surrounded by what ifs

things i could be doing right now but am not:

baking a cake
walking around in the sunshine
writing a letter to my congressman
giving blood
building a fire in our cold basement
writing useless poetry
playing frisbee with my sister
studying all the scriptural references to obedience
painting
hiking in the woods
mailing postcards to my grandparents
selling lemonade on the corner
protesting some outrageous global catastrophe

{ thank you flickr }

the fact that i'm not doing any of those things makes me wonder, but can have little explanation beyond itself. i just can't do everything at once. sadly.

there are a lot of insane and horrible and unpleasant things going on in the world. not many of them are happening to me. no doubt there are thousands of injustices i have never heard about and never will hear about. even when they touch me, or when i imagine they do, what do i do about them?

if i feel like it, i write about them.

passionate opinions don't come easily to me. getting too connected to a certain point of view is an easy way to get hurt and offended and proven wrong a lot of the time. why would i want to jump into puddles like that?

but i wonder what i do care about, if i don't care particularly who gets to be the next president. what views do i hold? what things are important to me, other than my cushy little life on this fat american continent?

inquiring roommates and friends have asked me this question. i answer things like beauty. truth. learning. i am more likely to be angered by a hideously-designed piece of junk mail than by whatever the UN is up to these days. does this make me an ignorant, shallow, pretentious person?

i hope not.

but would i really rather have the world look nice than actually be nice? of course not.

but i would hope the two go together.

if they don't?

then i'll have to choose. on a long list of things that might be most important, beauty and goodness are only two. i could choose instead another person, or some environmental cause, or the creation of small clay figurines. or i could change my opinions every day, one day honoring my rose bushes and the next what i'll have for lunch and who with.

in reality my priorities shift and re-settle almost constantly. tomorrow i might care a lot more about walking around in the sunshine, if there is sunshine. or i might decide to find out what exactly the UN is up to. it would probably be fun to write a long, conversational letter to my congressman, but i don't know what good it would do.