We must hold as many truths as there are to be held 🌍
Living and processing in a world of juxtapositions. 🫤
It’s a weekend morning and I want to clean my pots outside to prepare them for planting, but the weather has another idea. All week we’ve had rain and sun, on and off, like someone is toggling a lever. Just as I grab the large paper bag for yard waste, the rain starts to fall with fat drips on the deck. My kids are occupied, one with a piano lesson, one mysteriously quiet in her room; I gladly take the unexpected window of time. I turn to my computer to complete an online order when I see a tab sitting in my browser, the one I’m meant to be writing in so that Field Notes might appear in your inbox sometime soon.
I’ve tried to tackle this piece a few times this week. But, alas, I stared at the blinking cursor unsure of how to articulate my thoughts. They are just too big.
Everyday life has me toggling between living and processing — a bit like the rain and sun that take turns in the sky. I’ve been told many times I need to get out of my head, to stop thinking so much, to stop trying to make sense of things. Trust me, I try. But I am compulsively curious. I am also a ‘big picture’ kind of person, which is both a superpower and a weakness. I can’t help but look at situations from all angles, exploring possible scenarios and outcomes. I like to understand how things make me feel, and what it means for me.
This has me living in the past, present, and future all at once.
The people pleaser in me knows this isn’t always healthy. The business woman in me knows it has saved her rear many times. And the person, the human that is Me, knows and honours that this is how I’m hardwired. Over the years it has been imperative for me to find a way to tap into my default mode without letting it dominate everything — like downloading an app or program for temporary usage. I have learned how to let emotions come and let them linger a little while without trying to think my way out of them. It’s a work-in-progress. It comes through time spent outdoors, through micro meditations (I can’t claim to be a loyal practitioner), through yoga, breathing, journalling, and mindfulness.
But some weeks I live in my head more than others. Some weeks, the thoughts are just too complex to take apart.
The other night my daughter and I were watching YouTube videos of Rube Goldberg machines and domino chain reactions. It’s all incredibly entertaining, even deeply satisfying to watch. After a little while, when a video finished, she turned to me on the couch and said, with the unfiltered wisdom of her 11-year-old mind: “You know, it’s a strange world we live in that people can spend weeks placing a million dominoes when there are children who don’t have enough to eat.”
Strange, indeed. Absurd. Heart-wrenching to hear it from your own kid.
Since they were little, we’ve tried to help our kids understand their fortunate circumstances. We have age-appropriate conversations about what’s happening in the world (and our own country, for that matter). We travel with them so they can witness other ways of life. But the gap between imagination and reality is often too great to foster genuine understanding.
I suggested we watch something else, and realized as I said it just how fortunate we were to have the option to turn the horror on and off through the click of a button.
One evening last week, my husband and I were looking to “chill out” and he suggested we stream 20 Days in Mariupol, winner of the 2023 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film (the team1 behind was also given the 2023 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Public Service). I read the description2 and knew this would not be a ‘chill’ viewing experience, but also knew this was a seminal and groundbreaking film, and I owed it to humanity to witness it.
I lasted 20 minutes.
I feel ashamed to say I couldn’t handle the brutality of it, even as I sat on a cozy couch with a pillow in front of my face. I understood, deep in my bones, what Ed Vulliamy wrote in the The Guardian about the film, that it “feels like a cinematic siege of the soul.” I felt shaken from what I had seen; I still do. Faces of my own children flashed in my mind. Imagine this was us?
Paul and I went upstairs, and I knew there was no going to sleep anytime soon. I suggested we watch something else, and realized as I said it just how fortunate we were to have the option to turn the horror on and off through the click of a button. Looking at the clock, I noticed it was getting late and one of us needed to be up at 7 a.m. with the kids. So we landed on a show that has become our go-to when we want something short: Seinfeld. And as we watched the “nothingness” play out on screen, I thought to myself: How do Seinfeld and 20 Days in Mariupol exist in the same world?
The next evening, I was tucking my six-year-old into bed. She was wearing adorable unicorn pyjamas, the T-shirt of them slightly too small so that her belly showed a bit. In her room there is a little tent, twinkle lights, and a string of pennants in pastel hues that dangles from the ceiling. It’s a safe haven. It’s what I want for her. I kissed her goodnight. The footage from Mariupol still fresh in my mind, I found myself lingering a bit longer. This child has no sense that the world is as unfair and cruel as it is.
I know it’s only a matter of time before she wakes up to the realities of the world. I know this, of course, because my 11-year-old is starting to understand, just beginning to grapple with the juxtapositions.
Welcome to Planet Earth, my children, where the best and the worst collide and some kids are sleeping under twinkle lights while others are barricading in bomb shelters. (As I write this, my youngest has kindly interrupted me to help her find a silver crayon so that she can finish a firetruck birthday card for a friend’s party today. There will be prizes and games and presents and pizza and real-life firetrucks for kids to climb into.)
