on PBS. In one such interview, she mused that “Presence is the elusive superpower.”
It is difficult to be fully present: not to look around the corner to a better time (fingers crossed), or to the past to alleged golden times gone by. In this 2020, with the status quo akin to mayhem, I understand the glimpses forward and back. Fingernails on the door jamb. Whiplash toward the memories.
It’s a crazy paradox to me: I’ve spent so much of my life haunted or enchanted by the past, or so hopeful of the future. Even in the midst of all this present, I savor another time.
Bear with me: in these times I get more time with my sweet son, as he is virtually learning at home a lot, and I am in and out between classes. I teach students so grateful they are in the world, as am I. I treasure every day I am not sick or swabbed for illness, even though I’m surrounded by students in and out of quarantine every day. People I love are safe, for now. And those who have suffered losses are even more precious to me now, in the wake of the struggle.
When you’ve made a mess of things (as I have, in my moments that might be more than moments), and you rise up from the refuse to refuge of new chances and friends and family and opportunities to start anew, even a pandemic and a democracy with tears in its fabric can’t break you.
I still have a rearview mirror that haunts me with its images that are sometimes larger than they appear. And I’ve a future that could sketch it all up. But I’m grateful for being present these days: grateful that even in the crazy 2020, there is a God so much greater than all of it all.
I don’t have the superpower of living completely in the present. But I have the cape. I should probably check the laundry, but it’s here...
And it’s mine. My choice to face the day.
I’ll take it.
