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Let go … again, still, more

let go

I adore this piece about 15 Things You Should Give Up to be Happy.  Loved.  And it made me think of how often I write about letting go.  I write about it a lot.  A search for “let go” in my archives yielded 26 pages of results.  I could do a favorite-posts-post JUST of “let go” posts.  But I won’t.  Right now, at least.  I do wear a necklace that says “let go” which probably tells you a lot about how much this phrase means to me.

Maybe that’s actually what this life is all, and essentially, about.  Is that possible?  Just letting go of things, releasing, letting ourselves float through life as lightly as the spring petals fluttering to the ground, dying as they go, but beautiful?

So much of this modern life seems about holding on and grabbing.  It is true when it comes to material things, and I already know I have an aversion to this, to the the piling-up of possessions.  That letting-go I have already done: the illusion that there is any deep, true contentment to be found in things.

But this orientation towards acquisition also applies to more abstract things, and there I’m as guilty as anyone.  I spent the first 30 years of my life madly racking up degrees and achievements and accolades.  In fact my first, rejected memoir was all about that: about the realization that that way of navigating the world is fundamentally broken.  When there is no next obvious brass ring to grab for, what do we do?  Well, fly into the abyss is one thing.  But as we fall, we need to figure out another map to follow, one less defined by external validation and achievement and more delineated by the internal voice of our soul.  That letting go I am working on, though I think I’m moving towards it.

But there’s a third way I – and we – lean towards holding on, and that is the trickiest one for me.  It’s the letting go of what we thought our life was going to be.  That is inextricably correlated, for me, with letting go of my grief about the passage of time.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully release that, but I know that right now I’m bound in its net, tangled in the cords of sorrow that tighten around me every time I kick.  My life is exactly as I planned it and nothing like I expected.  That sentence, which I use over and over again is fundamental, painful, and true.  What I have is here.  Now.  And to really live it, I have to let go of my white-knuckle grip on both yesterday and tomorrow.  That letting go: still a long, long way to go.

As firmly as I know I need to let go, as fiercely as I’m convinced that that is the lesson I was put on earth to learn, I know I am also, simultaneously, incredibly attached.  I am attached to people, to places, to outcomes.  In fact I’ve often questioned the whole notion of hope, because it is very hard for me to feel hope in the abstract.  It always comes wound around a specific future or thing that I want to be true.

I have said before and still believe that almost all suffering comes from our attachment to how we thought it was going to be.  But I don’t want – and I don’t think I could, anyway – to be less attached to those I love.

Maybe I can parse attachment, and divide it carefully into two groups, the way Grace painstakingly divides her Perler beads by color.  Let go of what I thought life would be like?  Absolutely.  Yes.  I must.  Let go of those I love?  I don’t think so.

What are you letting go of right now?  Do you think it’s possible that learning to let go is life’s basic and most important task?

Some changes

This September will mark seven years of blogging for me.  I love writing here.  To say it has had a substantial impact on the way I live my life is an understatement.  Blogging has introduced me to a community of writers I’d never imagined meeting, brought me back to the person who loves to write, who I’d lost for many years, and reminded me in a visceral way that my life is right here in front of me, and if I don’t pay attention I’ll miss it.

It’s time for a small change.  Starting next week I’m going to blog three times a week.  Mostly this is because I’m worried I’m repeating myself.  A couple of years ago I noted that Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game could easily be the theme song of my life.  “Captive on a carousel of time” might have been a more apt (though more trademarked) name for this blog.  I feel like the circles are getting smaller, and I am becoming boring.  I told Matt about this change, and he asked why, and I said “because I think I’m repeating myself.”  Without hesitation, he said, “Yes, that’s probably true.”  Oh-kay.  There you have it.

Writing here has certainly made clear the central leitmotifs of my life: mourning the passage of time, the mysterious nature of memory, my dogged but imperfect attempts to be here now, and the reality that life is flawed and messy, grand and golden, and that it is impossible (for me) to have light without dark.

It is inexpressibly valuable to have clarity about what those themes are.  I understand now, and I did not before, the ways that these spots around which my soul pivots have defined my comings and goings and my feeling and thinking.

