They say hindsight is 20/20. Looking at the past, we see things with clarity. Things that don’t make sense while you’re living them will usually, with time, fall into a grander plan. In the same way, 2020 has unraveled strangely, bringing massive change and upheaval with it—not just for myself, but for the world as well—and yet, I have never experienced as much clarity in my life. Here is what I’m learning in summer 2020 so far….
The End of a Road
I have always been one who knew where to go. I set goals and achieved them; I found another goal glittering higher up, worked hard, and made that happen too. Always, I’ve had an intuitive knowledge of where I was headed. There were certainties: transferring to Westmont College, traveling abroad, writing the novels that were planted in my soul, choosing to study English, graduating in 2020. These were things I knew were meant for me.
Now, after graduating college, I find myself at the end of the clearly-marked path. The future is uncertain—a million roads branch off ahead, and I could choose any of them. Sylvia Plath describes this feeling in The Bell Jar, saying: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.”
But which future to choose? One metaphorical fig is a bestselling novelist. One is a life in academia, sleuthing the mysteries of literature and history—living my best #darkacademia life. Another one is moving to the city and becoming a young professional who has her own chic apartment and goes to the theatre on the weekends. Another is growing this blog and traveling the world. Still another is a happy home and a quiet life in the countryside.
My grandpa once told me that graduating is the most exciting time of life. After graduating, you can go anywhere, become anyone. As time moves on, as you grow older, you make decisions and begin down a path—but for now? The whole world is ahead.
Yet here’s the catch: the more options we have, the more difficult it is to choose.
What I’ve Learned from 2020
Everything that has happened so far this year—in my own life, in my friends’ lives, and in the world—has stripped away our presuppositions about life. Here in summer of 2020, we’re left with nothing but the rawest of questions. What truly matters, in the end? What is wrong, and what needs changing? Who exactly do we hope to become?
The Coronavirus Pandemic, in particular, has forced me to reevaluate my future in terms of what’s really important. I’ve learned to value the things that really matter: family, friends, health, and creativity. I’ve learned to slow down, allow myself to feel my emotions fully, and live presently in each moment. The value of simply being in solitude, without any pressure to be a certain version of myself for others, has patterned my days. As my mom says: “you are a human being, not a human doing.”
Slowness, then, has become my refuge. The birds flitting across the blue canvas sky. Time measured by sunlight and shadow, not by the ticking of a clock. Walking through fields and roads in unhurried solitude. Conversation without destination.
Life Currently
Here is where I find myself: I live at home with my family, in a room of my own, with a college degree tucked away in a drawer. By day, I watch the birds and fill the pages of my notebook with my various thoughts. On weekends, I’ve been blessed enough to be able to catch up with old friends—friends who have unexpectedly, like me, returned from the corners of the world back to our hometown.
It’s a time when, despite all the wrong in the world, my life is going unexpectedly right. The future is uncertain, but the present? It’s too good to be true. I know they can’t last forever, these halcyon summer days, so I cling all the more tightly to the fabric of these moments while I’m living them, conscious that they are burning to memories before my eyes. Nostalgia tinges every moment before it’s gone.
Halcyon. A word that means calm, peaceful, pleasant. An idyllic word for an idyllic time.
Letting Go of Control
Maybe it’s human instinct, to grab control of things. Maybe that’s why I’ve always returned to writing—because when a moment passes, I remember every detail and conversation on paper, slowed down, replayed again and again. I don’t want to forget. I’m afraid of losing the present moment. Why is it that when life is good, I’m afraid it can’t last?
Madeleine L’Engle writes, in A Bright Evening Star, that God’s gift of free choice is a sign of his immense power. Humans grasp greedily after control, trying to seize the things we’re afraid to lose, but it’s a sign of God’s immeasurable power that he grants us power so abundantly.
It takes faith, to let go of our hopes for the future. Faith requires trust; trust requires surrender of control.
“To live in this world,” writes Mary Oliver, “you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
From where I stand in 2020, the past is becoming clearer. I’ve learned a lot about myself. It’s going to take some time, but I’m learning to hold this moment loosely, to enjoy the moment without clinging to it.
The future is still uncertain, but I know that in the end, all will be well. What is meant for us will come, in time.
“I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.”
—Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
