Month: November 2011

Abundance begets abundance

A while ago I wrote about how I often stopped before things got hard, doubted in some fundamental way that I was not enough for a task in front of me.  I want to clarify something important about this.   First, I’m not sure that my resistance to really pushing myself – whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually – is about fear of failure.  It might be about fear of success.  It might be abhorrence of discomfort of any kind.  I really don’t know, which is why I shared it.

Secondly, when I write “not enough” I mean it in terms of myself, only: my own resources of strength, forbearance, intelligence, trust.  I am absolutely not a zero sum kind of person, and I wasn’t speaking about the world.

Last week I re-read Molly Jong Fast’s article in Bazaar about the New York fear of there being “not enough preschool spots, enough Mandarin speaking nannies, enough David Netto-designed $1600 cribs.”  The wording of that sentence, the not enough, sent me back here.  Sure, I write about my deep anxiety about being safe, but essentially I don’t think there is limited abundance in this world.  I really, truly care about supporting others, for example, and don’t do that with any agenda of my own but instead out of a sincere wish to help others.  I am not a competitive person, which surprises some people.  Ask my husband: he hates playing all games with me, whether tennis or bridge, because I simply don’t care about winning.  I am uncomfortable with shows of excess, to the point of over-correction.  I believe in my core that one of the best ways to remember how fortunate we are is to give of ourselves: whether it’s to listen to a heartbroken friend, to put a dollar in the guitar case of the man playing on the subway platform, or to cook a meal for the local battered women’s shelter.

I don’t know how I feel about The Secret, and I wouldn’t call myself a law of attraction disciple, but I do believe  that abundance begets abundance.  I think that there is a great deal of good in the world, and by noticing it, acknowledging it, we can add to it.  In a quiet and somewhat dark period of my own life, I am grateful for the reminder of this.

Fairy tales

If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. – Einstein

I just adore this quote.  Putting aside for a minute my essential belief that raw intelligence is innate, I agree with everything that Einstein means with this single beautiful sentence.  Why?  For lots of reasons.

Fairy tales are where the archetypes live.  They are where we learn about courage and love, about family, loyalty, and betrayal, about tests and triumph.  They are where we learn the most essential stories of humanity, the stories that go on repeating themselves over and over again in our lives and in our literature, as we grow into adulthood.

Fairy tales exist firmly in the realm of the imagination, and they allow children to dream of a world unrestricted by the boundaries of reality as they know it.  In fairy tales, magic can truly happen, and I think a commitment to the power of that which lies beyond reason and logic is fundamental to both intelligence and creativity.  How else can enormous leaps of the imagination come about, without this capacity?

More basically, stories are how you learn about the world.  I love that someone as aligned with the rigorous worlds of science and math as Einstein celebrates the power of the story.  I agree with him.  This reminds me of what I’ve written about my father: that he has a master’s degree in Physics, a PhD in Engineering, and an abiding trust in the ability of science, logic, and measurement to explain the world. At the same time, he has a deep fascination with European history and culture, often manifested in a love of the continent’s cathedrals, those embodiments of religious fervor, of all that is not scientific, logical, or measurable. His unshakeable faith in the life of the rational mind is matched by his profound wonder at the power of the ineffable, the territory of religious belief and cultural experience, that which is beyond the intellect.

I grew up in the space between those two worlds, believing that they are in fact as mutually enriching as they appear paradoxical.  I’d like to provide the same powerful learning for Grace and Whit.  As I help Grace learn the multiplication tables and how to touch type, may I remember to teach her also about dragons and princesses, about the hero’s journey, about spells which change the world, and about the fierce bonds of love.

Reading list

One of my favorite questions to ask others is “what are you reading?”  I recently noted that one mark of a truly good friend, for me, is someone with whom I can exchange single-sentence emails that ask that one question.  Over the summer I asked for, and received, many wonderful suggestions.  I’ve written before about the stack beside my bedside table, about the actual, real anxiety I feel about the fact that there won’t be time to read everything I want to read in my life.  But I try.  Oh, I try.

I’ve read some beautiful things lately.  I adored Priscilla Warner’s Learning to Breathe.  I devoured the Hunger Games trilogy, fascinated and compelled by the story and the characters.  I can’t wait for the movie.  I read Meghan O’Rourke’s The Long Goodbye in tears, loving every page, and cemented my belief that some of my very favorite prose is written by poets (see also: Just Kids).

Right now I’m trying (trying!  unsuccessfully!) to write fiction, so I find myself turning in that direction.  Dani suggested I read Michael Cunningham’s A Home At the End of the World, so I plan to read that as soon as it arrives.  Also in my current stack:

Blue Nights, Joan Didion
The Underside of Joy (ARC), Sere Prince Halverson
The Bread of Angels, Stephanie Daldana
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd
Admission, Jean Hanff Korelitz

Please, tell, me: what are you reading?  What’s on your list?  What’s your favorite fiction book, and why?

Looking out the window

One day last week I was puttering in the kitchen and it occurred to me I hadn’t seen Whit in a while.  “Whit?” I hollered up the staircase.  Our house is very up-and-down and we have a terrible habit, all of us, of shouting up and down the stairs.

“Yes?” I heard him answer from upstairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m just looking out the window.”

Oh.  I stood in the kitchen, a potholder in my hand, stunned, still, thinking about that.

Later that afternoon I was folding laundry on our bed while Whit sat in the upholstered chair in our bay window talking to me.  The late-afternoon sun streamed in, viscous, gold, like maple syrup.  I shook out pajama bottoms and folded them, smoothed little boy underpants printed with robots and sailboats with my hand, piling them neatly.

“Mummy?” Whit said from his perch, and I turned to see that he was gazing out the window.

“Yes?”

“Admire the light of this hour.”

I gaped and looked at him, at the back of his head which glowed, burnished blond, in the late-afternoon autumn light.  I had just recently reminded my children about looking at the light of every hour, about the power of really noticing things.  Still, I hadn’t realized how fully he had internalized this.  I dwell so often on the myriad ways Grace is, often uncomfortably, like me but for some reason reminders that Whit too has a seam of sensitivity and awareness running through him tend to take me aback.  I find it particularly moving that my Lego-worshiping, lightsaber-wielding six year old son can also spend long minutes looking out the window.  I’m not sure why this surprises me: I guess that Whit, like his mother and many people I love, contains multitudes.

Life has not forgotten you

So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?

– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Once again, from the beautiful blog A Year with Rilke