But I don’t want to just say the same thing over and over again.  I can’t possibly explain how much it means to me that anyone at all is reading my words; honestly, that is a gift beyond measure.  Thank you.  I know it’s awfully meta to blog about blogging.  I won’t do it again, but I just wanted to explain the change in cadence here that will start next week.

And to say thank you.

Isn’t it amazing how fast things can change?

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This picture, while it is of bedtime, is not specifically related to this post.  I love it, though, because it demonstrates the kids sleeping on the floor when we visited our closest friends’ house this winter.  This is a classic move from my family, to unroll a sleeping bag and crash, and I’m quite proud that my children are adept at it.

It had been a normal day.  Busy, yes.  For instance, we had no time to read Harry Potter.  But I had given Grace and Whit dinner and talked to them about their days before they took showers.  We had sat together on the couch and read a wonderful picture book from the library (I absolutely adore picture books and still read them to my children; they love them too), and then they got into their beds to read their own books before bed.

After fifteen minutes I went into Whit’s room to tuck him in.  We spoke briefly, I did the sweet dreams head rub and the Ghostie Dance, turned on his music, and left.  Then I went downstairs to Grace’s room.

I sensed as soon as I walked into her room that something was wrong.  I asked her if she was okay, and she insisted she was.  I gave her a hug, listened to her prayers (as always, a litany of “thank you for…” which inevitably brings tears to my eyes), and shut off the light.  As I was closing the door I watched her roll away towards the wall, and something tugged in my chest.  I knew she was upset, but I didn’t know why.  Sometimes I’m overcome by all the wordless input I receive from others, by the ways that I can sense the mood of another person.  This is simply what it’s like being porous.  There is nobody with whom this connection is stronger than Grace.

I went up to my desk and sat down, trying to shake it off.  I worry sometimes that I create incentive for her to have something wrong, when I do this, because it gives her attention when something is.

But I knew she was upset, and after a couple of minutes I crept back into her room.  She rolled towards the opening door in the dusky light, a smile on her face and a question in her eyes.  I lay down next to her and whispered, “please, please tell me what’s wrong.”

“I can’t stop thinking about when I die,” she began, defenses crumbling, all pretense of being ‘fine’ gone.  “I mean, will I spend a million years by myself staring into space?”

“Oh, Grace.”  I looked over at her.  “I don’t think you’ll be staring into space.  Remember, I’ll be there!  Think of all the people in Heaven that you can be with.”

“But what if I can’t find you?” Her voice rose and she hiccuped once.  We talked about reincarnation, and she said she thought that was a pretty cool idea.  “Is that what people mean when they call me an old soul?” she asked suddenly.  Yes, it is, I answered.

The conversation began to drift.  I am trying to remember that I don’t need to fix what she feels.  I can’t, anyway.  I listen to her, nodding, recalling the power of simply abiding with someone.  What can I do, after all?  Not die?  Of course, I will try.  But that’s not really in my control, after all; that much I know.

We talked about Grace’s best friend from camp, who is coming soon to visit.  The mood in the room lifted.  I gave her a hug, asked if she was ready for me to go.

Grace nodded.  “It’s amazing how fast things can shift, isn’t it?”  She murmured.

“It is.”  I smoothed her hair back from her forehead.  “It is.”  I kissed her on the cheek, pulled her covers up, and left the room.

As I pulled the door shut, she rolled towards the wall again.  It was precisely the same movement as the first time I left, but it felt entirely different.  I walked back to my desk and sat down again, just like before.  As I looked out the window at the night I thought about how sometimes all we need is a few minutes of someone really listening to us, sitting with us, witnessing us.

That is enough for everything to shift, for the world to tilt, for all to be well again.

Things you do when you are an adult

I am turning 39 this summer.  I have a 10 year old and an 8 year old.  I drive an SUV, own a house, have been married almost 13 years, and have a graduate degree.  It’s pretty hard to deny that I’m an adult.  I’m constantly surprised, however, by what it takes to make me feel like a grown up.

Some of the realization comes in the Big Moments.

