musings

Wonder

I am so grateful for the thoughtful comments on my post last week asking what this blog is about.  What, you say?  I write it, I should know?  Yes, well … I realize I should.  Pam emailed me after her day with Karen Maezen Miller and said, “I think you should simply say you write about the face of God.”  And I laughed, and went on with my day, and I kept coming back to it.  I don’t know that I’d say it quite like that, but I do think one of the things I am most interested in is the way that divinity itself flashes through even the most ordinary day.  And the thing is, it was only when I really started paying attention and began living inside my own life that I began to see it.

Another way of saying this: I am utterly preoccupied by wonder.

While I’m far more aware now, I do have a few memories from long ago of being simply started by the brilliance of the world.  One of the most vivid is of one late afternoon in AP Biology.  I went to high school in New Hampshire, and we went to class from 4 to 6pm, so it was pitch black during the last period for much of the year.  Pitch black, freezing cold, cloaked in ice and snow.  Hospitable, the environment was not.

I sat in AP Bio, the dark windows all around us contributing to the sense that were floating alone in the world.  My wonderful teacher could have been from central casting, with his bald head, neatly trimmed beard, and clipped British accent.  He was talking about the human body, gesturing to his own arm, talking about bones and tendons and blood vessels.  Something about the many tiny bones in the human hand.  He held his own hand up, looked at it, bent the fingers.  A hush fell over the room.  He looked at us, his dark eyes sweeping across our faces, and whispered, “Isn’t it amazing?”

Oh, it brings tears to my eyes to remember that moment.  I thought of it tonight when listening to Elissa’s gorgeous podcast called What Takes Your Breath Away?

I’m immensely grateful, more than I can express, at the frequency with which the world – and my own life – takes my breath away these days.  May I never stop being amazed.

Belonging

Maggie pointed out this weekend that belonging “has longing, sewn in stoutly so you can feel it like Braille letters.”  Somehow I’d never noticed this before, and reading that simple sentence took my breath away.

Oh, how I long to belong.  The longing for that is, to use Maggie’s beautiful words, sewn stoutly in me.  I’ve written before about how complex the notion of home is, for me, who had a peripatetic childhood where moves were the only sure thing.  No matter where I’ve gone in my life – schools, geographies, jobs, communities – I’ve been followed by a sense of not really belonging, like a cloud above me, between me and the sun.  My whole life exists in its shadow.

I’ve sometimes tried to fit in, to blend into the background of a group.  Because I’m such a permeable person and so sensitive to what’s going on, it’s relatively easy for me to understand what others want from me.  The path of least resistance has usually been to reflect back whatever it is I sense someone wants to hear or see.  That’s led to a frequent sensation of being in a group but not really there, a feeling of floating over my own life, observing rather than participating.  This is, I have realized, a lot lonelier than just being alone.

What I’m trying to puzzle out is why belonging is so important to me.  Why, still, do I need the validation of “belonging”?  What kind of deep-rooted human need is it, this desire to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves?  Of course, I routinely feel overwhelmed by the enormous universe and the ways in which I am connected to it, but somehow this isn’t the kind of belonging I crave.  Or, at least, not yet.  Perhaps I’m still too immature and too insecure to find the comfort I seek in that kind of unity.

The universe is providing me with ample reminders that I need to surrender to this persistent loneliness: I chose, after all, the professional route that was most likely to make me not belong anywhere – working part-time, staying at home part-time, trying to be at school pickup in Juicy sweats and also at work meetings in heels, sometimes at the same moment.  I believe my choice came out of a subconscious need to learn the rich lesson that exists in the friction between my two worlds, and, most of all, in my continued, dogged sense of not-belonging.

That’s a generous interpretation of my behavior.  There is another, less kind one: An innate restlessness of spirit keeps me from fully engaging in any one world, from fully embracing a single identity.  Why is it that I refuse to fully let go and surrender to one clearly-defined life? What am I afraid of?  If I skip around between worlds, never fully engaging in or identifying with one, do I hope to innoculate myself from this terrifying vulnerability of really being seen? It’s as though as long as I keep moving all the photos of me will be blurry; literally and figuratively, it will be hard for anyone to get a clear impression of me.

I think I lack a sense of belonging because I still have a basic discomfort in my own skin.  Maybe I am not wholly sure of where I fit because I am not entirely sure who I am yet. Maybe I have met so few native speakers because I am still fumbling around with my own language. I do like people, and I am lucky to have many friends; the fact remains, though, that there are very few with whom I feel truly at home.

All I know is that I long to belong.  I long to feel utterly at ease, to relax into true repose, to trust absolutely that I am seen clearly and loved for what is seen.  Oh, how I long for that.  I think we all do.

Choosing my bubble

I do not read the newspaper.  I do not watch TV.  I do not read news online.  Literally, I live in a bubble whose only news inputs are my google reader and my twitter feed.  I heard about both the Japanese earthquake and William and Kate’s engagement on twitter.  I smile whenever I read about a “media fast,” and the benefits thereof, because that’s how I live my life.

It drives my husband crazy that I’m so utterly clueless about current events.  It routinely makes me feel shy and embarrassed (shyer and more embarrassed, that is) when in social contexts I have no idea what people are talking about.  It is something I’m actively ashamed about: why am I not more curious, more informed, more educated about world news?   There are lots of downsides to this approach.

