Tumbling and Taking Wing
It’s been almost three years now since I first got sick with Covid. I know that quite a few of you are ‘first wavers’, as well. And among us first wavers, are many, many thousands whose bodies have not recovered—not fully, anyway.
As a glass-half-full kinda gal, I sometimes delude myself into thinking I’m more recovered than I am. It feels nice to focus on the bright side, and besides, I’m grateful for my good fortune; I get that it isn’t a given. I can hike and sometimes run a bit. I can swim and climb and write and travel. I can’t do any of these things at my pre-2020 level of intensity. But I can do them. And I know to appreciate and love the magic of this because I know what it is for these abilities to vanish. Sometimes, they still do. I’m sailing along and then—poof!—fatigue or brain fog or other symptoms overtake me, and the only option is to yield. To surrender. To rest for however long it takes. Usually, my cognitive abilities are the first to vanish, pulling my generally buoyant disposition along with them. Cognitive over-exertion is still my most frequent and troublesome trigger.
If you’re a long-hauler or deal with chronic illness or pain, then what I’ve described is likely achingly familiar to you. If not, well . . . the physical terrain that long-haulers must navigate isn’t all that different from the emotional terrain that all humans contend with. One day, you feel one way; the next day, you feel another. For a lovely stretch of weeks, you might think of yourself as smart or capable or kind or perhaps even superior to the people around you. But it only takes one thing or one small series of things—a dressing down from your boss, an argument with a loved one, an old trauma that bubbles up out of the blue, a financial blow, or a wretched bout of PMS—and suddenly, you are the worst, or so your inner monologue goes. Your life is a joke, and not even a funny one. You are out of control. You are too much. You are not enough.
We’ve all been there. We will all be there again.
Sometimes, I imagine that there really are people who are strong and graceful all the time, but invariably, when I get to know those people, their vulnerability surfaces. (And for the record, when people are willing to share those parts of themselves, it just makes me love and admire them more.) We all swim in this same precarity. We all have moments when the ground slips out from beneath our feet. We all know the feeling of falling.
I’ve written a lot about awe lately, and maybe this is why I’m so drawn to both the concept and the experience of awe. . . . We all know the feeling of falling, and if you know it well enough, then you may begin to suspect (as I do) that groundlessness is at the heart of human existence. That there is no solid ground, no certainty, no safe spot where you get to stand, comfortably rooted for all of eternity. Life is inherently uncertain, inherently mysterious. But mystery and uncertainty make awe possible. If I really expected my life to move in one tidy line from here to there, imagine the detours I would miss. I wouldn’t fall to my knees at the sight of a February flower, growing upward from last season’s decay. I wouldn’t crouch on the forest floor, bringing my eyes down to meet the dreamsicle-orange fungus stitched like lace across a fallen branch.
In these tiny moments of awe, falling becomes flying. Groundlessness becomes weightlessness. Mystery, uncertainty, precarity—they become invitations. Live, they say. Live into this. Experience this.
I need these moments. They don’t remove the zig-zagging ups and downs of existence. They don’t remove the precarity. They don’t eliminate the fatigue or brain fog or the need for compression socks and bed rest. But they illuminate beauty. They illuminate our connectedness. Which isn’t a ground exactly. It isn’t a thing that you can stand on and never be budged from again. It’s more like a hand to hold. A reassuring touch as you navigate this life, in which there are no assurances.
May you find that hand to hold this week—whether it’s a literal hand or a song that stirs you or a February flower. May you find weightlessness in the groundlessness, flying in the falling. May you remember that we are all there—every last one of us—tumbling and taking wing alongside you.