Landings Hard and Soft

08.04.2024

Aug 04, 2024

The hurricanes are landing. Debby, Carlotta and Daniel have been active since Sunday. We can track, monitor and measure their potential as they approach. What a service our modern day weather apps provide, even for me, for whom hurricanes are not my primary concern. But I wonder, with all this data, these precise and accurate warnings (which are critical to saving lives): why should we leave this type of modern day convenience to the realm of the weather alone? Why isn’t there an app that can alert us to the upcoming presence of new events in our lives that have the potential for both short and long-term consequences?

It’s true that, like hurricanes, the residual impact of people, places and things can’t be known until after they have come and gone, but wouldn’t you be interested in receiving the alert anyway?

For example: Let’s say you’re young—in your early twenties. You are studying Russian literature with absolutely no idea what you will do with that degree except potentially become a teacher, like those that you admire, the prospect of which you are reluctant to consider because:

a) you fear you are not smart enough to know enough in order to teach anything, and
b) you have a fear of public speaking in general

But never mind, there you are ensconced in your dorm room apartment, reading “The Idiot” when on your personal phone device (smaller than the book you are reading), you receive a notification—

“Special Relationship Statement:
Steve will be landing in your life in approximately four-to-seven days.”

Hmm, ok, better click on that one.

Current Stats Of Steve:

Category: Boyfriend
Max Sustained Influence: 2-4 years
Current Position: Seattle metropolitan area
Potential Long-Term Impact: low-to-medium
Storm Surge Calculation: 6 out of 10

You read the notification, do the numbers in your head. Build a diagram: survival, influence, course of life. After reviewing the diagram you have to decide: do you leave that dorm room? Or do you stay in the dorm room and read that book over and over and over, in order to never risk the probable impact of Steve. Hard to say.

The LifeEventImpact1 app, like the great majority of apps, would tell us everything we need to know and everything we do not ever need to know all at the same time. So, on second thought, perhaps we are better off predicting the weather ourselves. Because surely, at least once in your life, in winter, you walked outside in the morning, looked up at the sky and said, “It’s going to snow today.” And you were correct. The same thing happens with people. We know they are coming already. We just don’t always say it out loud to ourselves before their arrival.

Speaking of landings, the only thing better than a bird or a horse, is a bird landing on a horse. Whenever I see that, whenever I’m walking the dog—as I was today—and see those little birds, one, two, or three at a time, land on the sweet mares who live down the hill, I have to stop and just watch them.

This morning, as I watched, I wondered: do they like it—the horses? Do they like it when the little birds land on them? I mean, it might tickle for a minute, but, honestly, if you are one horse standing next to another, and you have a bird or two (or three!) sitting on you, tell me that you couldn’t help yourself, that you wouldn’t look over at the other horse, and wink a little, in your sweet, horsey, (braggy) way, and say,

“Hey, I’ve got some birds on me!” knowing how jealous the other one would be.

But then, the birds would sense your braggadocio and fly over to the other one just to show you who exactly it is that’s making this scene a five-star moment in this middle-aged lady’s life on a warm, perfect August morning.

You know, if that LifeEventImpact app existed, I wouldn’t download it. I would not have wanted to know in advance that on August 4, 2024, I would be so entranced by the side of the road; that I would be so content just to stand there and watch birds land on the backs of horses.