Here’s a little fact that you would never know unless I told you; it’s kind of personal so don’t let it get out. We have a bad habit in our house and it’s gotten to the point now where something has to seriously change. It starts innocently enough the same way every day. I get up first in the morning, make the coffee, bring it back to bed, and then my wife, Wendy, and I spend a half hour or so looking out the window and letting the day get off to a nice, slow start. It’s a harmless little perversion kept strictly between consenting adults — though some would think that we stray over the line by letting a big white husky with one blue eye and one brown eye worm her way in between us. Our defense against charges of moral weakness on that score is that we are firm that she stays on top of the covers.
We’ve been in this morning pattern long enough now that all the moves have evolved into a nice smooth little dance. The big husky crawls up and takes my place; she reluctantly moves when I come back. The water boils just as I finish grinding the beans in the hand mill and Wendy has Raven Radio clicked on just as I come in with the two cups. Something has got to change, though. It just can’t go on like this. The darned radio is spoiling everything.
Call it silly or call it part of the perversion if you will, but we find it kind of soothing to be brought up to date on the soap opera of Sitka water bottling and to be reassured that the kids will get a good lunch at school today. It’s the same every morning, though. The soothing murmur of local news gets broken by the chimes of NPR and before we can hit the button we’re being yanked to places far far away where terrible things that we are powerless to change are happening to people we will never meet. Snyder Peak may be glowing pink in the fresh sunlight and the dog might be in the middle of one of her tremendous morning yawns but there I am, struggling like a gaffed salmon trying to avoid being dragged over the side into some awful other reality. But it’s no use. The bloody details of body counts and hateful political posturing have grabbed my attention like a horrible highway wreck taking place right in front of me.
One of us can reach to turn it off, of course, but the damage has already been done. A stone has gotten into my shoe and it will stay lodged there for hours. A tiny cut has just been made to my conscience and it’s in a place where I can’t reach it. Aren’t I supposed to be Doing Something? Don’t I have some sort of Obligation? Now, I’m a pretty liberal-minded fellow. My lineage is among people who helped each other, whether or not they knew you personally and whether or not anyone was watching. Helping was something you just did. I’ve walked in my share of civil rights marches — or at least watched from the curb. I pony up what I can, or at least sign up, for the good causes. We compost.
Buried down there somewhere in each of us, I think, is a vague awareness that the Arab family picking through what yesterday was their home isn’t that much further away than the family in Juneau who has to make daily decisions about medicine or food…or even the local kid flirting with a really bad life choice. I think that somewhere in each of us there lies a deep niggling knowledge that we’re all in this together and that what happens to you, no matter who or where you are, matters to me. It is no coincidence that the same idea shows up in every one of the world’s great religions.
Lately, though, a different way of seeing my part in all of this has been working its way up into my consciousness. It might be one of those below-the-surface understandings that has been there all along but that I haven’t paid a lot of attention to. Perhaps it simply had to bide its time until I was old enough to get it. It could also just be the Karma Fairies’ way of keeping me involved even now that the legs are no longer up to the marches. I’m beginning to think that the time for marching and getting out the vote and being concerned and all that may have passed.
There are plenty of legitimate alternatives, after all. The world is full of thoughtful, even devoted, women and men whose daily contribution to humanity is to write a few good lines of poetry or to sit in silent meditation in a cloistered monastery. Who is to say that their effort counts for less than the hero or the saint or the martyr? Instead of being discouraged, maybe I just need to adopt a new model. Instead of buying into the notion that the Karma Fairy has assigned me some specific obligations, some certain role written for me alone in the big picture, what if it’s all a gigantic Cosmic Improve Symphony and my only obligation is to pick an instrument, any instrument, and join in? What if the individual instrument doesn’t matter that much? What if I have the freedom to change instruments any time I want? Maybe the basic human obligation is simply to join in.
My own aspirations have never been terribly grand and lately those daily choices made over the morning coffee have become even more modest. Cherishing the little rituals of the morning coffee and the yawning dog are more important than they used to be. Some days just working on better vread seems to be enough. It may be time to let go of the news. Maybe both the world and I would be better off if I tuned out the demands of those clamoring voices.
I’m tempted to trust the Karma Fairy on this one.
• Brooke Elgie writes from Tenakee Springs. He may be reached at brookeelgie@gmail.com.
