holidays 2022

Dear everyone,

I hope this letter finds you well, or at least managing. We return to life that resembles life pre-COVID19 (even as we’re still in a pandemic), yet with sighting the more-than-occasional mask-wearer, the grief of loved ones lost, and the processing of the trauma we collectively experienced.

This year, like many recent ones, several friends lost parents or other loved ones, human or otherwise. My thoughts are with you.

I learned of the passing of two of my college mentors: Patti Papapietro, a student advisor who succumbed to pancreatic cancer several years ago; and an economics professor, Dr. Lois Gosse, who passed earlier this year. I think of them often and the wisdom from which I continue to draw.

Yet, I am surrounded by fertility, too: My boss became a dad second time around, and my employee is expecting. Various friends became parents and others are expecting, too. And other friends hope to become parents, despite challenges. I hope they all find parenting as rewarding as they expect.

On the other end of the life cycle, this past May my father turned ninety, and my mother, nearly eighty-six, keeps on, her nonsmall cell lung cancer nodule growing, yet thankfully, at a slow pace. I am relieved they are so relatively robust at their advanced ages.

My sister, chronically unwell mentally and physically, took an especially bad turn this year, needing hospitalization and awaiting rehabilitation. She’s had skin disease and cannot walk because she’s been bedridden so long. I have not shared this difficulty with many, until now. People have their own mishegoss and sharing such news can lead to anxiety for the recipient, activating their urge to fix. It’s especially hard because my sister has always been resistant to treatment, which is why her own situation is so dire now. It’s in Gd’s hands now.

More broadly, it was a year of reconnection after two years of isolation: I attended conferences where I reconnected with colleagues from current and former employers. I helped organize, with the help of my galpal Khairah and a heavy lift from the alumni association, the 35^th reunion for my graduating class from the Bronx High School of Science. It was a joyous event, a high point of the year. Towards the end of the evening, we all burst into dance spontaneously, perhaps drawing from energy pent-up after all that time physically distanced. I feel blessed to have so many friends from that time long ago who I consider academic brothers and sisters.

It was a year of travel: San Francisco. Puerto Rico. Chicago. Cabo San Lucas. Lubec, ME. Two trips to Denver, a city overflowing with pornstaches (blech). Los Angeles. And several trips to NYC.

I travel so much to connect with friends in other cities. Yet when I return to my adoptive city, Washington, DC, my social life is often challenging to keep robust in an ambitious, overprogrammed, too-often-transactional, and transient environment.

This feeling of alienation was on my mind when I wrote last year’s note, too, in preparing for this one: “I’ve committed, in what I hope is a healthy way, in the coming year to observing and listening more, reaching out less, and seeing what the universe brings to me. I’ll do my share and see if others contribute theirs.”

This year, I tried to do that. In turn, the universe handed me a lot of need. Friends, or their significant others, in pain, with sickness and injury, reeling from difficult or ruptured relationships, straining to support troubled children. Work dissatisfaction. Colleagues and subordinates craving attention and support. People in my neighborhood begging for money or attention, in the shadows of new, luxury high-rise apartment buildings, amidst a nationwide housing shortage. Recently children have been occasionally tapping on some of my condominium building windows, seeking attention I guess, further aggravating residents already besieged with maintenance and repair needs.

Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, noted the world needs people who can pay attention to the pain of others since it is too easy to shut down. Yet, for those of us who refuse to shut down, who don’t stick our figurative fingers in our ears and who want to experience life in its totality, it can be exhausting. We have to find ways to be able to absorb all that hurt and take care of ourselves. I have not been so good at that. For 2023, I commit myself to more consistent meditation and journaling, and I’ve just restarted counseling.

The need I hear is just a kernel of the ongoing, larger pain in the world. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, speak to a mental health crisis borne from the dysfunction and indifference of contemporary society, and exacerbated by the pandemic.

It’s not all bad, yet there’s a lot of hurt these days: Ukraine, Russia, Iran. In America, mass shootings as commonplace as grocery shopping, and in places where we shop for groceries, too. The revoking of rights previously bestowed. Ongoing anti-Black racism and the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Unmerited hatred and discrimination towards so many groups, really. This past winter I started reading How to Stay Human in A F***ed Up World. For 2023, I need to finish that book, too.

Some developments this year give some short-term hope. Various components of the Inflation Reduction Act, if implemented effectively, could buy us some time to stave off the worst effects of climate change. A recent nuclear fusion breakthrough holds some long-term energy promise. And the American midterm elections revealed a large share of the electorate willing to fight for democracy.

Ultimately, whatever political or technological battles we win or lose, our human existence here is temporary. We are but visitors on an improbable and ridiculous journey on this orb, trying to make our ways, individually and collectively, as best we can.

In that vein, I am wishing you a safe and happy holiday season and a fulfilling 2023.

Love, Rich