WHY CO-EXISTING IS A DRAG

Have you ever seen one of those bumper stickers that say “Co-Exist”?  They are usually on the back of a Prius, or maybe a Westfalia van?  Sure you have, and like me, maybe you made some snap judgments about the sort of person who has such a thing affixed to their bumper, those hippie tree-huggers.  “Co-Exist” they smugly suggest, like when they say you should be eating more kale.  Like this is some easy feat.  Not only is it not easy, it can also be a total drag, IMHO.  Eating kale and co-existing, I mean.

The fact of the matter is that simply existing has been taking a lot out of me recently.  Putting one foot in front of the other has seemed Herculean; never mind walking and chewing gum at the same time.  I find myself wandering from task to task with the sort of ambling hopelessness of a shipwreck survivor; while I’ve somehow managed to not drown, supplies are dwindling and morale is low.  What little I have left of either, I’m in no mood to share. Co-exist, indeed!

Having been backed into the corner by the infamous “circumstances beyond my control”, I crouch here recognizing that many people live their whole lives this way.  Withdrawn into a place of self-protection and energy conservation, the mere act of existence takes all of their cunning.  They have no stamina or space to consider “the other guy”.  As I know (hope!) that I am living here as a temporary accommodation, I realize it is important that I take note of how it feels, so that when I encounter someone who lives here all the time, I will remember to have compassion for them.

Ah, compassion!…co-exist’s prettier and more palatable sister…we all like the idea of compassion because (ironically) it makes us feel good about ourselves.  Oh, it does, don’t deny it!  We LOVE situations where we can easily flaunt our compassion and we also will tolerate situations where we are able to extend it somewhat less graciously.  When we can’t feel compassion, however, we still need to somehow co-exist.  Without rancor, if possible; with it, if not.

I think we all accept, at least on an intellectual level, that we never know the whole story about what another person has lived or is living and how that drives those behaviors we don’t understand.  Obviously we are currently in the midst of a political environment where the vast majority of us are utterly dumbfounded by the other side, whichever it may be.  It is clear at this point that there will be no reconciliation, only co-existing.  Hard work!

Even people with whom we agree can be hard to co-exist with…ask anyone who has lived with a roommate.  In marriages, in work relationships, in families and extended families…the need for healthy balance, give and take and mutual respect means that the whole concept of co-existing is somewhat laughably naïve.  Successful relationships of all kinds require effort and frequent checking in to make sure the playing field stays as level as possible.  Bumper sticker wisdom be damned, maintaining any level of healthy intimacy is also hard work.

For me, one hugely difficult aspect of co-existing has always been watching people I care about undermining themselves by taking on unhealthy or unsustainable situations then fighting like hell to sustain them.  Or not taking care of their bodies and their health, in spite of living with discomfort and other alarming red flags.  Or spending so much time and energy building a case for why they can’t do this or that that if they had re-directed that time and energy, this and that would already be done.  How easy is it to co-exist with people who act victimized by their own choices?  Not very!

Because when people we love make obviously bad decisions and then complain about the negative consequences of their bad decisions, it is hard to feel compassion for them, right?  And we enjoy feeling compassionate, it makes us feel like we are good people, right?  So the question becomes are we more upset by the fact that they are authoring their own unhappy story, or by the fact that they are making us feel like we are not good people? 

No, seriously, I’m asking you.

I recently had the following comment left on something that I wrote:  “You seem like you’re very self-absorbed”.  Um, duh.  We are all self-absorbed; this is why co-existing is such a drag.   We are absorbed in our own reactions, feelings and intellect, and this makes it challenging for us to ever truly put ourselves in the other guy’s shoes.  However, in our self-absorption and meticulous cataloguing of our own experiences, we learn compassion for people we can relate to; but we also tend to avoid people we cannot relate to, and therefore avoid the uncomfortable growing pains of trying to understand where they are coming from.

The older I get, the more I realize that merely co-existing will not be enough.  Like Dr. Suess’s Star-Bellied Sneetches, we fail to recognize that we are ALL Sneetches and at the end of the day our attempts to separate out the people or groups that we feel threatened by or don’t understand is as much folly as the Sneetches bankrupting themselves by trying to maintain their status as “special”.   We are all “special”, and this may be the greatest reason of all why co-existing is a drag.  We are each having an entirely unique experience in this life, and we yearn to somehow share this experience with others; when our attempts to share ourselves get criticized or shut down (“You seem like you’re very self-absorbed”) we tend to withdraw.

