Hope

As the calendar year comes to an end and people look back into the past to see what they’ve accomplished and look forward into the near future to set goals, I look back and see that what I accomplished is that I am here. I am still in this mortal coil, still moving forward day by day, and still working to experience joy and, on most days, happiness. For me, simply being here is a huge accomplishment. As I look forward to the new year and as I try to set goals, my only real goal, as always, is to have hope that this year will be better than the last.

In “You Belong to the World,” the first poem in the collection You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World edited by Ada Limón, the poet Carrie Fountain states, “You belong/ to the world, animal. Deal with it.” If you’ve read this blog for a long time, you know I’ve wrestled with vegetarianism, veganism, paleo eating, omnivorous eating, and a variety of other ways to sustain myself. I do believe that eating vegan is the best choice for us and this world, and vegetarianism is a close second, but I also know that as I age I need more protein than what I can stomach on a vegan diet. Notice, I did not say than what can be attained on a vegan diet, but more than I can ingest. I cannot eat that many lentils. I don’t even like most beans. So, I am choosing instead to eat mindfully, in moderation, all of the things I love, because while I want happiness for the animals, I, too, am an animal and desire happiness and longevity. Maybe one day, again, I will be vegan.

About being an animal and belonging to this world and dealing with it. Again, if you’ve read this blog for longer than a minute, you know I am heavily invested in theology, and so much theology is about what will happen then. Then, as in, when we die. While I have never been thoroughly invested in an “I’m living well now, so I can get to heaven” theology, I have been, since I was very young, invested in a “how do I live my theology, or how do I live like Jesus and Buddha, here on this earth in this year in this specific moment” theology—this was not so popular in seminary, as I was always asking why people were good with the hopes of a future reward, rather than being good because those good works flowed from their beliefs and were a natural consequence of our faith in Jesus—but, I digress. The idea of being an animal who belongs to this earth, so deal with it, seems much in line with my way of theological thinking. We are animals who belong, for up to 100 or so years, to this earth, while simultaneously we are souls who belong infinitely to another realm, string, or timeline—I have yet to parse this out exactly—and while we are here, we belong not only to ourselves, but to the world and those other creatures who inhabit it. In Genesis, humans are given the role of caretakers of the other animals on this planet—so what? it’s a metaphor, mythology, or allegory; we learn from those all of the time. We are not separate from nature, but we are part of it; in fact, we’re the ones who are supposed to make sure the plants and the animals—every last living thing— stay safe and well, so we can all be fruitful and multiply. There’s a reason that all of nature—a hike, a swim, lying in the grass, watching the clouds, feeling the rain— feels so fucking good to us. We belong to it, animals, so deal with it.

How, you may ask, does that effect how I plan to live out my goals this year? Fountain writes, “Even as/ the great abstractions come to take you away,/ the regrets, the distractions, you can at any second/ come back to the world to which you belong,/ the world you never left, won’t ever leave, cells/ forever, forever going through their changes, [. . .].” I hope to come back to this world. I hope to be sober and present in each moment in which I live. I hope to love every thing and every one in that moment. I hope to be vulnerable by sharing the best, and worst, parts of who I am and to allow myself to be shaped for good by those who love me. I hope to move a lot and consume moderately and read some and write some in mindfulness. I hope to honor who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming. I hope.