Hope in Small Doses – Page 3

Spring is just around the corner; can’t you tell? Okay, may not if you’re living in much of the United States north of Florida and west of California. Ten days before the official start of spring, the temperatures can’t get out of the twenties and more than a foot of snow is predicted. Forecasters promise a colder and wetter than usual season.

Absent weather that conforms to a recognizable pattern, we proceed by sensation. It feels like spring is close at hand and not just because the calendar says so. We have more hours of daylight. Here and there, a bud or a birdsong suggests we are done with hibernating, no matter what the thermometer says.

Spring it is, then, and with it, a chance for renewal, reinvention, rebirth, redo.

Sorry, not that last one. Though we’ve been pummeled and punished by the toxic sludge stirred up by the election of 2016 (wherein violence seems to have been given a permission slip to run amok) or by life in general, we know there are no mulligans. We can’t rewind to our twenty-first birthday or even to last year, much as we might wish to. We can’t do over; we can only do again, maybe better.

What does “better” mean? I ponder this every March, which, by the way, is my personal new year. Not for me the man-made calendars or cultural/religious constructs that have us repenting or resolving in September or January. My rhythms derive from Mother Nature. If I could sleep from December through February, I would. If I could live the other nine months with nothing but naps, I would do that as well.

I engage in what I call psychic spring cleaning. My physical health is something I attend to seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Mental health, though, can always use a reboot, never more so than this year. So I’ve joined a group so I can attend get-togethers, meet with new people and feel connected.

The real adjustment I’ve had to make involves my attitude. Like many of my friends, I’ve lived these last four months alternating between anxiety and anger. Each is a natural default position for me and neither produces anything constructive. Thus, I’ve taken on a set of activities that allow for civic involvement rather than simply online venting. Thus, I’ve renewed my attention to charities that supersede politics and target groups that are chronically in need. Thus, I check in on my neighbors and practice my customized version of gratitude.

There’s also this: my birthday is in the spring. It’s been years since I’ve looked forward to it. From the moment I crossed what is by any measure the halfway mark of my lifespan, I saw myself as in countdown mode. That’s a formidable shadow to shake off and each year it becomes a little more challenging.

Which is why each spring I emerge, determined to fight my impulse to stay hunkered down and folded in. If I open my eyes, I see there are places I’m still needed and ways in which I can still be helpful. Sometimes I have to push extra hard to prove my worth in this youth and resume-oriented world. And yes, sometimes it’s a struggle to rise to the occasion or even rise up out of my comfortable chair. But the times demand it. So does a life repurposed, renewed and rebooted.

Relevance is in. It’s how we measure everything. What’s trending? What’s hot? What earns the clicks, the comments, or the buzz? How does that translate into currency?

I admit I struggle with the concept. Have for years. Who is listening to me? Who is reading what I write? How do I extend my reach? How will I know if I’ve achieved relevance?

The dictionary definition of relevance is “being connected to the matter at hand.” That’s vague enough to induce an anxiety attack. What is the matter at hand? How do we know? How often does it change? Who decides?

We do, “we” being an aggregate. Our impulses, our needs and our desires are reflected in our comments as well as our purchases. We affect and are affected by everyone else. We participate in and succumb to group-think. Everything we like, buy, rate or consume is quantified and measured. The results are used to determine what is offered to us, whether it’s commentary or the latest must-have thing.

Relevance breaks us out of the pack. Without it, we’re in the back row, out of the loop, powerless, maybe even voiceless.

Products and ideas struggle to be relevant. So do people. Irrelevance feels like invisibility. How many of us have tried to give a speech or teach a class to a roomful of people looking at their smart phones? I played piano bar for many years, which is only marginally less deflating. The job entails soothing without disrupting. The goal is to be ignored. It’s a profoundly disappointing way to entertain.

As Google helpfully points out, “artists and politicians are always worried about their relevance. If they are no longer relevant, they may not keep their job.”

So true. Ask any writer trying to come up with the perfect post-Harry Potter/Divergent/Hunger Games young adult novel. Ask any songwriter trying to come up with the next “Hello”, “Happy” or “Uptown Funk.” Ask any politician in 2016.

