How To Eat an Elephant

This is as much of a reminder for me as it is for you. 

Last night, I walked out of cheerleading practice and fell on the ice on the sidewalk to the parking lot. Like, totally bit it. Publicly. I bit it so hard and fell down so awkwardly slow, that I either had to jump back up and laugh it off like I was fine, or someone would need to call an ambulance, because there was no way to experience the physical blow I just took and not react. Like I’m not kidding you, I think I broke my whole stupid wrist and tore some of my nail off.

Slightly related, I desperately want to learn to skateboard, like I have a whole saved folder of skateboarder reels, and I lay in bed watching them thinking, I can still do this, right? Learn to skateboard after 40? We can still do things that involve falling, yes?

No, gentle readers, we cannot. 

So anyways, I stand up, assure everyone in the parking lot I’m totally fine, just clumsy, and I drive home in silence. I walk into the house, past everyone piled in the living room watching the National Championship game, into my office, close the door, and I let out the weirdest cry I’ve ever cried. The sounds I was emitting, I don’t know, they weren’t even my own normal sounds. 

Andy walks in, he’d gotten me dinner and was confused why I had just hard-passed through a waiting pile of Chipotle, and he sees me sitting in my chair crying, with blood covering both my hands, the knees of my brand new Aerie leggings torn and bloody and covered in dirt, and his jaw drops open. 

“Jesus, did something just attack you outside?”

Honestly, Andy, yes. 

(Here’s where we pivot, folks.)

It’s been a fucking week, amirite? I say this, on a Tuesday, but really, the last five days alone, my God. 

This is actually one of the most irritating- and I want to stress to you my use of the word irritating here, not life altering, but just needlessly irritating- parts of this man’s Presidencies: he’s loud, constant and exhausting. 

And that’s by design. It’s petty and irritating to exhaust you too much to want to deal with the actual big stuff. 

It’s death by 1000 cuts, and those cuts are all tiny little annoying soundbytes and declarations that are purposefully volatile and outlandish. 

The oldest daughter in me wants to be overly helpful and reassuring to you all right now, the Taurus in me wants to dig a hole, and the millennial wants to just give it all one big Garden State scream into the abyss. 

But, I have three teens who look to me as the adult in the room, so I figure I’ll share with you the same thing I told them. 

I need you to zoom in. 

Our day to day lives are not determined solely by who is sitting in the oval office, not really, the real shit happens right in your backyard. It’s happening in your school board meetings and city council elections and even your local neighborhood Facebook groups. The call, as they say, is coming from inside the house. We are the key holders to our communities, and it’s time we all start giving that responsibility the gravity and thoughtfulness it deserves. 

It sounds like such a small and unimportant thing during loud times like these, but if you spin-out and internet-react to every single headline, you’re going to be exactly where they want you… exhausted. 

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.  The culture, safety and success of your life, home, and town is happening in those small rooms, you have to get into them. 

I’m not here to downplay any of the big, very real things that have already happened since yesterday, and I’m not here to police your feelings or fears surrounding those things. We have organizations and institutions in this country that have been preparing for these times, and they are already there, doing their thing. 

What I am saying is, it’s okay to take a beat. To rest when you need to rest. Scream when you need to scream. Tune out when you need to tune out. To steady yourself behind whatever pre-cautions and safeguards and boundaries you need to feel your best and safest self. But when you come back, focus that energy where it does the most good and creates the most change, and that’s almost always going to be in places close enough to touch with your hands. 

I know very few Lord of the Rings quotes, because it’s very long and while the elves are hot, the orcs freak me out, anyways, this one always hits: 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I also wish we were living in a really easy timeline. I’d love to go to sleep and wake up and never have to hear from or about the government, or the crazy shit someone did or said for attention, and we can all just live our lives happily and safely. This is, unfortunately, not that time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also experience joyful moments, celebrate each other, and continue to be all the good parts we want to see in the world. 

That part, we can control, bite by bite.