The web of thoughts gets even more tangled from here.
While my mind is still reeling from 20 Days in Mariupol and my privileged existence, I’m making personal decisions about my life and career. I’m managing finances and what we’ll eat for dinner. I have programs to register my kids for, appointments to book, receipts to process, clients to invoice, events to volunteer at. I have lists upon lists, reminders and tasks, and what feels like a mountain of responsibilities.
The thoughts come in layers, from the personal to family to community to global and back down to the personal again; they are all inextricably linked, and yet I must compartmentalize them if I’m to walk through yet another day without my mind bursting into flames.
So, I go back to yoga, back to walking. I toggle into processing mode for a bit, and then toggle back into simply living, to being present for my family, to finding joy amidst the sorrow on this planet, which honestly feels so disingenuous.
Yet this is also the gift of living that many truths can exist at once. While I wouldn’t wish in a million years for 20 Days in Mariupol and Seinfeld to exist in the same universe, the fact is that they do. But so do sadness and joy. Grief and peace. Anger and acceptance. We can feel it all simultaneously; the gift is we don’t need to choose.
All this is pulsing in me as I’m chopping vegetables or listening to my kids’ stories about school (a kid took my eraser!) or filing paperwork — the everydayness that makes up a life here in my Canadian existence.
It all feels too weird sometimes.
I wonder how I can make a difference. I wonder what this all means for me, what I’m meant to do about the juxtapositions apart from just letting them co-exist.
I don’t have answers today, nor a nice, clean conclusion. I’m not sure I’m meant to have a way to wrap this all up in a beautiful bow or leave with some kind of reassurance that I’m even on the right track. If there is a lesson in this it’s that, in the world’s messiness, we simply can’t find a way out of it. We must live in it as long as others are. We must do what we can. We must remember.
We must hold as many truths as there are to be held, and not forget that this — all of this — is what it means to be human.
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Meghan J. Ward is an outdoor, travel and adventure writer based in Banff, Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the author of Lights to Guide Me Home. Meghan has written several books, as well as produced content for films, anthologies, blogs and some of North America’s top outdoor, fitness and adventure publications.
What’s caught my attention lately… ✨
Inside the Belly of an Elephant, by Todd Lawson — Todd and I have been crossing paths for years as fellow authors, mountain culture publishers, and travel lovers. I dove into his memoir this month and it became a propulsive read. After losing his brother to preventable cerebral malaria, Todd sets off on a motorcycle journey across the Americas to spread Sean’s ashes. It becomes a 19-month, 23-country odyssey that rails against the modern, convenience-seeking, technology-driven travel of today. Todd is a wonderful, wholehearted storyteller with a voice all to himself. The more I read, the more I appreciated this book. As for the title, it carries a profound message…
The Zone of Interest (2023) is a poignant film about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family next to the concentration camp. The film has provoked a wide range of reactions from critics, viewers and many within the film industry; it will no doubt lead to some conversations in your household or with whoever you choose to watch it.
Check these out too… 🙌
Lights to Guide Me Home - my memoir (reviews welcome on Amazon and Goodreads)
The Wonders That I Find - my children’s book
My Email Newsletter - updates about my books, projects, and 1:1 coaching
Related
I am an eight-generation Canadian and a descendent of British, Scottish and German settlers living, working, and recreating outdoors in Treaty 7 Territory — the homelands and gathering place for the Niitsitapi from the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani First Nations; the Îyârhe Nakoda of the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations; the Tsuut’ina First Nation; the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III and many others. I am doing my utmost, both personally and professionally, to deepen my understanding of the history of Indigenous peoples and the impacts of colonialism — past and present.
From their website: “Awarded to Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant for their courageous reporting from the besieged city of Mariupol that bore witness to the slaughter of civilians in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggles to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.
Meghan…I want you to know you are making a tremendous difference with your words. You have created a beautiful space here and it is because of you…that I have started my own Substack page. I launched it 2 weeks ago and I was so excited. And then …. I haven’t posted another thing. I’ve been struggling with posting. I too wonder if it’s the weather? So I almost laughed when I read your post today beginning with the weather. I’ve been a professional artist and art teacher for almost 30 years. I’ve been writing for about 6 years but haven’t shared my words. I want to write about my disability and how being in a wheelchair has changed my life and my art. The good and the bad. But then I think of all of the people with disabilities that are far worse than mine and so many are living in poverty? and how can I talk about art?? I am privileged to live the life I do so how can I help others when I am so fortunate? My mind goes into those same places as you and I am glad I am not alone. Meghan I owe you a big thank you. Please send me good vibes so I have the courage to do my 2nd Substack post.
I'm teaching two classes of writers online, and I notice we're all struggling with the truth. The war in Ukraine and the murders of children in Gaza are devastating, and day after day I don't recover from what I see. I think we will sponsor a family to escape. The small effort helps me continue to look and speak, and be with other writers struggling. Thank you for writing of this difficult moment.