And how about when the way we were born (our race, our sex, our sexual orientation) or how we were raised (our religion, our education, our culture) gets criticized?  How does it feel to be criticized for those infamous “circumstances beyond our control”?  We need to do better than to co-exist.   We need to recognize the plain reality that some of us were born with stars on our bellies and some were not, but there will be no peace until we stop attacking each other for our differences.

CO-EXISTING is the greatest challenge of the human condition, and the most important one!  And while fences (healthy boundaries) make “good neighbors”, we cannot build walls to keep each other out.  There will always be another con-man who is happy to profit from our foolishness, our divisiveness, our fear.  But no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that “the other guy” is the problem, inevitably we must realize that it is our need to have others conform their lives and behaviors to our expectations that is the real problem.  That is the bald truth, and why co-existing is such a drag.

When we recognize that 95% of the time it is our reaction (and not “the other guy’s” inciting behavior) that is the problem, we face the reality that peace on earth really does "begin with me".  Only when we are peaceful with ourselves can we co-exist with others gracefully.  So this is the hardest work of all!  Co-exist with every aspect of yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly peacefully and see how dramatically the world seems to change.  Total drag, but it’s the only way—you must be the change you want to see. 

Btw, Ghandi never said that, sorry.  Oh, and eat more kale.  Sorry about that, too.

 

 

Why I Like Being Uncomfortable

Yeah, no I don’t.  I don’t “like” being uncomfortable any more than you do.  If “discomfort” had Facebook page, I would only hit the “sad” and “angry” buttons for its posts.  Oh, and maybe the occasional “wow” when discomfort had really abused the privilege of being uncomfortable.  So what am I trying to say here?

I’m saying that unfortunately the expression “step outside of your comfort zone” is sound advice; actually, not only sound, but wise.  It’s something we should all be striving to do all of the time, damn the luck!  But most of us face the prospect of being uncomfortable with the same level of enthusiasm we have for getting out of a warm bed on a cold day.  That is to say, low-to-none.

We may think that “stepping outside of our comfort zones” involves some kind of physical or financial risk—trying a daredevil activity or “spending money to make money”.  While these are legit ways to stretch your parameters if they are available to you, the really important work of being uncomfortable is much more personal and intimate.  And much braver, too—the truth is often not only inconvenient, but horribly uncomfortable.

We all understand theoretically that the ultimate goal of stepping into discomfort is an expanded consciousness about what is comfortable.  We have so many arenas in life where fear is running the show; yes, we often have fears about money and personal safety, but we also have fears about emotional intimacy and self-advocacy.  In fact, standing up for ourselves is the thing that probably makes the majority of us the most uncomfortable of all; asking for help is another “uncomfortable” position for many, many people.

Emotional intimacy has always been a huge can of worms; now it has been made so much worse by the false intimacy the internet presents.  To feel secure in vulnerability in your closest relationships is a challenge; we all fear being mocked, misunderstood or betrayed by the people we have opened ourselves up to.  Now, in this era of what I will call “safe oversharing”, we see people all alone with their devices dumping their anger, frustration and loneliness onto their unsuspecting followers/”friends” for attention; if the sort of attention they receive is not to their liking?  Block/Mute/Unfollow/Unfriend!  This is false intimacy because it is actually just an exercise in control.

We cannot conduct healthy, thriving relationships from “a safe distance”; the screens that seem to bring us closer together are actually shutting us off from the deeper treasures of real bonding.  We are using them as shields to deflect this gnawing anxiety we have about both being alone and being together.  The paradox of the 21^st century. 

The University of Virginia did a study a few years back that concluded, in part, that most people would rather receive an electrical shock than be alone with their thoughts.  Yes, you read that right.  So this obviously begs the question:  what are we thinking about that is making us so damned uncomfortable?  It seems to me that that if we would rather face a painful shock than our inner selves, there is a serious problem afoot.

Now, I have a confession that I believe that many of my fellow artists and writers will relate to:   I am more comfortable being alone with my thoughts than perhaps anywhere else in the world.  Being alone with my thoughts is my “happy place”.  My thoughts are my friends; it’s the damned outside world that is interfering with my comfort zone.

