When The World Crumbles, I Eat Cereal

How capturing the joy of our youth helps us tackle the present.

I have found myself, in the quiet hours of contemplation since the recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action, students loan forgiveness, and LGBTQ+ protections, ruminating on a simple yet complex question.

In a world that, it seems, falls apart brick by brick each day, how do we steady ourselves to do the labor of mending its cracks? In a country that feels as though it is killing me daily, what force exists that can turn the harsh glare of reality into a torch to remind us of a path forward?

I have stood on the precipice of this question, with each tick of the clock marking losses, wounds, and tragedies. The blade of time, especially in the United States, has left no corner untouched, no decent heart unscathed. Each slice, a paper-thin sliver leaving behind the gaping feelings of fear and sorrow.

The potential beauty of the human condition seems to be constantly painted with the brush of regressive discourse, of daily news about depleting resources, of a dissolving democracy, of disquieting truth of human greed and apathy. The very foundations of our shared humanity crumbling beneath our feet.

But despite the countless cuts and bruises our spirits bear, I have found a balm to help soothe my hardest days, in the most unlikely of places: the joy of my youth.

It may seem to some like a contradiction, to speak of joy when the world screams in pain, but I believe it is in this very juxtaposition that we find the key to our salvation.

You see, the joy I’m talking about is not a flight from reality, in the ways that toxic positivity has acted as a scapegoat for a world that demands action. No, what I’m referring to is a courageous act of defiance against the onslaught of despair. Joy not as an evasion, but an affirmation, a fierce declaration that you have a reason to survive, to thrive, to embrace the beauty that persists amidst the ugliness.

A way to fortify ourselves enough to continue doing the actual work of ensuring that tomorrow might have a chance for joy as well.

The joy I speak of does not spring from the superficial wells of privileged lives. It is not a cheap intoxication, numbing us from the pain of the world. It is an old, profound, and deeply-rooted gladness that wells up from the depth of our being. Laid deep in parts of ourselves we thought left behind.

This joy fuels us, not by erasing the reality of our struggles, but by honoring them, by recognizing the strength that we've summoned to face them. It takes the raw materials of our pain, our loss, our grief, and transmutes them into an ironclad resolve, a passion that burns with the desire to heal, to mend, to rebuild.

To find what I am talking about, I look to the boy I once was, in what often feels like many lives ago.

The boy who eagerly sprang from his bed as the Saturday morning light peeked through the window, the dew still fresh upon the grass outside, every room in our modest apartment humming with the sweet notes of my mother’s Mary J. Blige CDs. Masking the sound of my footsteps, as I rushed to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal.

The rattling sound as the cereal poured into the bowl was like jazz to me, scatting in my ears. Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, Corn Pops, it didn’t matter, each one held a certain magic in the sweetness of their being. Drowning them in a sea of cool milk marked the commencement of a new day.

That boyhood me, as countless others, held a spark of life in his eyes, a flame fueled by the idea that anything was possible. I would often perch myself at the window in the living room, watching the passersby in their passionate pursuit of life, their hopes painted as boldly as the murals that adorned our neighborhood's cracked and weathered walls.

He believed he could do anything he imagined. Oh, the beauty of youth’s audacity.

Some of that boy's dreams may have been naive, but they were powerful, potent enough to send him to distant lands, exploring realms beyond the constraints of Yonkers, New York’s narrow streets. But life, as it does, has a way of drawing us from the innocence of youth, and into the trappings of adulthood.

The charm of those easy mornings, replaced with hurried sips of coffee, quick bites of dry toast, political sound bites on the television, and the all-consuming chase for survival. But how I desperately miss that boy.

So in one of my brighter moments, I decided that every week I will make sure to spend time with him by pouring us a bowl of cereal. A ritual not about the sustenance of my body, but rather the sustenance of my soul.

It's an ordinary thing, one might say, to wax poetic about a bowl of cereal. Yet, in the most ordinary, we can find extraordinary connections, ropes thrown across the tumultuous sea of years, tethering the people we are to the dreamers we once were. Reminding ourselves how we managed to get here, and how we might manage to continue going.

Each bite, each sweetness diffused in the dance between milk and spoon, becomes a door to my laughter, of running barefoot on grass, of playing freeze tag until the street lights came on without a worry in the world.

Cereal has become more than a breakfast routine; it is a time machine, a vessel that sails me back to the unadulterated innocence of my past. As the spoonful of nostalgia touches my lips, I am reminded of the home that persists within me, amidst the ever-eroding landscapes of this world.

And so, I implore you to find your bowl of cereal. Your symbolic refuge, the simplicity of your past becoming a sanctuary in the complex present. You will find that there is a certain kind of magic in these memories. They do not promise to fix the world, or mend our broken spirits overnight. What they do promise is the strength to carry on. They remind us of our resilience, our capacity to dream, our ability to find joy in the simplest of things, and our inherent knack to defy the darkness and create our own light.

Now, as the world as we know it seems to crumble and change in ways we scarcely understand, as we feel the gnawing reality of mortality, you might find solace in retracing the steps of that childhood you. Sipping on the nostalgia served in the cracked cup of reality, I understand that we will still feel on many days that we are dying slowly, but it is our duty to also live, moment by moment.

Remembering we were once that child, perched at the window, dreaming of distant lands and better days. It is in these things, these pieces of forgotten dreams and discarded joy, that I find my spirit rejuvenated, my resolve reinforced.

In the end, we're not just retracing our steps. We're rediscovering our essence. We're acknowledging what the journey requires. For, in the midst of a crumbling world, it is these dreams and this joy that will provide us the strength to fix what is broken, and build anew.