Today, checking my phone after yoga I quickly learn two things. The first is that Queen Elizabeth died, the second that "Wildfire risk is high in your area. PGE may need to shut off power in the next 24–48 hours." Of the two I find the second more alarming. The predictability I foolishly count on, even when I know better, is at risk. So trying to be prepared, I find the extra battery I use to charge my phone when traveling and realize that it needs charging. And of course I don't have or can't find the only cord that fits it. So I order another that Amazon promises will be here in 24 hours. Life in the 22nd century.
I don't feel sadness over the queen's death; she had a good, long life and death comes to us all. Maybe she's relieved that she no longer has to deal with troubled family members, or watch Britain sink beneath the wave of history that appears to be engulfing it. But I know her family is mourning, and the planet will feel strangely empty for awhile.
I was ten when she was crowned and she's been showing up in the background of my life for almost as long as I can remember. For anyone younger than 70 she's always been there. As Dan Rather wrote this morning, "she was a constant in a sea of chaos" and "her passing carries a significance far greater than her official duties would indicate." I'm not going to add to the flood of words that will issue forth over the next week or so, as she is memorialized and her family adjusts. Instead, I'm going to write about swimming.
Two days ago I was getting ready to swim my usual laps and trying to decide whether to count them, as I sometimes do, or simply check the clock occasionally to make sure I got my 30 minutes in. I've missed a lot of swimming lately due to travel, covid, and waiting for a cut to heal, and I was anxious to get back to it. So which was most important? Time or number of laps?
It's pleasant to not worry about how far you have to go, to just relax and get on with it knowing that in the long run it won't matter what you do or how you do it. This is surely what our souls would prefer. To put aside the measuring, the plan making, even the pressing duty, and just let the river carry you forward. So I tried that. I was focusing on my strokes—a little ragged after so much time off—and enjoying the cool water against my skin as I routinely followed the blue-tiled lines and . . . wait. Why am I counting? What am I counting? I had completely lost track of my laps but I was counting just the same. Because this is what our brains demand we do.
It's so damn hard to just be. To just be in the water, or be in a forest, or be sitting with your feet up, not thinking of anything, not always needing to accomplish or build or win. I appreciate the people who are hard at work solving our many problems. We need them. But sometimes I think that if we could all learn to be present, be here, right here now, maybe we wouldn't have all these problems.
I don't think we ever live long enough to become the people we want to be, and we will always depart leaving something undone, because no one wants to think that today might be the last. I don't know what Elizabeth II left unfinished when she departed today, but whatever it was it probably wasn't important. Because no matter what your ego tells you, most things aren't. Even if Einstein had left general relativity unsolved, someone would have finished it for him.
I remember telling Ray, shortly after we married, that I didn't want to get to the end of my life and look back on it and say "how boring." And I got my wish. But what one does isn't what life is about. It's about who one is. I'm still trying to figure that out.
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