Pandora

Inspirational song: Just Remember I Love You (Firefall)

Several times this summer, and most especially this week, I let external and internal forces swamp me. The news has been dreadful for months, and it keeps coming in giant waves of badness. I've been locked in an epic battle with the man, that really looks more like negotiations based on us emailing Zillow links, over what our next two to five years will hold. My emotions have been thrown in a tumble dryer, and my heart feels concussed and overheated. So how is it, when life is the most frightening, when I'm sitting with a dying cat on my lap, watching television coverage of a militarized police over-reaction in the heartland, or pondering a dramatic shift in lifestyle and income looming on the horizon, that I feel like just as soon as this crap finishes shaking out, my life is about to get significantly better? Where does this hope come from? I feel like I'm three big steps across a bed of coals, and I just have two more to reach the other side, stronger and freer than ever. Bring it.

I've generally been able to accept the bad times as a necessary corollary to the good. Most of the time, I'm not stuck in a why-me mindset, and instead I look for the lessons in the failures and the redeeming qualities in the situations or even people who disappoint me. I still love my friends, even when they are jerks. I still consider myself an incredibly fortunate person, even when I'm going through long losing streaks. And I believe that there is a great deal of positive energy on the horizon, if we can just survive the horrible news cycle.

I caught an episode of The Sixties on CNN, and watched and listened to a group of counter-culture icons describe how they had so many people wanting to travel from California to a certain gathering in New York, so they took an old school bus, and painted it in psychedelic colors and roamed the country in it. Of course I watched that segment of the show intently, comparing it to our own plans for converting a school bus into a temporary caravan for the Smith Park clan (well, the man and I plus the quadrupeds - Carlotta is not invited). My man has said more than once that he wants to paint the outside of the bus in elaborate, vivid designs, echoing the buses he has seen on his travels around the world. I'm less enthusiastic about that idea. I don't need to recreate the Acid Test during my year on wheels. I'm not out to "unsettle America," but rather to put my own mind and heart at peace. I have suggested I would prefer to design a caravan that is pure American Arts and Crafts movement, as if Gustav Stickley and William Morris designed a Pullman Car. (Yes, technically, Morris was English Arts & Crafts, but go with me on this.) My man is more excited about finding the beauty in the great outdoors, but as an avowed indoor cat myself, I'm determined to bring what I find beautiful with me as my private spaceship.

I don't know when I switched from being upset and terrified that the man wanted to go on the road for a year, to being excited at the freedom, potential for spiritual growth, and danger of it all. But somewhere very recently, no more than a week or two now, I have totally committed to this. I realize that getting my heart set on it means that I risk great disappointment if unforeseen circumstances rip it back away from us. But that is the calculus of opening Pandora's box. There is no telling what will come flying out. Over the course of my lifetime, I have flipped open that lid so many times I've lost count. But never, not once, have I lost hope.