That is why I started putting my thoughts out into the world.  Scariest thing I have done in my life, too.  The fear of rejection; but for me, more importantly, the fear of ridicule.  The fear of being told my thoughts are “wrong”.  And yes, it happened.  Everything I feared.

You know what?  It was terrible at first, bordering on excruciating.  And I won’t pretend there are never occasions anymore when it is not.  But ultimately, do you know what challenging my comfort zone brought me?  More bravery.  A lot, lot, lot more, in truth. And more comfort!  An expanded sense of what is comfortable.

Look, like most people, I frequently find life exhausting.  I often find people I love challenging.  Sometimes everything, including “fun” and “love”, feels like “too much effort”.  Does that sound even a bit familiar to you? 

Now we face our chicken-and-egg:  the reason we are so exhausted is because we hate the idea of being uncomfortable SO MUCH that virtually anything is preferable.  And how are we “avoiding” discomfort?  Yes, we soothe ourselves with that false intimacy of the internet, but way too many of us are walking on eggshells and in other ways being inauthentic with the people in our lives because we believe it will be “easier” than being honest and open.

So how’s that working?

We need to pull our heads out of our smartphones and get real with ourselves about happiness.  Frequently (usually) there is some barrier between us and what we think will make us happy, but we aren’t willing to challenge that barrier because we’re a) exhausted, b) it would be difficult and c) too much effort; RIGHT?  So we settle in our comfort zones and call that happiness.

But there is a greater happiness on the other side of the barrier—somewhere over the rainbow—a greater happiness in expanding our comfort zones so much that we actually welcome discomfort as a messenger and friend.  Our discomfort tells us that there is more here than meets the eye and we should dig in.  When we are willing to be uncomfortable, we are willing to GROW.

We are like houseplants, most of us, in a pot we have outgrown; but the stress, hassle and FEAR of repotting stops us in our tracks.  You need room to breathe and expand and ironically that room can be found inside yourself.  Step away from your devices every day and check in with how you are feeling.  Don’t sedate discomfort with another game, another text or another glass of wine; ask it what it is trying to tell you and be willing to learn.

Oh, the places you’ll go!

 

 

WHY REGRETS ARE FOR FOOLS

Years ago I wrote a story in which the elderly matriarch, an unapologetic control freak with sass to spare, told her husband, “Regrets are for fools”.  In context, there was irony in that statement; I guess I was too young at the time to realize the bald truth of such a line.  Regrets ARE for fools, and not because we don’t all do things we wish we hadn’t.  Regrets are for fools because they steal from the past to rob our present of peace.

Whenever we are facing challenges—or even if we just have an isolated negative experience—it is human nature to start flipping through the card catalogue in our minds looking for a helpful point of reference.  Have I, or anyone else I know, ever been through something similar?  What remedies, if any, were involved?  How long did the challenges or negative consequences linger?  We do this to help ourselves put things in perspective, which is healthy; what is NOT healthy is when this exploration of the past begins to devolve into woulda-coulda-shoulda.

I recently had a car accident that was an “accident” in the purest sense of the word because if any one thing in my day had gone slightly differently, it never would have happened.  The unfortunate precision of a split second in the wrong place at the wrong time precipitating chaotic results.  A crazy-making event to be sure, as my fervent (and pointless) wishes that I could go back in time and do it differently were waking me up at night.

I had a dear friend for many years who made a standard joke about these sorts of situations; she would always say that “short of becoming Superman and turning the world backwards on its axis, there is nothing you can do about it”, which both true and funny.  It’s also a great way to stop that looped conversation in your head about how you definitely should NOT have gone for ice cream on the way home by recapping the insanity of such regret.   We all wish we could be Superman, of course; but in these contained situations he is a good reminder that as humans we do not have the power to save Lois Lane from the earthquake.

This analogy becomes a little harder to both swallow and apply when we are dealing with big-picture life-path regrets—from the pursuit of a dream that never came true, to “failed” relationships, to lost jobs---now we are no longer looking at an isolated situation that could have been “fixed” by a different decision.  Now we are looking at a whole mountain of regrets and missed red flags and self-immolation for wasting our time, love and energy.

Most of us have had the experience of watching a loved one “go astray” in life—the anguish of seeing them chase a situation or relationship that to us has the most obvious neon, blinking DON’T WALK sign hanging over it.  But more often than not the situation is more subtle and nuanced than that…For many years I said that I had never been surprised by a divorce; not that I necessarily saw the relationships as “doomed”, but rather that I recognized the fractures that had the potential to rupture.  Yes, I said that many times over until it actually happened:  I was surprised by a divorce.  So surprised, in fact, that I grieved it as if it were my own.

