Month: June 2010

The stack

My stack is out of control. I am hoping that this holiday weekend affords some serious reading time. I am always fascinated by what other people read, so thought I’d share the titles that are piled on my bedside table right now. I think what people read is a very good snapshot of what it is that fascinates and moves them.

Our Town – Thornton Wilder
Little Bee – Chris Cleve
The Spectator Bird – Wallace Stegner
For the Time Being – Annie Dillard
Inventing the Truth: the Art and Craft of Memoir – William Zinsser
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller
The End of the Alphabet – C S Richardson
Half the Sky – Nicholas Kristof
Reviving Ophelia – Mary Pipher
Happiness – Thich Nhat Hahn
The Wishing Year – Noelle Oxenhandler
When Things Fall Apart – Pema Chodron
The Cloister Walk – Kathleen Norris
The Unfolding Now – A H Almaas

I’d love to know what you’re reading.

A reflection of what it is in this life you prize most highly

I have been thinking nonstop about Anne Lamott’s piece, about our true wealth being this moment, this hour, this day. As usual, she is basically the oracle to me, among my wisest and most impactful teachers. I agree with her initial assertion “that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder.” She herself says that this is not revolutionary, but in fact the basis for “almost all wisdom traditions.” She talks about “chances of lasting connection or amazement” and I think of Mary Oliver’s glorious line that often scrolls through my thoughts:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement

Let us all be less cynical, less negative, less judgmental.  Let us all have more wonder, more trust, more giving each other space to be human.  Let us all remember that almost everyone is really just doing the best they can.

What Anne’s essay has me thinking about today, though, is about the way we make time for that which we really value.  In fact, I think that if we each looked back over how we have spent the last day or week, we would see, in neon animation, a graph of what it is we really honor and think is important.  That’s what we make time for.  Most often, this happens instinctively, without much forethought or analysis.  It simply is.  We just say yes to that which we care most about.  Other times, we have to actively, even fiercely guard the time for certain activities or people who are near to our hearts.

Let’s no longer hide behind the excuse that we “don’t have time.”  The truer response would be “I don’t care enough to really protect the time.”  Maybe this is harsh, but I think it’s also true.  Think long and hard about how you spend your precious hours, the only currency in this life that I personally think is actually worth anything.  And if you look carefully at these choices, you will see a reflection of what it is in this life you prize most highly.  Do you like what you see?

Our true wealth: this moment, this hour, this day

There is no way for me to adequately convey my admiration, respect – hell, sheer hero-worship of – for Anne Lamott. This essay could have been crafted from my own thoughts. Admittedly, she took my fractured, ugly, disjointed thoughts and fashioned them into beautiful whole cloth. But what else is new.

She also cites something I’ve long believed, which is that we make time for that which is really important.  If you can’t fit in it, that says something meaningful about how you value “it.”  And one thing I seem to have no problem protecting time for in my life is time alone, in solitude, thinking, writing, reading.

I urge you to read this whole piece. It’s worth it.

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I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief—and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.

This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity—cell phone, email, text, Twitter—steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success.

Needless to say, this is very distressing for my writing students. They start to explain that they have two kids at home, or five, a stable of horses or a hive of bees, and 40-hour workweeks. Or, on the other hand, sometimes they are climbing the walls with boredom, own nearly nothing, and are looking for work full-time, which is why they can’t make time now to pursue their hearts’ desires. They often add that as soon as they retire, or their last child moves out, or they move to the country, or to the city, or sell the horses, they will. They are absolutely sincere, and they are delusional.

I often remember the story from India of a beggar who sat outside a temple, begging for just enough every day to keep body and soul alive, until the temple elders convinced him to move across the street and sit under a tree. Years of begging and bare subsistence followed until he died. The temple elders decided to bury him beneath his cherished tree, where, after shoveling away a couple of feet of earth, they found a stash of gold coins that he had unknowingly sat on, all those hand-to-mouth years.

You already have the gold coins beneath you, of presence, creativity, intimacy, time for wonder, and nature, and life. Oh, yeah, you say? And where would those rascally coins be?

This is what I say: First of all, no one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book.

If they have to get up early for work and can’t stay up late, I ask them if they are willing NOT to do one thing every day, that otherwise they were going to try and cram into their schedule.

