About last night…

It’s Wednesday morning in London. November has given us rain and it’s a cold 42 degrees Fahrenheit as I sit on an aircraft and watch the Sim City click along as we wait for the usual Heathrow delays to run their course. Outside the aircraft window, I’m watching a white airport vehicle that looks to be the size of a clown car. It’s zipping around the wet tarmac without any regard for the fact that the rear hatch has been left gaping open. There are traces of something flying out the back, but whoever’s commanding the vehicle doesn’t seem to be paying much attention.

I swear that recent months have been sending my particular planetary rotation through all kinds of bewildering shocks and starts. Both personal and professional mysteries abound— never to be fully understood— and not least of all, last night has left me scratching my head as I continue in my quest to find my own way out of the tall grass. The only thing that was different this morning was that I spent a whole lot of time being stopped and consoled by non-Americans as I accepted their sympathy. I responded by apologizing for the event that just happened in my home country. Back in 2008 I cried with joy over our election results. This morning, my usually composed adult self was crying tears of bewilderment as I conversed with strangers and tried to process the headlines as they flashed on the airport screens.

And I don’t even want to get into my political leanings or yours. Nor do I want to try and point fingers at anybody. Right now we’re all just dealing with raw emotion, and I’m simply not a person who has the stomach to expound upon what I think is right or wrong with our planet, my country, or any one way of looking at things. I’m just too freaking tired to do any of that, and even by admitting that I feel tired, I recognize that this makes me part of the problem.

Ultimately, we are all still the same, doing the same kinda crap

Right now I identify myself as one of 319 million clowns who are crammed into that tiny white car as it moves at full speed around a very delicately-orchestrated transport space. And not only is the car moving too fast for these slick conditions, but it’s moving without having performed the basic checks that more or less ensure that a vehicle is safe for operation. I’m on the inside and white-knuckled— pondering far too late exactly how we all got to this very point.

I don’t pretend to know what any of the “right” answers are as we go forward from here. Last week as I sat in class and worked on a project, I willfully sat on my hands as members of our group asked who would step up and be Team Leader. Eff no. I don’t want that job. If I can possibly get away with it, I’ll stay at the periphery and quietly plug myself in where I know I can. Over the course of my life I find that I’ve done that quite a lot— and it’s only now when shit’s starting to get scary that I see that my “unique” attitude is the norm. It’s precisely this line of thinking that gets people, places, and things into the situations that they find themselves.

We reap what we sow, but there is a part of me grasping to remember that the future is still ours to direct. Every choice that I make going forward still has really important consequences. For now, after last night, I’m going to endeavor to be nicer to people of all stripes, and even perhaps, on greater occasions, I’ll step up and be a more active member of the places I occupy. If only to ease my own mind, if I’ve got to be in a clown car, then I at least want to be the clown doing the questionable driving.