It’s been a whirlwind week in my life, like so many others that preceded it. So random that it’s a fitting example for what Albert Camus calls “absurd”. Trying to understand life and find meaning in its randomness has indeed proved to be futile. I can be doing my best on one thing, and still the thing that works out often is not what I invested in, and that which I’ve poured myself into can be running toward an apocalypse, well, atleast for now, until it turns around for some random reason or none at all or because all my work has finally come to fruition.
So I’ve decided that I’m going to let things be. Set hope aside, set optimism aside, and just embrace that sexy uncertainty that always beckons me forward whether I like it or not; like a shapeshifter who’ll either show me a good time or push me down a ravine.
The question then I ask myself is- do I want to risk embracing this uncertainty knowing things might very well get worse or stay the same? Or do I want to turn away, escape it, and pretend that the angel of hope will save me? Yet, the uncertainty remains, always, with or without the illusion of hope. It’s either I embrace it knowing that it never really gets that much better on average and plod on anyway (because refusal is death) or delude myself that it does based on all that’s good in my life, and feel disillusioned as time goes on. The latter is what we ironically call positive thinking or toxic positivity (the good-vibes-only phenomenon that came crashing down during the covid-19 pandemic), or tragic optimism ( as demonstrated by the father of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl; although I wonder if Camus’ absurdist view would’ve done anything for Frankl to survive the brutality of a Nazi concentration camp and escape), or the casual look-on-the-bright-side attitude (the old school Readers’ Digest style), it is just an illusory salve for our wretched souls limited to a human existence.
Last week, I savored a wonderful road trip to the California Redwoods with my sweet nephew and his vivacious wife, who live in San Jose, stopping to enjoy the raging Northern Pacific ocean in all its glory on deserted coastlines with the coastal redwood trees looming across the beach.
I marveled at tidepools with abundant sea life, spotted bodacious rufous hummingbirds among the lupines and black currant from the Klamath Overlook from where you can also see the Smith River river meet the Pacific ocean as gray whales migrate North for the summer.
We hiked the Prairie Creek State Park looking for the elusive, unmarked Atlas Grove of 380 ft plus tall redwoods mentioned in the phenomenal book, The Wild Trees by Richard Preston (hidden from the general public for good reason), and hiked the magical Jedediah Smith State Park with it’s towering giants, and hushed silence that hangs between drooping mosses, verdant ferns, gushing waterfalls, curious mushrooms and banana slugs, and vibrant blooms of trillium and bright yellow skunk cabbage blooms (that put out a scent that made me wonder if someone is getting high, understandably, to transcend even further with these behemoths that seemed to hug to heavens).
I think I died a few times from exhaustion and pain on that 7-mile moderate hike of squishy mud, fallen trees, and root-y terrain, but my soul was never more alive. On the last day there, we ended up wading through the prehistoric Fern Canyon, anticipating dueling dinosaurs to erupt from its canyons at any time for a climactic wrap. No dinos but the Roosevelt Elk finally made an appearance. Many, actually!
A return to San Jose to reunite with a loving labradoodle called “Cocoa” and some spinach dal soul food made by my niece, preceded by some uber special vegan Japanese ramen in San Francisco, and lots of candid conversation with this younger couple made for a wonderful trip.
Back home in Texas, the very next day, my fam bam came down with covid, and shared it with me. As if both of us parents being sick was not bad enough, we also had to deal with a painful family matter.
We’re all doing as okay as we can, and the love and support of our nearest and dearest friends dropping off food and checking on us, and phone calls from family have left us with a deep sense of gratitude for community. And for Paxlovid. And for having health insurance. And for living in a country that still cares about getting all its citizens vaccinated.
In all this apparent randomness, filled with beauty and heartache, fresh air and sickness, a fast-depleting natural environment and advanced healthcare, abundance and frailty, awe and darkness, profundity and insignificance, today I pause to fully embrace Camus’s revolt against the futility of it all.
As one of the most controversial biologists of our times, Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder,
“We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could’ve been here in my place but who will never in fact see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
Your writing is divine!!!!!! Your friendship brings me joy. Thanks for sharing!
Tess, that’s a big compliment coming from a professional writer! Thanks! And I’m glad we’re friends too 🙂