Zooming Along

"Life is about perspective and how you look at something…ultimately you have to zoom out.” ---Whitney Wolfe Herd 

 Remember back in the day when your parents would tell you how lucky you were? How many starving children there were in (insert faraway location here) and how fortunate you were to have a home, and food, and clothes? While it’s true that daily gratitude can improve your mood and lessen the chance of you having an epic fit in the paper towel aisle, it's a fact that gratitude is in shorter supply now than bleach wipes and Chromebooks. We've passed the early stages of the pandemic when we were mostly fine to stay home, wear the mask and wait it out. We were in it together, right? Summer was coming, the heat would kill the virus and it would just go away. 

Well, things change. 

 The nip of fall is in the air now though, and people are so damn tired of all of this. Outdoor cafes will start to close in a month or so; the reality of a New England Fall, with winter weather on its way, means sitting oceanside for a plate of clams is in the rearview. So, what’s ahead? Remote learning, flu season, less sunlight, more snowstorms, and I think the news said there is also a large asteroid headed straight for Earth in early November. We can all be forgiven for not being able to find gratitude in that dark mix. I'm in the bargaining stage right now, "OK, listen up here Universe, if I promise not to complain about the weather, the masks, the TP, and the flu, and also do better with recycling, do you promise to re-route the asteroid? Lemme know, k?" This week though, due to the Facebook function that shows me what I was doing on a certain date in other years, I found the following post about the silly complaints of some parents I knew. 

 1) A teacher asked college students to think up a funny title for an essay, something to make them laugh. Much gnashing of teeth and wailing ensued from parents who thought it was completely inappropriate to require a one-liner title at the LAST MINUTE. One mom is convinced her child will be ‘up all night’ and tearfully asked, ‘What are we doing to these kids?’ 2) Another kid is traumatized (the parent's word) because the school counselor suggested the kid should be the one handling college applications and interviews. 3) A parent insisting that they must oversee grades and have weekly conversations with her college sophomore's professors and residence hall staff because ‘I’m the customer, I’m paying the bills, they work for me.’ 4) A parent that refused to let her high-achieving, never in trouble kid, go back to college unless they agreed to a phone tracker, a car speed monitor, and daily 30 minute FaceTime check-in visits. 

 

Seems kind of stupid given what parents are dealing with now, right? Tracker mom seems especially off the chain, because at 20 years old, the kid who has never put a foot wrong, been in trouble, or gotten anything less than A, doesn’t need an ankle bracelet and a probation officer parent. While Facebook is something I’m trying to limit, because it really can be quite a sewer sometimes, the Memories feature does offer the opportunity to “zoom out” and gain a better perspective. Back in April, a post came up that had me in a silly selfie, wearing a surgical mask at the doctor. Turns out, I had the flu. So, a year later, swamped in a pandemic that is way worse than the flu, sure, I might still wear a mask, but I’m healthy, so that’s good, right? 

 It’s not just parents that are struggling to find the gratitude in their attitude. It’s all of us, though I do feel like right now, as we begin getting back to education, parents (and educators too!) are under a buttload of stress. There’s also an election looming that will impact all of us. I'm no political scholar, but I can't recall an election that has been this divisive, this anxiety-inducing, this…well…FUBAR’d. We all need that wide-angle view about now. Those curved mirrors that they put on blind corners, so you can see what's coming at you? Wouldn't it be awesome if they worked as a harbinger of other matters? Wouldn't just a small glimpse at what's coming up be helpful? There's almost no way to tell if the light at the end of a tunnel is a new day or an oncoming train. For now, while I've never been a fan of looking backward, I will definitely try to widen my view a little and not focus so much on the stressful parts but rather try to zoom out and include happier parts, like the sound of seagulls I can hear in my yard, my neighbor having his windows open when he plays the piano, and maybe one last plate of clams before the chill makes it impossible.