Relative Something

In the flitter of fleeting moments that are passing lately, as storms the size of nations rage, both in relation to U.S. weather and to the citizens of Egypt, my immediate surroundings appear calm. It is such a stark contrast, yet in my moment, no contrast at all. The calmness here just is. My calmness stands alone, regardless cyclones in Australia or protests or blizzards.

But amid the calmness, closer inspection reveals there is a person not getting enough sleep at night. Someone was involved in a collision playing sports and temporarily dislocated his jaw. Someone’s work yesterday was particularly stressful. Ice dams are developing on the eaves again. Children are sick with a fever. A car was rear-ended on the way to work. To the people experiencing these things, it doesn’t seem calm at all.

There’s that relativity thing again.  When we begin to feel overwhelmed by our own situation, it’s worth a shot to consider the more serious challenges other people are facing at the very same time. Sometimes, it helps. Sometimes, it doesn’t make our feeling of being overwhelmed change one damn bit, but it’s worth a try.

I’m glad my electrical power didn’t fail and I didn’t need to remove 2 feet of snow off my driveway yesterday. I only needed to remove 5 inches off of it on Monday. Now the state of my drive way is total calm. I noticed last night, with the temperature dropping below zero Fahrenheit, that my driveway was much more clean than when I shoveled it 2 days ago. The air is so dry and cold that the straggling amounts of snow that remain after shoveling, sublime directly from solid to vapor without melting to a liquid first. It would be fascinating to see a time-lapse video of that process, my driveway losing snow and getting cleaner all by itself.

Even amid the apparent calm, many different dramas are playing out in the flitter of fleeting moments.