Thursday Thoughts

Last updated on: February 21, 2019 at 9:21 am by Anne Kennedy

Thursday Thoughts 2019-02-21T09:21:28-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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The First Thought

Facebook reinstated Faith McDonnell’s account. Which is Fantastic, and thank heaven, and all the loud complaining on every platform available. Glad to see a moment of sanity catching its breath in all the turgid waters of our new social order. Meanwhile, I need to go find one of those old disk things to put all my pictures on…or maybe I should print them out? Can’t remember how it goes. What do you do with real actual pictures? Shove them in the cupboard I guess.

The Second Thought

It is Thursday, as you probably know, and you might be looking for inspiration. I know I am. So here’s some from twitter.

I love that there’s a rainbow over one edge of this blue, serene inanity. I ‘thought’ it would be fun to not worry about how things were ‘going to work out’ so I tried it for thirty seconds. I’ll just lie here, ‘thought,’ even thought I’ve already overslept and I have to figure out what to make for lunch and how to get the little girls through their school, and manage the anxiety of an older one who has an in class essay, and by ‘manage the anxiety,’ I only mean that I have to stand near her reminding her how many more minutes she has and that it’s going to be fine whatever happens, and I also need to figure out ‘how,’ by which I mean ‘when,’ to take a shower…

Maybe I have the wrong definition for the word ‘worry.’ Worry for me means trying to figure out ‘how things are going to work out,’ which is actually the bulk of my daily existence. I am that person. I figure out ‘how things are going to work out.’ When I stop doing that, as I tried this week, the whole order of our lives comes crashing down. And yeah, it is a ‘worry,’ because there are a lot of things to figure out, and like jenga, if you make a wrong move, everything comes crashing down and you have to pick up all the pieces and start over again.

Maybe the meme maker means something in a more cosmic sense—don’t worry about how things will work out ultimately, like when it’s time for death. But this also strikes me as insane. Of course you should ‘worry,’ as in ‘think about ahead of time,’ about ‘how things are going to work out’ ultimately. Spend some time considering what happens after you die so that you’re not completely surprised and unhappy when it sneaks up on you.

Or maybe we’re just supposed to think about the bigger things that are just shy of death. Also a bad idea. Make a plan.

Or rather, take the trouble to consider the theology of the thing. Who is God? Who are you? How ought you to live in the light of these two important considerations? Maybe you don’t need a ‘plan’ but you also don’t need to trust to twitter at the end of the day. Hashtag Rainbow.

Is it me, or is it actually weird to bring ‘belief’ into the realm of not worrying how it’s all ‘going to work out.’ Who is making it work out? Either it’s you bringing it about, or it’s some karmic energy force which to me seems particularly worrying. Worse still, it could be some powerful being who I would be very anxious to aquaint myself with in the face of death, let alone in the ordinary trouble of trying to figure out when and how to take a shower. Why wouldn’t you want to know the true nature of either the energy or the being? What if those things were against you? Seems an awfully foolish assumption to expect or believe that they, whoever they are, were working everything out in a good way rather than a malign one. Oh my word, now I’m worried about the poor twitterer who is making actual life decisions based on this meme.

I had a third thought for Thursday but I have to go make lunch. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow. Depends on whether or not it will work out.

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