You don't know what you're gaining

On hopelessness, change, discomfort and a leap of faith.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

Summer is not over. Not even close.

But a funny (annoying?) thing happens every year, at least in places like Minnesota where we actually have to endure cold weather while waiting for warmer days.

We wait seemingly forever for summer, enjoy it for about three weeks, then start telling people that it is “flying by.” Around mid-July, Midwest small talk revolves around the idea that summer is “almost over.”

Poor August, the Sunday of months. We’re so worried about the end, the return to the grind, that it stops us from enjoying the middle.

Even if we try not to lapse into this mode, it is unavoidable at times. We have been inundated already with back-to-school shopping advertisements and discounts on classroom supplies for our kids.

It’s July! Can’t we just forget about all of this and panic shop on Labor Day?

Thinking about school in our house has freshened my perspective on something I started to realize this spring as we prepared to move from Minneapolis to Eagan.

We would go and look at a house, and our three kids would immediately get excited. They would call dibs on certain bedrooms within two minutes of a showing, and our oldest without fail would whisper “I love this house.”

Then we would go home and the memory of the houses we just looked at would fade quickly. Instead of being excited about the prospect of moving, the kids would all shift to worrying about all the things they would miss about our old house.

This intensified after we bought our new house. Moving was no longer a temporary thought exercise; it was our reality. And the more we wanted our kids to fall in love with all the good things about our new house, the more they clung all the things they loved about our old house.

But almost instantly after we moved into our new house, there was a dramatic shift. They could feel and experience everything we had been trying to tell them, in addition to new things they were discovering for themselves.

The things they liked about the old house started to transform into memories, and the things they didn’t like about it were replaced by a newer and better experience.

Before that happened, though, I had a good deal of anxiety. Did we mess up by moving out of the only house they had ever lived in? Why weren’t they as excited as we wanted them to be?

The answer, in retrospect, is a twist on an old expression.

They knew exactly what they would be missing with the old house.

They didn’t know what they were gaining.

I’ve been able to share that perspective with some other friends who are also in the process of moving and experiencing some of the same trepidation from their kids.

And now that school is almost here (note: it is not, but the discourse insists that it is) we are experiencing some of the same feelings again.

Our kids are thinking about their school friends from Minneapolis and all the routines they used to know.

A few nights ago, our 7-year-old was sullen before bed time. We tried to ask her what was wrong, but she went into her room and was in tears. Her older sister followed her and was able to get her to open up about what was wrong.

“What if we go to our new school and I forget where my classroom is?” she said.

Our older daughter assured her that she would walk her to her classroom the first few days at their new school until she got the hang of it. All was temporarily well until later that night.

I asked our older daughter if there was anything she is worried about, and she confessed that she has been thinking about how hard it might be to make friends at a new school.

That caught me off guard because this is a 10-year-old girl who has — at least in the past — made friends about as easily as the rest of us breathe air.

“It’s not as easy when you’re in fifth grade,” she said, anticipating what it will be like. “You can’t just go up to someone and say, ‘let’s play’ and then you’re friends.”

The friends she has now are primarily from her old school. She has had a bunch of sleepovers with them already this summer, and she greatly misses the freedom to just walk over to their houses.

Trying to tell her that she will have all of that soon with a new set of friends — while still keeping the old ones — only does so much in July.

She only knows what she’s missing, not gaining.

I find that this has a greater application to the world at large. The entire ethos of our time is changing, and the pace of that change is dizzying.

On one side of the timeline is the life we have all known, which in many ways has been individual-focused and increasingly easy (as it relates to obtaining our material wants and needs).

The present is a transition and to some an existential crisis. In a life that’s increasingly digital, on a planet that is increasingly volatile and crowded, who are we and what are we? Is time close to infinite or not?

I sense hopelessness is on the rise, both from those who are truly desperate and getting left behind and those who feel powerless to create change.

In the chaotic swirl, a lot of people are trying to show that they matter individually, and they are doing so authentically sometimes but in utterly performative ways other times.

My second sense is that we need to reframe the classic “American Dream” away from the individual and toward the collective in order to redefine our direction.

We can’t spend, eat or selfie our way out of an existential crisis. We need an existential solution, even if it runs counter to our way of being up to this point.

The “now” is neither here nor there, and it’s uncomfortable to think about all that might change.

What fills the gap is hope, but that requires a leap of faith.

We don’t know yet what we’re gaining.

• It’s the last Sunday of the month, so a bit of housekeeping. A while back, I asked readers for some book recommendations. Just to reiterate that summer is not over and there is still time to get to some of these titles before the rush of the fall, here are three books readers nominated as life-changing and their reasons:

A People’s History of the United States. “I hadn’t considered alternate versions of history throughout my schooling before I read it and what ‘changed my life’ about it is realizing what you read or are taught isn’t necessarily the full details of what happened. It taught me to use my brain a little more if a topic or article interested me.”

The New Rules of Aging Well. “Spoiler: this is not about Botox, skincare, etc. It’s about slowing down the inevitable decay to our bodies — our muscles, our minds, etc. Very interesting and straightforward.”

It. Goes. So. Fast. “It changed my recent work. How can I do my freelance work — but also be involved with my family? It raised a lot of questions for me.”

• Wrote this down the other day. It’s been a month of heavier thinking, I guess? “The thing that makes us fearful of living at times is that it is when we are at heightened states of existence that we often think of our own mortality.”

• August is going to be a big month for working on getting that old book I wrote into shape to publish here. It’s been sitting next to my bed for two months waiting to be read. Maybe I need to listen to my own words and understand that I don’t know what I’m gaining yet, either.