Carpets and Corruption

Ahh, the end of February. In Seattle, that means the beginning of the end of what is jokingly called the Great Dark. The cherry blossoms are blooming, my bluebells have emerged, and the sun is even making an appearance from time to time. Cabin fever, which has fully set in by now, is starting to ease off.

For some reason, this year felt worse than most. Which is funny, because it wasn’t, not weather wise. It was a remarkably clear, warm winter. But Forrest spent a month this winter pulling out our old carpet, throwing our entire household into a state of upheaval. It was a necessary change. The carpet was in the house when we moved in sixteen years ago, and has survived three kids and two dogs.

When we pulled it up, we found old scraps of wallpaper under the baseboards, patterns from the sixties and seventies which had been long forgotten. We found uneven boards that had to be sanded and puttied. We saw evidence of our own family’s history – stains from a hundred spilled glasses of water, from that time our daughter dropped slime on the floor and it never quite came up, from the pacing feet of parents up late with crying babies.

That carpet was ready to go and I am so happy the project is done, but the mess and the work and the stress made for a very long winter.

I think a lot of us are feeling like our world is in the middle of a very long winter. We’re pulling up the carpet on the world, aren’t we? And seeing the ugly wallpaper and stains. The question is what are we going to do about it? It would be easier to just tuck that old carpet back down, or hey, maybe pull up the old stuff and then just put new stuff on top without worrying about those uneven boards. Leave it for the next person to deal with, just the last person left it to us.

To be fully honest, that’s my first instinct. I’m busy, there are projects that I need to move forward with, bigger and better ideas that I want to work on. But not my husband. Forrest likes things done properly. And so, the floor will be sanded and the old baseboards will be replaced and if it takes twice as long, then so be it. Because it’ll last twice as long too.

It’s been heartbreaking, hasn’t it? To realize we live in a world of corruption. Even worse, a world where too many people think that allowing corruption might be the price we need to pay for a better economy, a stronger military, a more ordered society. I understand it; I really do. Life is hard enough. Are we really going to use our energy to fight one more unending battle?

But the thing about corruption is that it corrupts. It will ruin everything it touches and in the end, it’ll need to be fixed anyway. So the real question is, do we have the courage to do it now? Or will we leave it for our kids? Our grandkids? Do we have the willingness to take on hardship so that when we hand something to our kids, it is something worth having?

That might feel like an easy “yes”, but it leads to the harder question: What will it take to clean up this mess? I don’t know. I doubt anyone really does right now. Except that from here on out, we must have the courage to be honest. Honest about how we got here, and honest about where we’d like to go. We must demand accountability and refuse to accept anything less.

And maybe then, when we’re building whatever comes next, we can at least be sure of the ground underneath our feet.