The lamentable weight of our actions
on Weather by Jenny Offill
“Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters? Old person worry: What if everything I do does?”
I often find myself caught between these two questions which, in my head, are equally horrifying. What does it say about me? I am as young as millenials get, and it terrifies me to no end that in the grand scheme of things, nothing I do matters. That I will always be too small for this vast world, and that I would never write, do or say anything that would guarantee the preservation of my soul - vain as that sounds. It mortifies me that I could vanish and be reduced into an irretrievable memory, or worse: I would be remembered only as the placid, sharp-tongued bitch (not that I’m not fond of that characterisation). But the thought of never having touched or moved a soul! The thought that I might never alter, turn or burn - in the best sense of the word - someone’s worldview, or dreams, or lived reality. It’s a strange fear, I suppose. One that feeds an equally odd aspiration.
“My #1 fear is the acceleration of days. No such thing supposedly, but I swear I can feel it,” Offill writes. Does this accelerate aging too? I asked myself, shuddering at the thought. How much time do I have left to find out if the things I do matter? Or, perhaps the more accurate question is: How little time? How grand a gesture must my actions be for them to be consequential? Whose standards of importance do they follow? Mine or yours? Or were the lines never ours to draw?
“The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.”
Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I should be asking: How little is too little? Can the small things become as essential as I petulantly insist they be? I won’t lie - I ask these questions while devising an answer that would leave me with a modicum of optimism. I want all I do to matter. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Or maybe it’s to preserve my own delusion that I have any control over the universe. That I am not too small.
I sometimes imagine my fears and concerns as a pack of biscuits. My mother would always tell me to put them in a jar before I eat them so that they stay crisp. The rectangular biscuits never fit quite right in those round jars; awkwardly crammed together and leaving odd gaps that no whole biscuit could fill. “There are bigger jars in the back,” my mother would say, irked by my absurd struggle. No. I’d pause, keep the excess inside the packet, bound it with a rubber band and store it in the fridge. My mother would click her tongue; indignant. No. A bigger jar would leave too much empty space. This jar should fit. it’s just not the right shape. I long for my mind to shapeshift, to bend and break to accommodate the seeds it has sown. Too much, never enough.
Throughout this book, Lizzie sails across these two states. She nurtures - often at her own expense - her marriage; her son; her brother, who is battling an addiction; and the many people who sent letters to her mentor Sylvia, in over their head on climate change and the impending doomsday. We listen to Lizzie’s musings, the irresistible thoughts of a person who is attempting to save as many as she can. Offill’s clipped sentences and sardonic revelations beg us to fill in the blanks: She presents us with silences that make a bond; the bricks that make a fortress; the weather that make a climate. Sometimes I would empty that packet of biscuits, cramming them into the round jar. I’d watch them break; crumbs and pieces settling onto the bottom of the jar. I’d watch, knowing full well they would go untouched. All we do matter. Except, of course, for those times when they don’t. But we make do. We weather. May You Be Among the Survivors.