This past summer I sat at the funeral of my last grandparent, and felt the ferris wheel hitch forward and the car I’m sitting in lurch closer to the top.  I have watched friends lose both parents and pregnancies.  I’ve seen the way illness and misfortune –  mostly in the shape of cancer, in my life – can strike suddenly, shockingly, and leave everyone who witnesses it reeling.

But, truthfully, a lot of the a-has happen in the Small Moments.

It is the night I went out to dinner with a friend and learned that her husband had forgotten the stickers with which her son was supposed to make Valentine’s for his class in Vermont.  It was February 13th.  We drove by my house on the way home and I ran upstairs to gather up all of our leftover stickers, and brought them down to her.

It is the ease with which I cook for my children now, and way I feel my own mother’s hands guiding my own as I move casually around the kitchen.

It is the quiet hum inside the car when Matt, Grace, Whit and I are driving, after dinner, to New Hampshire to ski with friends and I realize that everything I care about most in the world – everything I truly need – is in this darkened car.

It is reading the alumni magazines of my high school, college, and business school classes, and noticing what my peers are doing: CEOs and Congressmen and heads of departments at hospitals.  It is taking my daughter, with a broken collarbone, to see an orthopedist who is the younger brother of a friend from high school.

It is driving through Harvard Square on move-in day and wondering aloud to my husband that the college freshman are closer to our childrens’ age.  It is his baffled response: “That has been true for a while now, Linds.”

I suspect I’m not alone in this disbelief about my age.  Is it too scary, to accurately locate myself on life’s ferris wheel?  I write about that wheel all the time, about nearing the top, about how gorgeous the view is from here, about how I can see ahead and how quickly we’ll descend.  And I do believe that, and feel it – fervently, truthfully, often.  But at the same time I struggle to accept that I am actually almost 40.  I still think of my parents as 40; it was only five minutes ago that I ran around the back yard in a sundress while my handsome father, smiling under his brown mustache, gazed at his birthday windsurfer leaning against the wall of our house.  How can that be almost thirty years ago?

What is this about?  Is it stubborn denial?  Do we all still think of ourselves as 18?  The aches in my back, weakness in my knee, and wrinkles on my face all speak to my actual age.  As do the, you know, children.  And yet.  And still.  In my head I’m always eighteen, dancing in the late-day sun amid a swirl of magnolias with the women who knew me then and still know me best.

Do you feel like a grown-up?  Why or why not?

 

 

There is room for all of us

One afternoon last week Grace was telling me about a conversation she had with a friend about being competitive.  They were discussing the pros and cons of that trait, and, Grace said, she told her friend, “Well, my mother is not competitive at all.”  I was equally taken aback, I think, by the fact that she had noticed that and that she’d offered it in a conversation with a friend.

This is true.  It’s also surprising to a lot of people.  But it’s absolutely true.  I’ve written before about my disinclination towards competition when it comes to sports and games.  And that remains true of me; I’m a total nightmare to play tennis or a board game with, since I just can’t get myself worked up about winning.

But what’s on my mind lately is competitiveness more generally.  We have all encountered people whose view of the world is predicated on an assumption that their success is linked to our failure.  The world that these people live in is a zero-sum one, in which there is a set amount of success; if we do well, that lessens their chances to do so.  So they have to be dismayed at our success, much as they try to hide it, because they fret it endangers their own.

I simply do not believe this.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me, as I get older, how firmly I believe that there is room for all of us.  Room for all of our success.  When a friend does well, that doesn’t mean I’m less likely to; in fact it enlarges the universe, and in no way detracts from me.  Success is not a zero-sum game.  It is the opposite.  I cannot adequately describe how deeply, and how fiercely, I believe this.

There is only one truly limited quantity in this life, one truly zero-sum thing, and that is our time.  I have written before about my belief that how we spend our time reflects what we value, shared my personal experience that drastically narrowing my life led to a startling, unexpected expansion.

That is simply not the case, in my opinion, with success.  This view allows me to entirely genuinely celebrate the accomplishments of friends and compatriots.  I do not feel lessened by their success.  I truly, honestly, do not.  There is room for all of us to blaze brightly, to shake the universe, to make our mark, to move people.

Once again, my ten year old daughter saw me better than I saw myself:  My mother is really not competitive.  And I’m not.