My time in COVID-19 induced quarantine has had me reflecting on the things that I crave or look forward to in life that remain perpetually out of reach. Like a nice dinner outside in my general area without the party being crashed by invasive insects. Multiple times, the dinner I had with my family the other weekend was interrupted by spotted lantern flies landing on our table or dive bombing us. You could barely walk anywhere without seeing one of them flattened on the pavement. It was disgusting to experience. Spotted lantern flies, like all insects, are fascinating creatures. That does not subtract from the damage they have been doing to local ecosystems since they arrived in America a few years ago. They did not completely ruin my dinner, a genuinely good meal on its own, but they were a nuisance.
Recently, it seems like life has been filled with nuisances, and they accompany everything otherwise worth living for. All of them point towards the path of one of life’s cruelest, most disabling nuisances—DOUBT. Seeing those harmful insects polluting the air makes the restoration of the world you once knew seem more and more unlikely. Seeing people’s conversations de-evolve into mindless sloganeering and virtue signaling makes you question anyone’s ability to think critically. Having your view of the world ignored and shot down makes you question if your words even have meaning. You get overwhelmed by a gaslighting world, you lose grip on your motives and sense of self, you become complacent. You are crippled when the spotted lantern fly that just landed in your hair should have been the one to take the boot.
I know from personal experience what it is like to be overcome with dutiful, certain passion. Ninety percent of the time, that passion feels one sided. Life becomes an uphill battle to defeat the monster assembled from the tangled wires of consciousness and unconsciousness, decisiveness and anxiety, love and hatred—and nothing is right until the mission is completed. The rewards are usually temporary and unsatisfying, and true fulfillment has a waiting list. Now that’s what I call a nuisance.
At least I’m lucky that a few of the waiting lists I’ve found myself on have been growing shorter. That’s not always the case.
