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The Contraction [1]
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Date: 2022-09-11
For the love of Ukraine
At one point in time, during the many hours of the days of the years I sought a remedy for my incurable condition, that of being perfectly human, I read something helpful to me during days like today.
The work escapes me, I’m sorry to say, but it was surely about having and developing loving and lasting relationships.* While I have enjoyed many successes in life to date, I fully confess I have been an abject and utter failure in this domain. That work has been so complete I’ve given up on the idea completely.
The concept I remember though is this; when you are happy and things are going well your balloon fills, and if the contents are the lighter than air helium, you are buoyed and bouncy, straining high at the end of your string, held fast against a buffeting wind.
Ultimately and inevitably, something happens to figuratively burst your bubble. Your balloon begins to deflate.
This isn’t necessarily anything that happens external to your situation or relationship and certainly doesn’t have to be cataclysmic. In fact it is more likely to be something small, some discomfort that happens within you, or as the case may be especially here, within me. A tiny leak.
Needless to say, the balloon deflates, fails to launch and stay afloat, loses its shape and firmness, as much of your joy in it dissipates as well.
Of course the remedy is to re inflate the balloon, but even this cure loses efficacy over time, the elasticity becomes compromised, its ability to contain the life saving air you try to give it diminishes.
It is as natural in fact as the physical phenomenon of breathing oxygen into our lungs, to capacity and in that moment between breathing out, coming to rest momentarily at the still point of fulfillment. Exhale. Pause. Inhale. Pause. Repeat.
This pattern recurs with me as regularly as Sundays reprise on the calendar. I’m older now and wiser (ha!), more accepting of the inevitability of its persistence, and now able to allow myself the time I need to wallow in it. And even enjoy it from time to time.
Maybe that’s how I add more air to my balloon, I don’t know exactly. I'm not cognizant of anything happening that takes me from ‘meh’ to 'yeh’ but I'm usually over it by Monday, if not before. I'm rather in awe of the mystery, but it’s a cycle I’ve come to expect. I've learned to settle in.
What I don’t expect and in fact fail to guard against are the external forces that compel me back into the land of the living, into relationship, and possibilities outside the confines of my contentment.
The most dramatic of these has been the illegal invasion of Ukraine by the bullying bear from the east that happened a little more than six months ago. There had been news, and fears, and discussion, and I had followed these with guarded interest, but was ill prepared for how invested I’d become in the plight of that nation.
I’ve given a lot of thought into my fervent reaction, trying my best to understand how I can feel so impassioned about a country and its people another world removed and relatively cavalier about the internal shenanigans threatening to destroy everything I hold dear about America.
I imagine at the core of it, there’s a sense of a nation, the beautiful innocent Ukraine, going through the pains of birthing democracy, while ours has been rearing a recalcitrant toddler for a couple of centuries now. The terrible twos. Remember those?
We definitely have an interior element throwing a tantrum as it seeks to get its way, but at the heart of me, I trust we also have intelligent, loving, and capable parents that are not going to allow the enfant terrible run and rule of the house. (Don’t prove me wrong, y’all!) So I have been able to relax around the multiplicity of American villains, while working in the background to see them and their powers rendered irrelevant.
We still talk glowingly about those halcyon days of our own struggle for independence, and though I’m generally a poor student of military history, or any history truth be told, I tend to be able to grasp and retain the highlights. The plight of Ukraine strums that same patriotic chord in me.
I started writing this diary between updates to the conflict, attempting to understand and explain how hollowed out I’m feeling just now, with the end of the aggression in sight, and the various offensives being waged to phenomenal success. Both kos and Mark Sumner have admitted they can’t keep up.
And just as I reached the above paragraph, another update came in, this one announcing the Russia retreating from all of the Kharkiv Oblast, and my poor tired balloon was rejuvenated, rendered fully plumb, completely and wholly engorged. Oh, the vagaries of life lived fully present in the moment!
Prior to that wonderfully welcome interruption, I had sought to begin to process the grief that I feel settling within me. I spoke of it briefly yesterday, in a diary comment or two, fully hoping this war will end tomorrow, yet already feeling cut adrift, floating slowly away. Aware that even as I'm celebrating Ukraine's future success, I'm relinquishing the tenuous connection I've managed within the dkos community.
I'm hoping there won't be another major event that rocks my world to come along. There's already enough to stay informed about: the threat of climate change, the persistent ameri-red menace, racial injustice, gun control-- and I know I can trust dkos to keep me informed.
And I sincerely hope I'm not jumping the gun on the ultimate victory for Ukraine, but already I've relinquished any attempt to keep up with the comments. In just a day, they number in the thousands, or so it seems. Too much, much too much for me.
I'm aware there's going to be an empty space there for awhile, but I'm already feeling the tension between the fabric of the balloon and the oxygen it contains. I want to be a part of, even as I struggle to get free.
My neighbor just in time brought me a pail full of fruit, so I have to get started making spiced apples and pear preserves. Maybe if we're ready for it, life will bring to us exactly what we need, and when.
[END]
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