Our Fragile, Fragile World
But not all of it will crumble like dust
I know destruction. Intimately.
I know seeing the entire world I’ve experienced wiped off the face of the Earth.
The Universe taught me that lesson pretty early in this life.
A Devastation. A Reality Check.
I had grown up in a small town — one that probably seemed like a Norman Rockwell painting for folks not from there.
Huge trees made arched coverings over quiet streets. Historic commercial buildings lined the main street. Leafy green parks were surrounded by neighborhoods filled by families in cozy homes. Much of the town gathered at the high school football field on autumn Friday nights, under bright lights and blankets. A small liberal arts college sat on a hill overlooking the rest of the town.
This was home for all of my growing-up years.
I walked up the hill to that college in the afternoons, when I was in elementary school, so the students pursuing Education degrees could practice on us. I marched through the shady streets as a teenager in the band, first as a trumpeter… and then as the drum major leading the charge. We’d bike to the community pool, the public library, or the Dairy Queen in the summers.
These backdrops were the world I knew best.
And just as I was launching into adulthood…
… all of it disappeared.
In a matter of fifteen minutes, on a Sunday evening in late-March, one event — so powerful, so swiftly finite — altered the course of not only my life, but also the lives of thousands of others.
Many said it sounded like a freight train.
Bringing its winds of destruction, a mile-and-a-half-wide F3 tornado barreled through town, destroying everything in its wake.
Almost nothing was left untouched.
Afterward, TV news reporters, looking for optimum shots, reported with the site of my broken childhood church in the background. Two gaping holes, formerly covered by magnificent stained glass windows, provided an unobstructed view of the sky, which now served as the ceiling of the place where I had been baptized as a baby, received my first holy communion in 2nd grade, and been confirmed in 4th grade.
Over 75% of the shady tree-cover — one of my favorite features — was completely gone, as all of the trees had been uprooted and/or destroyed.
The college on the hill was decimated. The white spire of its chapel, typically reaching into the sky as a shining beacon, day or night, was split in half like a toothpick. Massive old trees — and august buildings that had hosted generations of higher learning and growth — were suddenly destroyed.
Historic landmarks, hundreds of homes, sentimental meeting spots, key infrastructure like electricity… the public library… gas stations: all were just… gone.
I will probably never be able to fully convey the feeling to you: what it’s like to see everything that you’ve called “reality” just… dissolve.
At the time, I wrote this in my school paper:
How could a force akin to a breath of air expelled from a lung be powerful enough to completely demolish and demean everything that we had accepted as our reasons for living?
Since that event, I’ve often reflected upon and said this, and I do believe it’s true:
my hometown doesn’t exist anymore.
Sure, the municipality exists.
And the community did really come together and rebuild in life-affirming ways.
But the home I knew as a kid only lives in my memory now.
What Binds Us
You’ve probably figured out by now that I’m reflecting on this experience because, this past week, we have all been watching the Los Angeles area suffer through a similar destruction — this time from out-of-control wildfires.
The images I’m seeing feel SO familiar.
Homes: completely gone.
Favorite restaurants: no more.
Stores and churches: in shambles.
I saw one video of a person driving down the street, commenting on all the things that had been there just hours before — but were now destroyed.
The dismay and grief and disbelief in the voices recorded along with the video were so heart-breaking. And also: the recognition for me was deep.
The pain is deep.
The shock bowls you over.
Your brain can’t quite compute how something that had seemed so solid — only a matter of moments before — could just be gone. Just like that.
I’m sure I’m not the only one.
You don’t have to have lived through large-scale disaster — tornadoes or wildfires, earthquakes or floods, hurricanes or bombs dropping — to feel the resonance within yourself, as you watch those images and videos coming out of LA this week.
You might have lost a child, or a spouse, or a sibling.
You might have lost a home to foreclosure or eviction.
You might have lost a job.
You have probably lost many things, in your lifetime.
And the devastation of that loss will have vibrated at much the same frequency as the devastation vibrating out of southern California right now.
Our loss binds us to each other.
To experience loss is to be human.
To be human is to experience loss.
What Matters. What’s Real.
Of course I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ll tell you what this kind of loss has taught me: what truly matters, what’s actually real… is not what the world around us is telling us matters, or is real.
In these lives of ours, we can spend a lot of time confused.
Distracted.
Spinning in circles.
Descending into sinkholes.
And so often, a profound loss is one of the only things that will shake up our world enough to spur all of our manufactured importance to fall away like dust.
I don’t want it to be that way.
But yet, it so often is.
Here’s the thing.
The more that we can live our every day in ways that acknowledge, and remain forever-conscious of, how fragile — and thus how precious — our lives are, the more we are prepared to confront reality when we’re confronted with it.
Alternatively, the more enamored we are with the illusions — those made-up monuments to our pride and our ego, those prizes others have told us we should strive for, those finish lines we are running toward without having stopped to consult a map — the more devastating our losses will be. Because they’ll completely shatter the façade that we’ve bought into — the one we’ve convinced ourselves is reality.
Yet.
If instead we’re living in a way that recognizes the gifts of having a house to clean (rather than grumbling about the chore)… of being able to share with others because we have enough for ourselves (instead of constantly thinking about what we don’t have)… of being so close to a loved one that they’re able to piss us off like no other (instead of resenting them)… of just being here, alive, breathing… of being able to be human… in community with other beautiful humans: loss won’t have to introduce us to reality. Instead, we’ll be living in it. And loss will just crack it open wider for us.
Being here.
Being human.
In community.
With other beautiful humans.
That’s it.
That’s what it’s all about.
Anything else?
Window dressing.
So why do we keep getting so distracted?
Let’s not do that.
Let’s go deeper together.
Let’s stay deeper.
And let’s root into the reality that love is who we are… and being in love with each other is the only thing that really matters.
I encourage you to reach out to connect in solidarity and community with the beautiful humans of the Los Angeles area. There are many ways to do so. One great way is giving to the Mutual Aid LA Network.
THANK YOU for considering this — and for giving, if you do!
🙏🏻
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Beautiful. Thank you for this, Cecilia.
This reminded me of "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop. In case you don't know it... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art