Just when I think the roller coaster is at its scariest part, it gets even more terrifying. California is burning! Mid-pandemic, we have yet another crisis. COVID keeps us out of restaurants, concerts, sporting events, parties and now the fires confine us even more to our homes. The simple pleasures of bike riding and outdoor social-distanced exercise are no more. The air quality is horrific and where my iPhone weather app previously stated sunny or cloudy or rain; it now says the weather is smoke. No one needed to tell us this. We smell it the minute we walk outside. We see the fine soot floating in the sky, sprinkled on the ground and covering our cars.
The true horror of course is not that we can’t go outside and run. It is how many lives that are destroyed with these flames. Our noses and eyes fill with the sent and pain of homes and people's lives being consumed by the inferno. For me, it is far away enough that I cannot see it but close enough to haunt my social conscience as it subtly invades my senses.
I am tired. We all are tired. We cannot live in a constant state of fear and despair. For me to say this is probably insulting and maybe even enraging to those who have been evacuated, lost their homes or are packed up in anticipation of evacuation. They have no choice but to live in very present fear and/or despair. I acknowledge this, and my heart goes out to those affected and the courageous firefighters on the front lines. But for the rest of us who are feeling only the indirect effects of the fire, we have discovered that living in a constant state of horrible anticipation and sorrow is not serving us well.
"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…it’s about learning to dance in the rain!"
—Vivian Greene
So, I will neither feign ignorance nor ignore the plight of the world. But I will also find time to laugh. I will hug my husband and son. I will go to work. I will watch movies and write and sing and I will learn to dance in the soot.
Comments