A New World

I'm an Uncle now. My sister and brother-in-law have a daughter and she is one year old this month. She grows by leaps and bounds in every way, drinking in the world like the happy buddha! What a joy she is to witness.

Joy is what I need right now. I feel as if I've been through some cosmic event and deposited on a strange and distant shore of some new world–not entirely strange but forever transformed and I don't ever want to go back. When I entered the event horizon I was free but alone in the deepest sense. Now my internal struggles are public and I speak to others with the ease of a shared challenge.

I guess there is a reason that introverts have survived so long ;-) I know that there are many who have not fared so well and I do not forget the struggles all around us. When Obama talked of hope he was not talking of the hope in denial but in the face of the harshness of this world.

There will be a future, make no mistake. If you feel like running away or abstaining from procreation or both, who can blame you but know this; there will be a future. Your actions will affect this future, whether you run away or stand and fight. The only way to keep sane in this struggle is to join with others. Community is the only way to struggle in the long term. It is the only way to keep the strength required to make a difference.

When I think about making a difference I think about the career struggles, the walls I've run into, the market trying to bend my efforts to its will, but now I think about the future, beyond myself, not in an abstract way but in a real concrete way. What kind of Uncle will I be, what will the world look like to Isa?

Life has taken on a new urgency, both in relation to Isa and in the context of this geological moment. Although doing at least as much as before, I am focussed on being, living, experiencing my life with and through others. The doing will always be there but it's no longer the most urgent thing.

A new world–indeed.