Dust yourselves off

So many difficult stories flood the news today and many of them threaten our sense of well-being, or at the very least muddle our perception of who we are as members of a community, as Canadians.
As with most ostriches, I turn the television off and cringe and hope things will be different for my grandchildren.
Hoping is a lovely sentiment but is not actually participating in a remedy for those things that lead us into the darkness. But conversation helps. Listening helps.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his observations regarding Hamlet that “the truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”
That is true. The many things I have worried about in my life have never happened–never came close to happening. So as I worry about racism raising its ugly head higher to be heard, the corrupt notion that one person has more value over another (a sentiment that makes me sick to my stomach), perhaps I need to believe that goodness and honour will prevail.
And those who are the noisiest are simply that, noisy, and the quiet militia behind the cameras and sound bites is going about the work of ensuring equality exists.
There is not a one of us who has lived our lives without a wrong turn, and an honest memoir would talk about those wrong turns because therein lies the greatest opportunity for learning. Perhaps we could have made fewer wrong turns if we had wrestled more with “what if.”
But what if has both a good and bad side. A Jekyll and Hyde, if you will.
In my present situation, what if is exercised on a daily basis. I hike the Ninth Avenue Trail that runs on the side of the ridge behind me. Signs warn of bears but everyone I talk to shrugs it off with, “They’re all asleep.”
I suffer from insomnia. What if the bear has the same affliction and decides he will have a before-bed snack. What if?
Apparently a lovely hiking trail can be found across the Yukon River and once the river freezes, I’ve been invited to go hiking on said trail. What if the ice isn’t thick enough? What if I fall through and I’m swept away by the determined current?
Have you read “Meadowlark”? It’s not an option I’m willing to toss the dice on considering where my creative mind has gone before.
The point I am trying to make, and perhaps not very well, is life comes with its warts and imperfections, and we are sometimes just another wart. Ostriches don’t really put their head in the sand.
We all have moments of feeling like a fraud, feeling part of the problem, feeling less than perfect. So we dust ourselves off and try not to worry about what was and instead pay attention to what is.
I walked to the river last night after midnight in search of the northern lights. I thought they would inspire me to try harder. I didn’t see the green dancing lights in the sky and I was disappointed.
But on the scurry home, because it was very, very cold, I listened to the crunch of my boots on the hard snow, that glorious sound, and I smiled.
Sometimes what we set out to do may fail but . . . maybe, just maybe something more valuable happens.
wendistewart@live.ca