It Could Be Otherwise

And one day, it will be.

Dear Reader, I don’t go for platitudes of gratitude, but I will say this: I am truly thankful for you! Without you, Flower Child would be nothing. Thank you for being here.

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George Bailey realizing how much he loves his life as it is — broken banister knob and all — in It’s a Wonderful Life. (I still wonder why he doesn’t just fix it.)

Now that our national holiday of forced gratitude is behind us, my thoughts are once again on the much-celebrated practice of expressing gratitude.

Last year, I wrote about the light and dark sides of gratitude. That’s right — though I’m a true believer in gratitude, it can backfire to express gratitude just because we’ve been told to, rather than because we’re feeling it. We can suppress stuff we need to be feeling, and we can divert focus from changing whatever systems need to be changed.

Dark times don’t inspire gratitude

That’s especially evident now. Even before November 5, we were living through an ongoing global pandemic. Prices were going up, despite the positive economic markers the pundits kept punditing about. Climate change was bringing dramatic disasters to even so-called climate havens like Asheville, North Carolina. And all of this was happening in an increasingly divided political climate, while we progressives were being told to have empathy for fascists even though they never extended us that courtesy.

Then, the election.

All of the above is still happening. And now, our fraught and uncertain times have become exponentially more fraught and uncertain. I don’t need to tell you about the threats to our democracy, our climate, and our well-being. We know what the newly empowered fascists are planning to do; they wrote a 900-page tome explaining it, and in case you haven’t read Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” (I haven’t either!), they’re vocal about it on social and non-social media.

It’s hard to envision what this will look like. How successful will they be at implementing their plans? Will they break all the laws, or just some of them? Will they take away my Social Security and Medicare? (Yes, I am obsessed!)

One thing’s for sure: it will be bad. We just don’t know how bad, or exactly what flavor of bad.

Given all that, what can we feel grateful for? I know expressing gratitude is beneficial, but you have to really feel it. How do we do that?

The lesson of old photos

When I look at photos of myself from 20, 10, even 5 years ago, I’m often stunned at how much better I looked then. I had dark hair! I was thinner! My skin was smooth!

Did I think I looked great back then? Of course not.

Then, I see current photos of myself and I’m horrified. My hair is scraggly and gray. I’m nearly 30 pounds heavier than I used to be, and it shows. I look like an old hag. Should I care about this stuff? Maybe not, but let’s be real — we all care about how we look.

As true as all that is (to me, anyway), there’s another truth I’m aware of: the truth of how I’ll feel if I get the chance to see those same photos in 20 years — you know, if I live that long and the world isn’t completely destroyed by then. No doubt, I’ll wish I looked as good as I did then.

Well, I hate to break it to you, Self: Then is now.

The lesson of calamity

My looks are the least important thing in life, I know. But the same principle applies to everything.

One night in my early thirties, I had a bad stomach flu and was throwing up so much I got dehydrated and ended up in the emergency room. The nearest one was at St. Luke’s hospital in the Mission, the place to go if you had a gunshot wound but apparently not as excellent in other areas. They hydrated me and did a sonogram, and then they casually mentioned I should see my gynecologist. I made an appointment but didn’t rush it.

It was close to 5pm on a Thursday. My gynecologist, memorably named Madelyn Kahn, looked concerned when she saw the sonogram report from St. Luke’s. She then proceeded to tell me I almost certainly had cancer. “It’s been a bad day,” she said, shaking her head. There was that horrible bedside manner she was known for throughout San Francisco. You’re having a bad day, lady? I thought. I’m the one who almost certainly has cancer!

I stumbled out of her office, hyper-aware of all the normal people walking down the street having normal, cancer-free days. I went to meet a friend for dinner at La Mediterranee on Fillmore Street, one of my favorite restaurants. I could barely taste the food the normal, cancer-free people around me were enjoying. Everything looked dark.

Mercifully, I was spared thinking I had cancer for long. Less than 24 hours later I had a sonogram at a different clinic, where the doctor in charge said immediately, “This is just endometriosis.” I’d never heard of endometriosis and had no idea what it was, but it wasn’t cancer. As the soothing balm of his reassuring tone washed over me, I cried in relief.

The truth is, I didn’t know if every one of those people walking down the street and eating in the restaurant was cancer-free. Some of them might have been sick. They might have just been dumped by the love of their life. They might have been laid off and facing eviction. Someone they loved might have died.

But for a brief moment — though it seemed much longer — I knew the feeling of your life falling apart while everyone around you goes on living as if nothing were happening. It’s not a feeling you forget. Nor is the relief when you realize your life isn’t actually falling apart.

Any of us can be hit by calamity at any time. Does that make me nervous? Yes, it does; I’m a worrier. But it also makes it easier for me to appreciate what I have now.

What we have now

On a trip to visit Rafael’s mother when I was in my late forties, I was amused to hear her reminiscing about her fifties, when she had “so much energy.” Cool, I thought, I have something to look forward to!

Reader, I did not have “so much energy” in my fifties. But I put way more work into making a career change than I can imagine doing now. And I expect that when I get to my eighties, I’ll talk about my fifties the same way Rafael’s mom did.

“Yes,” I hear you say, “it’s all relative. I’ve heard that before.” Sure you have — but hey, it’s still true!

And it helps to be aware of this truth.

The good thing about being hyper-aware and worrying about potential calamities — besides single-handedly warding them off via the immense power of my omnipotent brain — is becoming hyper-aware of how good we have it now.

Rafael and I have less energy and a few more aches and pains than before, but we’re lucky to still be quite healthy. We have a house with a not-high mortgage in the expensive Bay Area, where I can go hiking all year round. We have great friends. Two cats in the yard. I could go on.

As the Leonardo DiCaprio character says at the end of Don’t Look Up, “We really did have everything.” Only for us, it’s not yet past tense.

I don’t know what will happen in the next four years and beyond. I hardly know what will happen in the next four minutes.

But I know that right now, we have everything. And it could be otherwise.

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A poem for our times

The poet Jane Kenyon said it better than I ever could. When she wrote “Otherwise” in 1994, she and her husband had both had bouts with cancer, which increased her awareness that some day, the life she was living would be gone. It was gone for her the following year, when she died at the age of 47.

Otherwise
By Jane Kenyon

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.