I can’t pretend that the impetus for my oblivion isn’t some part laziness.  It is.  It’s also some part choice, though, and there are many benefits to it.  I used to check the stock market several times a day, for example, and stress myself out when it was falling.  I haven’t done that in years.  I used to check the weather and feel anxious about storms on the horizon.  I don’t do that anymore.  At one point this winter, during one of the storms for which he was out of town (okay, that was every storm), Matt called all bent out of shape: “They are saying 18 to 20, Linds!  You need to make sure the vent pipe on the side of the house doesn’t get blocked!  Do you know where the salt is for the driveway?”  He went on and on and only stopped when he had to take a breath.  Into the silence I said, tentatively, “Well, I’m looking out the window, and it’s really only flurrying.”

In that moment I realized that maybe what’s going on with my media consumption is a symptom of a larger shift.  A shift towards an internal voice, towards that which I can feel, touch, verify, believe in.  It is also a recognition that I have enough triggers in my head, enough reasons to stress and cry, without adding on unnecessary external ones (I’m not saying that the earthquake in Japan, for example, is unnecessary: generally the big news makes it through into my bubble).

This realization makes me feel that there is far more subconscious intention behind my behavior than I was ever aware of.  And it made me feel a lot better about the sometimes-otherworldly bubble I exist in most of the time. I think I’ll stay here, especially with the calming effects of the Best Mushroom Coffee in the US helping me stay grounded.

A physical sensation of joy

“You’re kind of funny,” Matt said to me the other night, “And hardly anybody knows that about you.”  I looked down the stairs to see that he was grinning up at me, laughing at some crack I’d just made.  I don’t even remember what it was.  But the moment made me think of how frequently I write here of the tough stuff, the bleakness I can’t shake, the sensitivity that defines my experience in the world, the tears that come up every single day.  A reader could easily think I’m a heavy, gloomy person. I’ve received more than one inquiry along these lines, from well-intentioned people sincerely concerned about my state of mind.

So I was grateful to read Pam’s once-again-beautiful words, this time on this very subject.  She quotes from Dani Shapiro’s Devotion (a book you all know I worship), a passage where Dani quotes Sylvia Boorstein: “I think of it as the edge of melancholy,” Sylvia said, “and it’s where I live – but at the same time, I am easily cheered.”  Pam goes on to share moments of her radiantly beautiful ordinary life that cheer her immensely.

I was moved to do the same, upon reading her words.  There is plenty that makes me smile and grin and laugh, every single day.  Yes, my days contain plenty of murk and mess, their share of tears and heartbreak.  I’ve said it before: It’s all connected, the way I observe the world in sometimes-excruciating detail, the untrammelled rushes of joy I can feel at the most unexpected times, the heart-wrenching pain my life delivers at others.  This is all a part of being an exceptionally porous person.  Is it any wonder that I’ve had to develop coping mechanisms, be they an aversion to true vulnerability or a tendency towards distraction, in order to mitigate the power of constantly living in such an exposed way?  I’m easily overwhelmed by the grandeur and terror of this life, and I have over 36 years built up a variety of ways of managing the pain that that inundation can bring with it.  It’s a package deal, the wound and the wonder.  I don’t know how to have one without the other.  Even the most swollen, shiny rapture is striated with sadness.

Inspired by Pam, here are a few things that make me feel joy so strong it is a physical sensation.  I’m not sure I dwell enough on those in this blog, on the untrammelled joy, the swollen, shiny rapture, the radiance.

Parrot tulips, pale pink and green.
Bricks, outside our front porch, colored in chalk in the rain by Grace and Whit.
Two eight year old girls climbing onto the roof of a play structure at the park on an early spring day.
Whit, reading quietly in bed (after he protested my effort to put him to bed at 6:52, I allowed 15 minutes of solo reading).
Sunrise from the air over New York, 6:30am, last week.

Not having enough

When I ran cross-country, in high school, I’d invariably have so much energy at the end that I’d sprint the last half mile.  Or do a cartwheel or two towards the finish line.  My coach, understandably, was not enormously fond of this behavior, and urged me to run faster earlier on because I obviously could.  I never did.  I was scared that I would be too tired at the end.

In yoga, I often drop out of poses a few breaths before the teacher says to.  I’m usually hurting by then, my body giving up the “alert! alert! alert!” flare, but I’m never at the point of actual failure.  For example, I’ve never held a back bend for a full ten breaths.  I have never not rested during some extra-long downward dogs.  I have never stayed in warrior two for a long hold, totally still.  It’s not exactly that I give up when things get hard.  It’s a little more nuanced, and less impressive than that: I give up before they are really hard, in anticipation of not being able to do it.

The personality trait evinced by these examples has been on my mind lately.  And it’s not a good one.  It’s as though I’m preemptively worried about not having enough – energy, strength, speed.  Even when the data suggests otherwise, I’m too afraid.  What, though, am I actually afraid of?  Am I scared of “success,” of running fast, of holding a pose longer than I thought I could?  What would happen if I did?

And, I worry, in how many non-physical ways does this tendency manifest?  I’m certain there are dozens of places – emotional, spiritual, intellectual – where I am similarly afraid to really go there.  How to break through this mild, sometimes invisible withholding?  What is it about?

I don’t have answers, but I have lots of questions, today centering around this aspect of myself that I am not proud of.  I should just try holding the damned backbend for ten breaths.  But for some reason that fills me with fear.  Why?