Fluxx

For the past couple years Tom and I have been playing a card game called Fluxx, in which the rules change every turn. Success comes not from a long-term plan, but from being able to respond to constantly changing conditions. As I look back at what I thought about my life just three weeks ago—my goals, plans, assumptions—I’m shocked at how much is different. The things I can do, what I take for granted, how I get something done, the way I move through the world, has all changed, at least for the short term and likely longer. 

I think of the way I took my health for granted, my freedom to travel anywhere I could buy a plane ticket. Why not Italy? Or China? And of course I could go anywhere I wanted to in Seattle. The world felt like an open book, full of choices. I just had to make a plan and it would unfurl in front of me like a cash register receipt. If I needed to do something I would just get people together to help. Bored? See a movie, go to the library. Who knows, maybe I could go back to school one more time, study poetry. And when I met a friend, we’d hug, share food, high-five at an amazing soccer goal. I remember the months my mother was in the nursing home at the end of her life and how touch became the language that mattered. I think of the playfulness of a Hakomi workshop—all the ways that touch supports life.

Just three weeks later I can hardly recognize the incredible freedom of that world. So much of what I took for granted has disappeared overnight. And none of us really know what's ahead.

Yet as I write these words in pencil in my spiral notebook I can feel a warmth spreading in my chest, can feel fear and grief loosening their grip. Why does writing down what hurts, help? I suppose for the same reason talking to another person helps. The chance to acknowledge the burden we are carrying. To be honest. To allow feelings to flow, instead of lying stuck somewhere. To recognize that every time something changes, something else is there to take its place.

And next turn it will change again.