Milestones that matter

Tulips know when it’s time. (Image by Mabel Amber)

Tulips know when it’s time. (Image by Mabel Amber)

I’m spending spring in Maine for the first time in many years. I’m looking forward to blooming lilacs and chestnut trees, which are still several weeks away. Meanwhile, the the first sign of spring arrived a few weeks ago along with the melting snow: the peepers.

From late March or early April, you can hear the high-pitched singing of this tiny frog rising from ponds and marshes all over New England. Even when the air is chilly and the trees still look like a bunch of sad sticks, the peepers signal that warmth and green will eventually return. The commencement of the peeper orchestra was especially comforting this year — at least some things are still happening as scheduled.

One of the things that makes the peepers so magical is that you can’t pinpoint the exact date on which they will begin. It changes from year to year, presumably dependent on the weather, snowfall, rainfall, and so on. They don’t use a calendar.

We humans, on the other hand, take our Gregorian calendar, base ten number system, and 24-hour clock very seriously. We often try to organize and measure things that may not conform to our tools. This causes anxiety, disappointment, frustration, and confusion.

For instance, many news outlets have spent the past twenty-four hours reporting that the United States now has over one million cumulative COVID-19 cases. This isn’t really news, any more than the odometer on your car rolling over. We’ve chosen a number with a few zeros as our “grim milestone,” giving us an excuse to talk about how bad things are. But it’s just incrementally higher than yesterday and the day before (and with limited testing, it’s not even accurate and certainly not precise).

We might be especially disappointed that we’re celebrating a “milestone birthday” in the midst of a global pandemic, even though there’s nothing necessarily more significant about 30 than 31. A birthday itself, arguably, is arbitrary. It’s a convenient opportunity to reflect on our lives, but it’s not the only one.

In addition to making sense of the past with our number systems, we’re trying to somehow impose our will upon the future. And that’s where things really get messy. April 30. May 15. July 1. These dates have meaning in our calendar system, marking the end, middle, or beginning of a month. But a virus doesn’t care what day it is. It’s operating independently of our stay-at-home orders, phased reopenings, or the start of the summer tourist season. We don’t really have any control, so we create rules and regs in order to feel like we do.

Meanwhile, many states and localities are not publicly reporting (or perhaps even tracking) COVID-19 recoveries. The cumulative cases must always go up and up, but the number of active cases in some areas is going down. In Maine, for example, the number of people who have recovered from the virus is greater than the number of people who currently have it. It’s still not something to make plans by (again, due to the lack of comprehensive testing), but isn’t that milestone a worth noting along with fact that the total number of cases in the state has passed 1000?

There is profound suffering in the world already, and we give ourselves a double dose of it when our happiness and well-being depends on certain external conditions being met. If we can let go of how we think things should be, we will find more joy. Anniversaries, graduations, and other major milestones are important because they represent a meaningful accomplishment or commitment. That can’t be taken away, even if the party is postponed.

Lots of annual festivals, conferences, conventions, reunions, and concert seasons are not going to happen this year. I’m sure it was the 25th Annual Something for somebody, and it’s truly disappointing to lose that. But we can carry on.

Lately, I think often of the “Whos down in Whoville” who were “singing without any presents at all” in the Dr. Seuss classic. It will be some time before we can gather in person with our families and communities. However, like the Whos, we can still celebrate what we have instead of focusing on what we’ve lost. We can try to pay attention to the people and experiences that matter most to us, and patiently wait for the signs of change and healing to emerge, on their own schedule, like the peeper’s song.

 
 
Casey von Neumann111020, 122820, 052721, 031923Comment