Midlife Meditation

I'm angry. I don't say this lightly. I'm not a believer in anger. Anger is an emotional appendix, a feeling that has long outlived its evolutionary purpose. In our world, expressing anger does not get constructive results. It does foment violence in the home, in the schoolyard, on the streets, and between states. It drives couples apart, traps children in the middle of divorce, turns town meetings into free-for-alls, furthers the causes of reactionaries who shout down information they'd rather not here, and thus furthers the descent of this nation, this world, into the inferno of climate change. Anger gets us nowhere. I've believed this most of my life. Expressing anger, however justified, has never yielded a result I coveted. In fact, however I have expressed my anger--and that includes the vaunted "I statement"--has always made matters worse. Always. And yet I feel it. However dedicated I may be to detachment, however logically I may seek to t...

A week ago last night, my heart broke open. Some context: since 2005, it takes many gallons of fuel and hours of travel for me to see either of my children. For the first few years after they were moved to Idaho Falls, I saw them fairly regularly, a few days at a time, about once a month. Then my daughter Sarah graduated from high school, and started having work commitments. I still saw Sean fairly often, and for extended periods at school vacations, but that, too, had to change, as he entered the work world last year. This means that, prior to last Friday, I hadn't seen him or Sarah since last August, when Amy and I drove 700 miles for a few hours with each of them. This is the reality of my empty nest--and really, of all empty nests. Every parent has to, at some point, adjust to the departure of children as they set out to make their own way in the world. Granted, in recent years the length of their time living at home has, overall, been extended by our cruel economy...