It’s not just artists and politicians who feel the pull of relevancy. Everyone worries about being important. At work, relevance becomes all about keeping the company at the leading edge of its field. At home, parents compete with the latest app or social media meme for significance in their children’s lives. It’s hard to be a knowing role model when the Internet provides all the answers.

Although relevancy (like everything else) seems amplified, it’s not a new concept. We want to be connected. We want to feel important. We want to stand up and shout, “Hey, I’m here!” The wealthy often insist on naming rights to buildings. Perhaps they hope their money can help them stay eternally connected. Legacy establishes immortality. The donor is relevant every time someone enters the [Your Name Here] Science Center.

The older we get, the less clear we are about how to be relevant or even how or where we might connect to what matters. Children grow up and move away. Spouses and siblings die. We are eased out of jobs and into a life of enforced leisure marked by secret struggles or stretches of isolation.

At some point, it may seem meaningless to think about being relevant. We can’t all be insiders. If our goal is to cast a really wide net of influence, we’re up against impossible odds. Some of us give up. Others continue to push back against obsolescence. What are we doing?

We’re trying to connect. We want to count or be counted. That’s what it’s all about. Somebody cares, somebody needs us, somebody is listening to us. We want to influence something, no matter how small that something is. That’s what floats our boat, gets us up in the morning, and makes us smile. I matter, you matter; we matter.

I argued in Hope in Small Doses that a life of purpose can just as easily involve sharing information as curing cancer. It’s not the scale; it’s the intent. We can be relevant by being a best-selling author or by being a damn good storyteller. We can shape change by running for office or by spending time with a friend in need. Relevance doesn’t require we compete for prominence unless our goal is to have an effect on the greatest number of people. In which case, we’re out of luck. There’ll always be someone with more followers or more money or more power. The next day or week or year, another person will come along to claim the influence crown.

I’ll be honest: I don’t always find it easy to embrace a more intimate definition of relevance. I’m a writer and I want to reach as many people as possible. That puts me in competition with others also vying for the attention of a public we’re trying to influence, enlighten, educate or entertain. We can’t all be relevant, can we?

Yes, we can: maybe to one or ten instead of a thousand or a million. The challenge is to acknowledge that we are all connected to the matter at hand by virtue of being alive.

Insdie Out Anger

I have a temper. I suspect it’s inherited; I offer a tip of the hat to dear old dad.

Being uncomfortable with confrontation, I try to control the impulse to explode. This isn’t always helpful as it produces a surly muttering version of me. So when I need to yell, I yell—in my room or in the car. In private.

As someone whose temper sometimes flares, I work very hard not to employ anger as a weapon. Mine is more about frustration anyway. Common irritants include lousy customer service, my aching back, challenging bureaucracy, bouts of loneliness and the rise of dis- and misinformation. Hard to blame any one person for all those feelings.

I’ve been reading about American anger, especially as it applies to the electorate. You know the mantra: We feel insecure. We live in unpredictable, scary times. Oh, and don’t try telling anyone it’s always been this way. People have short memories as well as short fuses.

What bothers me is so much voter anger is fueled by massive quantities of misinformation and significant misdirection. Too many people are led to believe “X” is both important and true or, maybe worse, they don’t care if it’s true because it feels significant. They are willing to direct their fury at identified bogeymen because it’s both easier and emotionally satisfying.

Look: Politics in America have always been nasty and voters have often fallen for dirty tricks. Nothing new. During the 1828 Presidential campaign, the accusations about John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson (mostly Jackson) included murder, adultery, corruption and sex for hire. Adams was horrified at the tenor of the stories and avoided the dirt. Jackson, angered by charges against him, eagerly participated. Jackson won.

Anger in politics? Also not new. Hitler’s rise to power was built on his ability to foment anger by identifying the supposed villains who had robbed the German people of greatness. Mideast politics seem to be a cycle of repression, anger, change and repression.

Not new but still depressing in America in 2016. Those of us who believe in evolution keep hoping human beings have progressed. Imagine a world where people demonstrate a willingness to come together to create practical solutions to difficult problems. Now imagine a world where the worst of humankind keeps triumphing over the best. Which world do you want?

Anger can unite. It can encourage action. It can bring about change. It can also incite violence or bring people under the sway of a charismatic demagogue. Public anger can turn on a dime, which is why we must take care to manage it carefully.

angry bird

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Nikki Stern

Spring Cleaning

Anger Management