When I'm in the city, it's easy to imagine we live in an orderly world. We're subject to rules, schedules, and endless paperwork. It's easy to be convinced that everything is within our power to change, if we just follow the prescribed steps. Or, if not our power, it is within the abilities of someone more powerful: our treatment team, our boss, our politicians, or perhaps the algorithms that seem to be in charge these days.
All those headlines — "Walking this much every day can add up to 10 years to your life, longevity doctors say" "12 easy habits to reinvent your health this year" "Cut your cancer risk with these 6 helpful food hacks" — slip into our subconscious. The idea that we can control our fates is imbued in popular culture. It feels like life is a math problem I can solve.
That's not how it feels today. Right now I'm on an island in the Azores, ostensibly to study people's lived experiences of rural healthcare, but so far mostly working on our website. The island of Flores is 143 square kilometers, or 55 square miles. It's something like 1,600 kilometers, or 1,000 miles, off the coast of mainland Portugal. It's part of the North American tectonic plate, although what I think of as North America is 3,900 kilometers, or 2,400 miles, away. The islands of the Azores are connected to each other by ferry, theoretically, since there's hardly any service in the winter. Each island has a tiny airstrip.
It took me four days to get here from Toronto, a city with a significant Azorean expat community. The problem was the weather. The delay worked in our favor, though. It gave me plenty of time to catch up on reading and work and chat with my fellow stranded passengers. We got to go on a bonus round trip to Horta, in a failed attempt to get to our destination.
Most importantly, it gave us all time to go to the shops in the capital of the Azores. The supply ships had not been able to dock at Flores in several weeks, so when I finally did arrive the store shelves were just about bare. There was not a single vegetable available for sale. There were a few of the most expensive cheeses, a stray sausage or two, and milk that was being rationed.
There are more storms coming, so yesterday I was out trying to clear a drainage channel. I didn't get very far, because of course the volcanic soil is incredibly rocky and I'm someone who works on the internet. Even if I had more muscles and the right technique, the road would probably still wash out anyway. There is a lot of rain coming.
People who live here are used to it. While they're happy to have the opportunity to buy things the shops here don't normally carry, no one is so worried about the bare grocery store shelves or the road washing out. The road was only built ten years ago, anyway. There’s still the old ox cart pathway. Everyone has a garden, with vegetables and citrus even in February. People have chickens, goats, and cows. Everyone has a stockpile of food for exactly this scenario. People trade with their neighbors and help each other out, because there's no other option. Here the simple truth that independence happens at the community level is undeniable.
Facing a version of nature that is so obviously mighty puts things in perspective. I can't even imagine how I would react if a road washed out in Toronto or if the shelves of NoFrills were bare. I know how I get my knickers in a twist when the subway is shut down for an hour because of an "incident" or the time the city approved construction permits that meant the sidewalks on both sides of my downtown street were closed. I look for someone to blame, someone who is responsible. I demand it be fixed. These things aren’t supposed to happen.
When nature is to blame, it's a different matter. We cannot argue with the wind and the rain like we argue with politicians and CEOs. When everything is orderly and there's a chain of command managing just-in-time supplies, it's easy to forget that behind all of that is a system beyond our comprehension and control. We can joke about the Ever Given and gripe about the consequences of poor decisions. We cannot decide that there will be no more storms on the ocean.
The weather here is a presence, not a backdrop. The electrical power, the water coming out of the taps, and the fact that I have internet access feel a little bit magical. Weeds reclaim the garden and pathways so quickly I can just about see them growing. Everyone who has needed an emergency room has a story about being flown to another island in a military helicopter. If you want to spend some time on one of the smaller islands, you can rent an absurdly expensive holiday house or you can ask around until you're introduced to someone who'll be spending a few weeks away in order to have surgery or get some other scheduled medical treatment. In Toronto, if you're cold, if there's no water, if you have to wait for treatment, a journalist will write a story about it and people will demand something be done.
One of the things I spend a lot of time trying to untangle while I go about the ultimately futile chores my day is made up of is, of the many aspects of caregiver burden, which can be improved and which are ultimately merely the human condition? How much suffering is due to our fighting an unchangeable reality?
When some billionaire promises to cure death, I imagine an eternity of getting up to pee, flossing my teeth, cleaning that awkward space behind the toilet, trying to find the right part at Canadian Tire, getting caught in a two factor authentication loop, and filing my taxes. Frankly, it's not particularly appealing. There is a beauty to scarcity. As much as each death that touches me feels like a tragedy, I don't want to "cure" death. Sometimes the slog is the point. As much as I can kvetch with the best of them, fighting against the human condition is the most futile task of all.
Where is the line between what we can improve and what is simply human fate? What is malleable in this incomprehensible universe we live in? What suffering is from the cruel indifference of humankind and what is the result of the cruel indifference of nature? How can we make the cruel indifference of nature easier to bear?
In Toronto, surrounded by glass towers, it's easy to believe that life can be planned out and managed. Here, that idea is laughable. All that rain washes away the myths w’ve been told about human power.
The serenity prayer is so ubiquitous that I have no idea how or when I accidentally memorized it. Out here, as I try to dig a ditch ahead of a storm, I can feel it in my bones. It's pointless and miraculous all at once.
The website is great!!