You can always tell where people want to walk on a campus or in a park from where the traffic wears down the grass. These are called “desire lines.”
A friend reminded me of this as we had coffee and discussed the state of the world and Gaza. In the liberal enclave of America where he lives, people who had always been in the same camp politically now argue and everyone feels the stress of not knowing where others stand with those they had just presumed were allies.
“Everything is getting remapped,” he says with a sigh.
In Prospect Park, where the desire lines are obvious, another friend throws a ball to Willy, a lovely pit bull terrier who would happily run, retrieve, and return that ball to your feet for three hours straight.
Willy’s dad knows schools and so that is what we discuss. Sixty years after Brown vs. Board of education public schools are more segregated than ever. At private schools, “There is a hunger for the wrong kind of experience,” he says. “We are feeding on the wrong thing.”
Willy’s desire is as unimpeachable as it is tireless. Ours is questionionable and wearying.
—
Everyone tells me it is a scary time, that they are afraid. Indeed it is. Me too.
We might start by doing less.
Take a break from the unhealthy intake, the empy calories you feed on.
Practice some quiet and minimal good: help a person whose beliefs you know nothing about, serve a kid by learning from them, operate in real space, give anonymously.
Do something not even your enemy—be they new or old—could take issue with.
Chase that for a few hours.
See what lines it wears into your heart.