Some dwellings are heightened threat environments. It's difficult to focus on external chaos when the home and being is chaotic. Then, it all feels the same or similar. Feeling unsafe is the norm. Being unsafe is the norm.
I often assign my new desire to be home on being a parent. "Outings require so much effort," I say. Truthfully, the [varying in severity] inconvenience, annoyance, and difficulty of toddlerhood is a ready-made excuse.
I feel the heightened threat environment of the world. It whirs with the car speeding by as I clutch my 1 year old hands tighter. It's in the drunken voices of neighbors. It is on TV, phone, and computer screens. It's in the comments and newspapers. Violence visits freeways, churches, malls, schools, movie theaters, grocery stores, concerts, political rallies, golf courses, small and large communities all over the globe.
If you feel it; if it clings to your hair and clothes like cigarette smoke; if it makes your stomach turn like overpowering perfume in an elevator, you are too sensitive. You consume too much news. You are simply not trying hard enough to be optimistic. You're too fearful. You're too dramatic. You are the rain drenching parades.
What is the appropriate response to living in the heightened threat environment of humanity? Denial? Defiance? I don't know. I only know I prefer the constructive chaos of my 1-year-old to the destructive chaos of the world in the safety of our home.
- 09/17/2024
