This week I was sent an article and these words have stayed with me since:
“Humans love a disaster, but only shaped and curated and set to music, not to live in. We want the fall to be followed by the rise.”
Kate Washington
When we teach narrative writing to children, we remind them to include some sort of problem. What’s a story without conflict, after all? We also teach them to make that conflict significant: layer the obstacles, provide atmosphere, let us feel what the characters feel.
It is also true that the conflict within the stories we read and the stories we write require a satisfying resolution. No one wants tragic, never-ending sadness or disaster. We read on for the rise, for the rainbows after the storm.
And yet this year, we are living within a real-world disaster with seemingly never-ending conflict. Every so often I sense an end-in-sight and allow myself to feel hopeful, but truthfully, it often seems short-lived.
I’m tired (as I’m sure you are). But I do believe the rise will come. And when it does, it will make the ordinary all that more treasured.
Yes, the rise will come.
Hopefully, the lessons learned throughout this pandemic will be enduring too.