How Can We Bear To Leave Our Kids A World Like This?
Windows of opportunity
Hello friends.
So on Monday morning, I was pretty zonked. We had a friend visiting us from the West Coast, and we had been out late the night before, and the night before that. On autopilot, using the care muscle memory that most parents probably have, I made E’s breakfast the way she likes it: one fried egg white and one piece of toast, spread half with butter and Bonne Maman, half with Nutella. While I was packing her lunch, she asked…
“Mom, what do you see? Like, when you look at things, do you see the same things that I see?”
Just one of those stunning, magical, dorm-room philosophy questions that is perfect for a Monday morning. She came over to stand in front of me, I put my hand on her shoulder and we looked out the window. I tried to describe the sunlight playing over the oak leaves as the branches tossed gently in the morning breezes, with the flat city sky peeking out behind them, just as if I’d never seen it all before and didn’t know any of the words.
“The leaves look like they’re talking,” I said.
“Now they look like they’re arguing,” she said as they gesticulated a little faster, on the one hand, on the other.
We spied a new strawberry peeking out from our little patch on the deck. She pointed out how the flashing sun seemed to fatten the telephone wire.
It was one of the parenting moments you want to hold onto forever, which is why I’m glad I have the space here to share it with you.
It’s pretty perfect, because the theme of Episode Seven of We Are The Great Turning is about the stage on the spiral of the Work That Reconnects called Seeing With New Eyes.
I find this stage a little bit mysterious.
The heart of the Work that Reconnects, for me, is honoring your pain for the world.
Before diving into that pain, you first have to root yourself in gratitude, which gives you the strength to go there.
You make space to express your grief, fear, rage, and insufficiency or despair, and are heard and witness as you hear and witness others.
Then comes this phase— seeing with new eyes.
But how? Why? How is it that crying, wailing, cursing doesn’t just lead to more crying, more wailing, more cursing of your fate? That’s the fear, that the spiral becomes a downward spiral.
But in practice, this perspective shift almost always comes. At least, it’s available when you are held and supported.
It may be a bodily thing.
Emotional tears contain stress hormones, which the body may be shedding. It’s also known that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins in the brain, improving your mood, raising the chance for bonding with other people, even relieving physical pain.
Joanna Macy is a big proponent of using the alchemy of tears to increase our empathy, by letting our pain be a mirror into the pain of other people and the world.
Leaning into that perspective shift afforded once we honor our pain, seeing with new eyes, in the Work That Reconnects, can also mean trying on the perspectives of our ancestors and future generations.
“We are part of a river of time, from before we were conceived in this life. There are those living through us somehow. We're connected through tears and grief as well as love. We're connected through loss as well as birth.”
As E and I were looking out the window that morning, trying to see what the other person was seeing, it connected me to something so tender that I can hardly say it, even though it’s at the heart of everything I’m doing right now.
I love my children more than anything. And I’m so devastated that we’re leaving them a faltering, diminished world.
In seven years, my younger child has already lived through a pandemic, a wildfire air quality emergency, a sudden rain event with no name that flooded 150 schools in New York City.
This past winter, we drove 300 miles due north and up to 3600 feet elevation to see some snow, and the ski mountain was bare and muddy.
And yet.
When I look at the world from her perspective, everything is alive. Everything is fresh. Everywhere you look there are people and other creatures to love and questions to ask. Her life is so full of undeterred and unmitigated joy and wonder.