In Belgium in December the light comes slowly, but the news does not.
In reading the headlines coming from America today, my heart sank into the murky waters of confused and outraged sadness. I just stood there, alone by my coffee pot, all messy hair and wet eyes, seen by no one in my silent house, heard by no one across the starlit, inky Atlantic. After a pained few moments, my heart then did its usual upward strokes to try and return to the productive surface of my life: the kids would get up soon and needed to be fed; my younger son needed a ride to coach morning baseball with some kids in the French-speaking region; last night’s dishes needed to be tidied up; my daughter would soon rise and want me to help her entertain her pet rats; and I had to do some work so we could financially keep living this life we’ve chosen here in Europe. But for the moment, it would just be me in the gloom, alone with my cellphone and the NY Times headlines.
In my quiet home this morning, my older son was sleeping, home for the weekend from college. Here in the Dutch-speaking region, I have been told we have been behaving like a typical Flemish family: the kids attend world-class and ridiculously inexpensive colleges and live in little “kots” on or near campus during the week, but come home on the weekends for things like laundry, groceries, and nurturing. We did not expect this pattern, as our son was accepted into colleges in the US and Europe and I guess we never thought he might choose one so close to home. This had not been my own experience: both of my siblings and I had chosen to go to college many hours from home, though we, too, enjoyed a close relationship with our parents and one another. As I tiptoed by my son sleeping in our upstairs open guestroom, I regarded this college-blossoming young man, slumbering happily just outside the rooms of his two sleeping siblings. I saw how the morning moonlight caused him to glow, reminding me of his babyhood, eighteen or so years ago when I comforted my sleepless self by basking in his sweet-breath, moon-shimmered beauty. Just like all moms, everywhere, I am sustained by memories and unexpected moments like these.
God protect him.
Protect them all.
Back downstairs after flipping some towels to the dryer, just before the sun finally arrived - in Belgium right now this is around 8am - I indulged in another fascinating, miraculous, and comforting vision: I watched a video of birds flocking in Denmark, famously called Sort Sol: Black Sun. Though made up of thousands of birds, they bring to mind so many other things: a moving amoeba, a tide-tossed jellyfish, sparks and smoke swirling above a campfire, a schoolyard of children playing tag, a giant windswept cornfield…and whatever it looks like inside my own soul. A murmuration of birds, I guess, just feels familiar. It feels, somehow, like a self-portrait.
If you’ve read my essays before, then you know I spent a year here in Brussels taking a transdisciplinary postgraduate that examined ideas related to human thinking: cognition, emotion, embodied thinking, group thinking, complexity, artistry, and systems. We spent time learning about flocks - how they work, and why. I came away understanding that we, too, are a flock. Our human system moves similarly to flocks like Sort Sol. When I read about individual tragedy such as I did this morning, and think about the young people affected, and their parents, and my own sleeping children, and my eldest flitting back and forth joyfully from our nest, and all of us seemingly safe but never really safe, somehow watching these birds in motion provides my emotionally exhausted heart some relief. Sort Sols have been recorded with a million flocking birds - can you imagine that? The random but fully aligned movements of these flocks, when seen from a distance, are waving, dancing, three-dimensionally transforming, flashing, and always soft around the shapeshifting edges. They are not just the birds that make them up - they seem to be their own, intelligent, living other thing. This feels very, very familiar.
Flocking is a purposeful action, evolutionarily speaking. Birds with flocking behavior are less likely to succumb to a predator; they share information quickly and easily; they take turns in low and high energy positions; they rapidly pickup cues on innovation in attaining resources; and they are trained in social awareness and adaptive response. In the meantime, they show off their daring and darting skills to other birds, attracting mates and strengthening the species. Ultimately, flocking species have neural wiring for cooperation without centralized control.
Though it often does not feel this way, especially in times of social discord and violence, we humans are wired this way, too. I am me. But I am also we.
When I first started that postgraduate program that began my fascination with flocking species, my Belgian classmates regarded me with some curiosity: I didn’t realize it for many months, but I guess I was a bit of a strange bird. Several later told me they’d felt that as an American I had brought with me both a good sense of humor but also some trauma. How often these go hand-in-hand! Now passing the two year mark in Europe, I know that by living in a place with a strong social net and a better sense of safety for my kids, this trauma has been given time to heal. In Belgium I’ve been fortunate to have been able to take a low-energy position in the human flock for a little while. Still, frequent drone sightings, rapidly increasing military spending, the situation in Ukraine, and political saber rattling have been pressing into this particular spot in my murmuration, leaving me and my family once again feeling exposed, and on edge. Have I just replaced a shooter’s gun with a drone bomb?
As the light moves through gloom into day, things are suddenly feeling quite late, and I whack my little Italian coffee pot filter comfortingly back and forth, dumping yesterday’s grinds into the garbage. I set about making a fresh pot. No more time is left to ponder these things, I need to get back to engaging with my world, hoping for the best.
I’ll leave you with this: birds exist within flocks by staying close to their neighbors, avoiding collision, and moving in a direction. In Europe I have selected some inspiring neighbors - several coming from much, much more dangerous and volatile places than our own insulated but still sometimes tragic western world - and I make sure to stay close to them and engage in little things like quick conversations or big things like offering and accepting support. I try to avoid collision by engaging in civic life respectfully, not assuming I know what difficulties strangers are experiencing in their own private lives. And finally, I try to move in a direction: I attempt to uphold positive values based on what I perceive are universal human rights, and I try to imbue these into my children and community.
I guess it isn’t certainty that carries me forward. It is proximity.
This is so relatable. Even a good Pilates stretch can't undo those morning headline.