I have a family of bluebirds at my feeder causing me tremendous stress.
The whole reason I buy birdseed and suet cakes is for this. In early spring I get bluebirds and cardinals and woodpeckers, and crazy yellow finches. The bluebird babies are screaming toddlers, and if they weren’t birds you would judge their parenting. The adolescent cardinals are disheveled assholes, and I shoot sympathetic thoughts to their parents while I drink my coffee. “I know, man. He’ll leave the nest eventually, I promise.”
The stress is guilt. I cannot shake the feeling that every moment I spend counting bluebirds I could be calling my senator or setting up a protest group. In the back of my head I believe there is a manual somewhere that lays out what a normal human being can change in extraordinary times, and still keep their nerves inside their skin. Do you reorder 30% of your non-work, non-family time? 70%? What’s the sweet spot between saving your community without smashing your life like a piggy bank? No one has flowcharted it for me yet, so I can only assume I’m doing it wrong.
I know from history that heroes sacrifice everything: their families, their jobs, their security. I’m no hero, so I’m looking for guidance. I have spent the last 20 years droning on about the value of pleasure, of being present to the sublime funhouse of our senses. And in this new present, in which my neighbors are too frightened to drive and our government talks about rounding up the outsiders like we’re Vichy, I am guilty. All my pleasures are possible because of the safety of my skin. I have the unearned luck of getting to be appalled but not terrified.
Is that what we are, great and small, two sizes on the same body? Can I fight with my time and money and know in the back of my head that part of the reason I am fighting is because I want to drink wine and crack filthy jokes again? (Don’t get me wrong- I’m still drinking wine, but for the wrong reasons now.) Can I be a caring citizen and insufferable twit at the same time?
The answer to that is obviously yes. I am a caring citizen. I am such an insufferable twit. And I suppose that I will fight as hard as I can for as long as it takes so that eventually I can go back to really digging deep into twitdom. Because I want to count bluebirds and make dick jokes.