I’ve taken a week off from work to tackle a long to-do list. I have a pile of information to absorb and as I do that, I’ll be sharing some of my musings, here. They will be incomplete. Sometimes there’s redemption in the unfinished and unkempt bits of life—and sometimes there’s not. If it’s helpful to you, then it’s a testament to the belief that art can transcend the artist. If not, feel free to discard and move on.
A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye. –Joan Didion, “Holy Water”
Do you remember summer days in that inflated plastic pool? It littered yards through the neighborhood on sticky, hot afternoons. It was filled with tiny bodies splashing uncontrollably as droplets cut across cheeks, noses, eyes, and lips, teeming with laughter. The water was soothing to those small frames, amused and in the moment. But those smiles would predictably disappear as the water seeped from the pool into the ground, dispersing as rapidly as it collected, unmanageable and absorbed. The pool had sprung a leak. It was at this point that the neighborhood moms, clustered together, would disperse like the water and begrudgingly amble over to refill the pool. The goal was to buy them another half hour of free time knowing, all the while, that the small hole in the pool would lead to inevitable deflation.
Our attempts to control the uncontrollable share an indomitable fate with that plastic pool—they are artificial, bloated, temporary. To soothe ourselves with the immediacy of containing such forces is to live in denial. The energy it takes to deny the reality is beyond exhausting. But our fear trumps our desire to escape the fatigue. If we accept our lack of control, then what? If we’re not in control, who or what is? How will we withstand the outcome if we surrender, relinquish, or reset?
The real consideration is how we’ll withstand the outcome if we don’t.