What to do when it's too much
How to endure the ache
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Today’s inspiration:
What Happened During The Ice Storm
One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.
Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too. They saw dark spots along a fence. Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They couldn’t tell how easy it was to see them huddled there.
The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam. The pheasants’ breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were blindfolded with ice and didn’t flush. The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads, looking at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to yell, Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed-wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the boys’ caps and coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.
Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same. They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing. They ran across slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their skin as they made their way toward the warm blurry lights of the house.
Jim Heynen
I came across “What Happened During the Ice Storm” years ago, in an issue of The Sun Magazine, and promptly cut it out and hung it above my desk. When I started grad school, I slid the cutout into the translucent sleeve of the beat-up binder I recycled for all my classes, and it sat there front-and-center for the duration of my MFA. When I taught on fellowship at USF, it was the first thing I had my students read and discuss. This weekend, while organizing a closet, I rediscovered it, still sitting there in the front of that same binder, a gentle invitation to slow down and read it anew.
As with every time I read this piece, I am refreshed. I love how contained it is, how complete. I love how, despite its brevity, it has such a profound emotional effect. I love how the author lingers at the bottom of that third paragraph, with that barbed-wire fence and the glistening grass seeds, to extend the reader’s discomfort at not knowing how this might turn—what will the boys choose to do with those helpless pheasants???—and then of course, the turn itself, when they choose compassion.
Despite my enduring appreciation for this story, last night, something felt freshly pertinent. Why? I wondered. I reread a few more times. I took the dog out, no phone. I laid on the couch and stared into the twilight sky, living room darkening around me, omnipresent August fog thick and roiling outside.
Good stories hug us close to the bone of life. A good piece of writing can reveal deeper or different meaning over time; this is why we return to familiar words for solace in shitty or difficult times. What came to me last night inside of my mulling was yes, a felt-sense of the preciousness of life, of how desperately I want to wrap my metaphorical coat around every last one of us. But that wasn’t all of it. In my persistence, a recognition: the story pierced my heart anew because it demonstrates what it actually looks like to care. Grander actions like giving money, time, effort, energy; speaking up and out, placing our bodies in the streets, calling our elected officials—these are all important and vital. And. The majority of the ways we might care for each other are in small moments like the ones where we might place our coats over freeze-blind pheasants—moments that to us might be a minor blip in our day, but can make all the difference to whoever, or whatever, is on the receiving end of our kindness or attention.
Years ago my former yoga teacher told a story of being on retreat and making the pre-dawn walk to the mess hall, and how worms were all over the walking path, doing their early morning squiggles. One day she walked past one that had been stepped on by another attendee, and from that moment forward, she scooped them up on her way and moved them to the safety of the grass. One morning, another retreat goer-asked her, “There are so many worms, there’s no way you can save them all—what does it matter?”
Her response? “It matters to the worms.”
Lately—in moments where I pull myself out of the compartmentalization required to be a functioning human alive in these times—the ache is overwhelming. I know you know what I mean.
It’s also true that as long as I embed myself in community, I know what actions to take. There is always an action I can take.
Sitting inside of despair and hopelessness is a very individualistic dance. What can I do? I’m just one person, do my actions even matter? Nothing will ever change, why bother? This thinking has us turn our backs on the truth of our interdependence. Participating in a protest might not make the difference I desire today. But if I tend to my people. If I nurture my relationships. If I get to know my neighbors, if I ask myself what is one thing I can do right now, I always know what to do, and it is these more humble, quotidian actions that sustain me for the long game required to affect more systemic change.
What to do when it’s too much? We turn to each other. We place our coats over each other’s backs. We feed each other’s children (and pets). We lend our expertise. We carry each other when we have the spoons; we let ourselves be carried when we are falling apart. We laugh together, we rage and cry and share in our what the actual fuck sentiments.
There is always a way to be caring. To love. And though it might seem like a blip to you—and in the grand scheme, it is most definitely the most insignificant blip—it could also make all the difference for someone. Indeed, it could save a whole life.
I think of that turning point moment in the story, and how, even though I know what is coming—that the boys will choose mercy—it still catches my breath every time. These moments of grace are what keep us engaged. These moments matter.
SELF MADE is a call to deeply connect with the self—self-knowledge, self-trust, self-development—and then to make, small step by step, a life that you savor. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Certified Integral Coach, and Holistic Recovery Guide, based in San Francisco, CA.
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really beautiful. thank you!
What a delicious story!!