Giving Ourselves Some Grace
There is something bubbling up that I want to talk about. The problem is that it’s not quite made itself known to me yet. So I’m turning it over in my mind and my heart, exploring what wants to make itself known to me.
I’ve had a couple of clues. It’s funny how that works. I’ll be going about my business, living my life and then something will light up for me, something I see, or read, or something someone says will draw my attention for just a little longer than usual. Or much longer than usual. That’s how I know it’s something that wants to be explored.
In this case, I’ve been thinking about despair in these times, how everything seems to be so topsy turvy, how everything seems to be crumbling, how most people I know are struggling with REALLY big, hard stuff having to do with transitions, or trauma past or present, of feeling unmoored with nowhere to turn. It feels like it’s in the collective air. Add to the mix real and present danger from some who are in power or want to be and it can feel a little overwhelming.
A friend of mine often talks about how the baby boomers have so royally screwed things up. She lays the entirety of the blame for “how things are” at the feet of the boomers. And she’s a boomer. I guess it’s natural to want to find someone to blame for the woes in the world, individual and collective. Actually, it’s a practice as old as time. It surprises me, because it’s so reductionist. Also, I guess, a practice as old as time, to want things to be black and white, good versus evil, us versus them. Our collective unwillingness to wrestle with complexity, nuance, conundrum does us a disservice, I think. Maybe it’s just a reflection of our immaturity as a species, as a society. It feels all very adolescent to me to say things suck and it’s all “fill in the blank” ’s fault.
I was speaking with another friend who used the phrase “meeting the moment” the other day. She talked about how adolescents and young adults, and everyone really, need the opportunity to meet the moment where they stand, with the internal resources they’ve built, so that they can learn and grow and forge resilience and expand wisdom. I like that, and it occurs to me that that’s exactly what we’re doing. We as a collective are being asked to meet the moment, to hopefully recognize that we’re all doing the best we can with what’s available to us, and to offer some grace to ourselves and to those who came before us.