Pen-demic

  Sarah Burgess Tomorrow I turn 45. This year I have spent more time in my closet than a classroom. I have given up on pants with zippers and buttons and now favor elastic waistbands almost exclusively- jeans included. Comfort over style every day. I’ve played more games with my family this past year than I have in the entire 16 years prior. We’re a game family now. I am learning to sit with imperfection and failure and discomfort rather than trying to “fix” things. Sometimes the healthiest thing to do is embrace the inevitable grief of life. There is peace in that. My rogue, white chin hair and elastic waistbands remind me that the last time I was relevant, Clinton was President, but I will still “throw it back” in a room full of teenagers if it makes them laugh (at me, not with me- I get it). When Dave asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I couldn’t think of a single thing. Not one. This year, for maybe the first time in my life, I really feel like everything I need I already ...

One of my long term concerns for this extended period of   isolation is the way it divides, reducing others to flat, uni-dimensional categories of I’m right and you’re wrong, of moral and immoral choices, of bad people and good people. When we are locked behind screens with limited face-to-face contact, it’s difficult to remember that people are more than an ideology on a single issue. Real life is messy, complicated, and full of contradictions. People are, too. The daily rhythm of real relationships-in our work, in our schools, in our churches and gyms and town halls- allows for us to see beyond a single issue. When an ideology is attached to flesh and blood, we can debate and disagree, but it is easier to embrace and forgive. There is danger, according to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in a single story (see Ted Talk of the same name). There is danger in inflexible narratives that lack understanding of context and back story. There is danger in reducing one another to sound bites...