They may explain that they have to go to the gym four days a week or they get crazy, to which I reply that that’s fine—no one else really cares if anyone else finally starts to write or volunteers with marine mammals. But how can they not care and let life slip away? Can’t they give up the gym once a week and buy two hours’ worth of fresh, delectable moments? (Here they glance at my butt.)

Can they commit to meeting one close friend for two hours every week, in bookstores, to compare notes? Or at an Audubon sanctuary? Or a winery?

They look at me bitterly now—they don’t think I understand. But I do—I know how addictive busyness and mania are. But I ask them whether, if their children grow up to become adults who spend this one precious life in a spin of multitasking, stress, and achievement, and then work out four times a week, will they be pleased that their kids also pursued this kind of whirlwind life?

If not, if they want much more for their kids, lives well spent in hard work and savoring all that is lovely, why are they living this manic way?

I ask them, is there a eucalyptus grove at the end of their street, or a new exhibit at the art museum? An upcoming minus tide at the beach where the agates and tidepools are, or a great poet coming to the library soon? A pond where you can see so many turtles? A journal to fill?

If so, what manic or compulsive hours will they give up in trade for the equivalent time to write, or meander? Time is not free—that’s why it’s so precious and worth fighting for.

Will they give me one hour of housecleaning in exchange for the poetry reading? Or wash the car just one time a month, for the turtles? No? I understand. But at 80, will they be proud that they spent their lives keeping their houses cleaner than anyone else in the family did, except for mad Aunt Beth, who had the vapors? Or that they kept their car polished to a high sheen that made the neighbors quiver with jealousy? Or worked their fingers to the bone providing a high quality of life, but maybe accidentally forgot to be deeply and truly present for their kids, and now their grandchildren?

I think it’s going to hurt. What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

The only person

What is authenticity? What is the truest expression of self? What do I really want? Who am I, at my deepest core?

It’s awfully easy to lose sight of these things, at least for me, in a world where I feel the competing pressures of dozens of responsibilities and identities every single day. I’m a complicated person to begin with, I think, and that’s exacerbated by and refracted through the all the demands on and expectations of me.

Well, isn’t who we are what we do? I don’t personally think it’s that simple. I’ve written before about how an adult life can often hem us in, how responsibilities curtail our ability to purely express the deepest desires of our heart. And after all, we soon forget what it is our young heart, not yet dented and bruised by life’s hurts, truly wanted.

All of this results, for me, in a swampy morass in which I know a few things for absolute certain but am mixed up and confused about most everything else. I’ve realized that the expectation of a single clear answer or one ringing bell of simple truth is an utter fallacy, a crutch, an immature belief that is far from the reality that there are just more questions beyond the questions.

Still, there are a few signposts. I think that it’s useful to think back to before our lives were complicated by all of these midlife demands, to when we were able to follow our hearts in a more unfettered way. I was reminded of this this weekend when my dearest friend from college said to me, upon hearing my latest news, “You are doing what you always dreamed of doing, Linds. You always wanted to write.” I confess I was surprised to hear it put so baldly; I always knew that writing mattered deeply to me, but I honestly don’t remember being so plain, openly, that it was my fondest dream.

I also think of the many times, over and over, when I chose solitude or introversion. This is just one place where I’ve been challenged before about the authenticity of how I represent myself, but when I reflect on the choices I’ve made, they show the truth I know about my instincts. I chose to live alone all but one of the years at college that I could choose. I also lived alone when I graduated, in a city away from almost all of my friends. I chose to write my thesis in a small and quiet carrel on the nerd-central floor of the library (with a beloved – and studious friend) not in the social group carrels downstairs. I never played team sports, choosing instead to run cross country, which I imagine must be the most isolated and singular sport of all. I return now, circuitously and slowly, but surely, to that most individual and lonesome task and dream of all: to write.

I do know myself, despite all of the murky facts, the input from the world, the mixed-up advice I’ve received. Confused, contradictory, complicated. Yes. But I am me, and I know it.

I am the only person who can tell the story of my life and say what it means. – Dorothy Allison

This post is part of Dian Reid’s Self-Evidence & Authenticity Challenge. Thank you, Dian, for being an inspiration and an example.

Saying yes

Grace, Whit and I went to Story Land for two days. We explored the park, leaving no ride, show, or exhibit untested. We stayed in a hotel. We swam. We went out for dinner. We had whipped cream on our waffles this morning. More about this magical visit another day. But I learned one simple thing:

For two days I said yes instead of no. And it was delightful.