When Things Settle Down

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “When things settle down…”

When things settle down, I’ll call. I’ll get together with them. I’ll finally have time for something I’ve been wanting to do. I’ll take care of something that matters to me but somehow never seems quite urgent enough for today.

The funny thing is, it’s hard to remember very many times when things actually did settle down. Some things got resolved. Some simply went away. A few turned out not to matter nearly as much as we thought they did. Some of the things we worried about never happened at all.

And then, of course, there were new things. There always seem to be new things.

The larger world isn’t helping much these days. There’s plenty to worry about, argue about, and try to understand. The noise never seems to stop, and with elections approaching, it’s probably going to get louder before it gets quieter. It’s tempting to wait for all of that to settle down too. Maybe then we can get back to our lives.

Except these ARE our lives.

Maybe that’s what makes “when things settle down” such an interesting idea. Somewhere inside it is the hope that when life becomes a little less complicated, we’ll finally have more room for the things that really matter.

But perhaps we have that backward. Maybe discovering what matters is part of how we settle down.

And what matters is often surprisingly ordinary. The people we love. The friends we haven’t talked with for a while. Time with someone without needing to accomplish anything. The things we’re curious about. The places and communities where we feel that we belong. The things we do simply because they bring us joy.

None of those requires the rest of life to be in order.

Maybe we already know that, because we’ve lived through unsettled times before. We’ve worried about things that eventually got resolved, changed, disappeared, or simply became something we learned to live with. Not everything turned out the way we hoped. Some things hurt. Some still do.

But through all of it, we kept living. We loved people. We made friends. We laughed. We created things. We said goodbye to people we loved and hello to people we hadn’t met yet. We discovered new interests. We changed our minds. We grew.

We didn’t wait for life to settle down before living it.

————————————————————

Perhaps “when things settle down” isn’t a time that’s ever going to arrive. There will always be something unfinished. Something uncertain. Something asking for our attention. The world will continue making noise, and tomorrow will probably bring something we didn’t expect.

But maybe settling down was never about getting all of that to stop. Maybe it’s about becoming a little clearer about what deserves a place in my life while it continues.

What’s important to me? Who do I want to spend time with? Who haven’t I called lately? What am I curious about? What brings me joy? What matters enough that I don’t want to keep saving it for some quieter version of my life?

Those questions don’t make the noise disappear. They don’t fix the world or clear the calendar. They simply remind me that the noise isn’t everything.

Perhaps things begin to settle down when I stop waiting for them to. Not because there is less going on. Not because I’ve figured everything out. And certainly not because the world has suddenly become a quieter place.

Maybe I’m just learning to settle a little more comfortably into the life I’m already living.

The world may not settle down anytime soon. But perhaps we can.