I would have thought it was fall because I saw my first sugar beet on the side of the road just a few days ago (since then I’ve seen several), but the weather has apparently decided to fast forward toward winter. It’s been really cold, and gray, and windy as all get out. Two nights ago, the winds were so fierce that the leaves were literally leaping off the trees. Lawn furniture was blown about. The house shook with the gusts and kept waking me up. We’ve seen huge flocks of geese flying the wrong way south, honking their heads off. I haven’t hauled out boots or winter jackets or scarves yet, but it won’t be much longer if it stays this chilly.
Despite that, I’ve been going walking nearly every day, often twice…a quick 15-minute walk at work after lunch and then another, longer one as soon as I get home. I’ve learned that if I don’t do it right away, it’s too easy to get busy and forget or sit down on the sofa and then it’s all over. I’ve already lost over 5 pounds since my first visit to WW so I’m motivated and in a positive place about continuing to work at it.
I just finished another fantastic book: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Have you read it? So, so good, and so, SO terrifying. I’ve read several future dystopia, apocalyptic, end-of-world books in my life and even if some of them are very good, most of the time they are just too disturbing to contemplate. It’s not typically a genre I care for much. But for some reason, this one really resonated. Perhaps because it seems so PLAUSIBLE and perhaps because it ends with a glimpse of hope (and there weren’t any damn zombies).
It certainly has led to a lot of thinking over the past day or so about all the things we surround ourselves with that are ultimately so fragile: medical care, plentiful food, refrigeration, critical infrastructure like running water, electricity, the Internet, news. We know what’s going on, all the time, everywhere (if we care to keep up with it). We can travel from one side of the planet to the other within the span of day. Our families and friends are scattered all over the globe and yet we can contact each other at any time, in real-time.
It’s frightening to think how isolated and how helpless most of us would be in the event of a global catastrophe like the pandemic that is described in the book. And sobering to think about how much we take for granted. And how much we’d miss if it all disappeared. Toward the end of the book, one man thinks about the fact that if he had realized he was eating his last orange, he would have savored it more.
And despite all that, I highly recommend it. It was lyrical, haunting, unpredictable and full of incredible, fascinating character studies. I also recommend savoring things more.
Savor the time you have with your loved ones and the phone calls from family far away.
Savor the foods you eat that come from faraway places.
Savor the bread you didn’t have to bake, the meat you didn’t have to hunt, the vegetables you didn’t have to grow.
Savor the fact that you can call and make a doctor or dentist appointment any time you like.
Savor the heat in your house, and the lights and the screen in front of you.
Tomorrow is the end of a busy week, and it ends with a dinner out with work girlfriends. I’m looking forward to it, but also kind of wish I could just come home and collapse, muddy and exhausted, on the couch, with a new book and myskväll with the kids.