Bicycle Parts and Tote Bags

I attended a workshop this week on "vicarious traumatization" for people who work with folks who have experienced trauma. One of the things that stayed with me from among the instructor's ideas about how to protect yourself from being negatively affected by the traumas you hear about was not giving in to cynicism. Karen Saakvitne, who led the workshop, has found that over time, the world's miseries can make us feel pretty hopeless. She shared that she tries to actively protect herself from this by avoiding, for example, gruesome NPR stories that talk about the victims of atrocities whom she has no way of helping, and confronting the people in her life who give up and accept that the world is pretty miserable and there's not much we can do about it.

So I've been giving a lot of thought to cynicism, as I often get stuck in its sway. I don't know if it will work, but I'm going to make an effort to be less cynical. It can't hurt. Edginess is overrated.

Here goes: It was a cold and raw morning, and scheduled for New Haven's monthly winter farmers' market. As I was walking the mile or so there, I passed a handful of other solitary farmers'-market-goers on their way home, tote bags heavy with greenhouse greens, potatoes, and unpasteurized milk in returnable glass bottles. It was such a comfort to know that others had bothered to walk over there. I don't know if, like me, they wanted to support family farms generally and the farmers they've become acquainted with specifically, mill around with their neighbors, and reduce their carbon footprint by favoring food grown nearby and carrying it home in a reusable bag. Even if they just walked over there because they wanted some really tasty artisanal cheese or maple butter (OK, I guess I fall into this category also), I was still moved by the decidedly un-cynical act of making it to the winter farmers' market.

On my way home, I went to pick up my bike at the Devil's Gear II, the week-old annex to my favorite New Haven bike shop. As I rode home on my bike, so thoroughly tuned up and shined up down to the spankin' new yellow tape on my handlebars that it felt brand new, I decided that it was pretty encouraging to live in a place where there's so much demand for bikes and bike repairs that the bike shop has to expand.

And those are my hopeful thoughts for today.