What Happens Next?

Stammered, stoppered, stunned by the news. By headlines four inches high. By images of strangers—panicked. By the realities of a country that has lived far too long on borrowed time, in the haze of inflated ambitions, under the scourge of obfuscating mechanisms and tools.

What happens next isn't up to most of us, but I think this much is true: Responsibility, in the midst of this crisis, means living on. It means going about our days as we would have elsewise gone about our days—a little kinder, maybe, a little more clear with ourselves that every moment of abundance is a gift, every gesture of goodness is a salve. Anxiety can't help us now. Obsessively watching the news won't change the news.

Outside our windows, the world goes on. The rain comes, the flocks descend, the sun rises, a neighbor brings a puppy home, inexplicably, the sweet William once more blooms. Life's incidentals, but right now, this is what we have.