Distillations

It’s a chilly 54 degrees this early Farmhouse morning. For my friends and family living in the broiler that is the southwest U.S., that’s not terribly unusual even for summer, but it does seem to herald the closing of the season. Much of that feeling, no doubt, is due to my personal circumstances. A confluence of events will make this our last Farmhouse weekend for several weeks to come. In a couple of weeks we are embarking on a long-planned trip to Cornwall, England, to see our friends Tony and Xenia. Following that, there is Emily’s even longer-planned wedding. And then, after a year of making arrangements (including hiring our new partner Joshua, who is fabulous), a long-delayed knee surgery for me. If I’m lucky, my surgeon will let me travel up to the Farmhouse again in time to see the leaves turn.

For now, though, a cup of hot tea, a serenade by distant crows, and the orange rising sun. Space for reflection.

An acquaintance, a brilliant, accomplished individual, was talking with me the other day, lamenting the state of the world. Like a scientist, he had accumulated the data that to him indicated we were doomed along any number of fronts. Listening to him, I had a sudden and intense vision of chemists laboring to complete a difficult, dangerous distillation. (Since watching Oppenheimer, I have been a bit obsessed with trying to review and better understand 20th century physics, so this is not that surprising. From tons of pitchblende, scientists labored to extract pounds of uranium, which they then bombarded with neutrons and subjected to a dozen difficult extraction steps to yield mere grams of plutonium: a poison so evil God himself did not create it, it exists only because of the efforts of man.) My sudden thought was that we have the tools at hand: global interconnectedness, social media, news that exists only for its headlines, to distill all of the world’s troubles into tiny, toxic nuggets. And considering our craving for innovation, we do that day after day. These nuggets are our creation, and they are poisoning us.

The Farmhouse reminds me there is much to love about the world. My family, friends, and co-workers remind me there is much to love and value in each other. But sometimes that requires consciously turning my attention away from the wider world.

I don’t mean to preach. I do hope there is an underlying theme to these Farmhouse posts, and that is to share good things about the world. It is intentional that I use Facebook, this tool that can convey so much toxicity, to do that. I encourage you to do that as well. Keep posting those vacation pictures, or of your kids as they start school again, or of dogs. Yes, more dogs! And resist the urge to indulge in, then post and re-post negative things because they, for just a moment, feed your need to strike back.

And just for today, remind yourself you are not, in fact, directly responsible for who gets elected to what office, or for fixing the temperature of the atmosphere, or for managing conflict in the South China sea. You are responsible for the well-being of those around you, so work on that. Isn’t that what you really want, anyway?