On Making Sense of Today: Essays

Alison Ash Linnell, Brigham Young University

Abstract

On Making Sense of Today is a collection of essays trying to make sense of not only today, but of yesterday - and yesterday's actions, and today's consequences of those actions. It seeks to find understanding of loss, discontent, and disconnection, but ultimately searches for and finds hope, empathy, and connection in the human experience. The collection ranges in subject matter from the trivial - how to recover from a forgotten essay idea - to weightier matters - whether any death should be advocated for and celebrated - and many issues and questions in-between. This collection is also a study of uncertainty and vulnerability, especially how examining uncertainty with vulnerability can cultivate a deeper observation of the human condition. Some of the uncertainties considered in this collection are how to respond to a duplicitous compliment, how a parent can reconcile misunderstanding a child's love language, and how to process the complicated emotions of a child disconnecting from a parent. While the uncertainty of each question is unresolved, each essay does examine these uncertainties with vulnerability, and that vulnerability creates a connection to any reader who has struggled with a similar uncertainty and in that process, both author and reader feel a little less lonely in their struggles to make sense of things that cannot always make sense.