The Last Word: Old Man River
“Ol’ man river
That ol’ man river
he must know something
But he don’t say nothing
Cause he just keeps rolling
He keeps rolling along.”
Lately, I’ve lost a lot of friends.
My failure to put myself neatly in any one political camp during a particularly tumultuous time has caused many of the people that I considered to be close to me for years to lump me in as part of the problem. Deeply hurt by my former friends’ misjudgments of my character in a world of vitriol and peer pressure had put me on edge emotionally and mentally. I began to fall behind in work and school.
One mid-morning skirmish between my pets resulted in a visit to the emergency vet clinic, and what followed is what I’ve referred to as a “behavioral factory reset.”
Driving home from the vet, my eyes so full of tears I could barely see the road, I lamented to anyone who would listen: Why is the expectation in our society that we must work ourselves to death until something unplanned becomes the breaking point? Why do we care so deeply when people reject us for who we are and our beliefs when we have been patient with them for some time? Am I being punished? Am I actually the bad guy?
Upon returning to my little apartment, I became strikingly aware of the disconnect: I was working all the time, but I wasn’t moving ahead. I was such a “yes man,” and people did not hesitate to pile more onto my plate. I was “half-assing” 20 things when I could have been “whole-assing” five. I had to do something immediately.
Many individuals woke up the next morning to my resignation letter in their inbox. I resigned from things that took up my time, that cost me money or that just didn’t bring me joy anymore.
At 24, I felt that I had already lived several lives. I was fed up. This was not sustainable.
I couldn’t continue to pour from an empty cup.
*****
I talked to a former professor of mine, who was facing burnout after a difficult pandemic collegiate year. He shared with me that he was trying to find joy in the little things in life. For him, boating down the Arkansas River did the trick.
He shared with me, “One never feels isolated by the river. One is subsumed by something much bigger. Or rather, there is no big or small. There is just everything.”
I paused to think, and he added, “The river doesn’t care. I suppose that could sound cold or impersonal to some people, but I find it freeing.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant until I began to fill my now more abundant free time with the simple, little things. I’m an environmentalist, so for me, the little things were in nature. For so long, I flung myself wholeheartedly into activities hoping to earn praise: praise from my parents, praise from my friends, praise from my bosses and coworkers. But it was never enough to satisfy me, so I pushed further.
Yet, the more I tended to my beehives and chickens, hung bird feeders and planters in my backyard and watched the squirrels and the chipmunks stealing seeds, the more I understood what my professor had meant.
Despite my circle of people growing smaller and smaller, I found more and more joy in the little things. I found joy in knowing that the fate of the universe actually wasn’t somehow in my young, naive hands and that things like the River had been there long before me, and would be there long after. Not everything was as “life or death” as I had made it out to be. For many folks, that’s terrifying. For me, it was a relief.
I was relieved — and maybe even envious — the more I spent time in nature checking the boxes in my bird book for winged critters that I had seen while bird watching. The Carolina chickadee that had a fondness for the seed pellets served in the hanging feeder outside my office window didn’t know that Senator Joe Manchin in West Virginia had recently rang the death knell for all of my climate advocacy since high school. If he did know, he didn’t care. Nor did my dog, Bee, give a damn about the Supreme Court. The birds and the squirrels and the honeybees and the chickens just continued doing what they had always done, happy to be there, seemingly ignorant.
Why couldn’t I?
I’m too tired and far too insignificant to fight “the evil of the week” every single week. So instead, I’m going to try to be kind to everyone that I meet; yes, even the folks and former friends who view me as a knuckle-dragging troll for my political views.
And the more I find myself being kind to others, the sooner I can go home and surround myself with nature and with my pets. The sun will come out tomorrow, and the birds will sing, and the squirrels will chitter , and the river will keep rolling along.
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