But it taught me something very valuable:  no matter how smart, sensitive, honest and in tune we are, we can only operate on the information that we currently have.  Another friend of mine who went through an entirely less surprising divorce said something very wise about it…we are all doing the best that we can with the information that we have in the present.  For every “red flag” we may have overlooked (or deliberately ignored), there were a million other pieces of the puzzle that were influencing us in some way.  And given the entirety of the picture, we made the best decision we were capable of; hence—regrets are for fools.

As a woman now firmly ensconced in middle age—life more than halfway through, quite officially over-the-hill---I am facing some fairly big decisions about how I frame those roads I travelled that seemed to lead nowhere and the companions I have lost and am losing along the way.  Of course the easiest, most human response is to call myself a fool for chasing the unattainable, loving some who did not recognize my value and trusting those who could not respect that sacred bond.  And I have been a fool on occasion, with no doubt.  While people who genuinely care for me tried to point out the giant, blinking DON’T WALK SIGN above my head.

But much more often than that I have been brave. 

Brave to try things I wasn’t sure would work, brave to go places that were not familiar to me, brave to love people who were wounded and unable to reciprocate.  Brave to say “I can do better” and “That was my fault”;  brave to admit, “I gave it my best” and “I did what I thought was right.”  Brave to face myself every day and say, “Today we will have another go at this thing called life”, in spite of heartache, exhaustion, loss and grief.  In spite of insecurity and fear.

My Father used to say, “Every day is a good day” and this is the epic truth.  The day you fail is a good day; the day you lose is a good day; the day your heart breaks is a good day.  Because you are still here and doing the best you can with the information you have.  Every day we have a new shot at this thing called life.  Don’t let regret rob you of another second of it. 

When I had that accident I thought—if I had done one thing differently this horrible event would never have been—but with life, just the opposite is true.  If you had done one thing differently you might have lost your most valuable experiences, your most important lessons, your most profound relationships.  So love all of it and all of you with no regrets.

Why When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Over It

A story my Mom loves to tell on my older sister is that when she was a teenager and did something that made my parents angry (kind of her M.O. at the time, frankly), her response to my Mother’s admonitions was always, “You’ll get over it.”  OOOh, SASSY!  And BRAVE!  Let me advise you that my Mom was not much of one for backtalk when we were kids.  Still isn’t, come to think of it.

Of course my sister was right; as a parent, your “getting over it” skills become madly honed as you recover from your children’s misbehaviors and mishaps alike.  I’m thinking of the time my son shattered a beloved Christmas ornament on the kitchen floor.  And the time he somehow got ahold of the title for our car and went at it with his safety scissors.  Or the time he ruined our 10^th anniversary trip by giving us both the most virulent stomach bug in the history of mankind the night before we left (turns out you can puke your guts out in fancy hotel bathrooms as well as anywhere!).

But you get over it.  What are the other options?  And as years pass you “get over it” quicker and quicker because you come to realize that NOT getting over it is a fool’s game.  It’s like contracting a horrible stomach bug and then actively CHOOSING not to recover.

I have recently been going through a very tough time—a lot of proverbial sh*t hit the proverbial fan at once—and I became so overwhelmed by negative input that I sank into a real depression for the first time in a decade.  So many situations were at crisis level at once, I couldn’t think of which way to turn.  Like the little boy with his finger in the dam watching hundreds of other leaks pop, I was in full-on panic mode.

William Shakespeare wrote, “Cowards die many times before their deaths” and I very much related to this as my panic spun out of control…not only was I worrying about all of the bad things that were ACTUALLY happening, my mind was inventing a lot of worst case scenario outcomes that would wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.  I felt neither brave nor well-equipped to handle all the things coming my way, both real and imagined.

I spent a few weeks “dying many times”.  I really don’t recommend it.

I even had a dream one night that I went to a big, dress-up event except when I showed up no one was there and when I tried to leave I realized my fancy clothes had (ala Cinderella) changed to rags and then my driver left without me, but took my purse and phone.  And left behind, dressed in rags with no money or mode of communication, I decided that my best option was to wander into the woods and disappear forever.

The universe was not being particularly helpful, either; after the initial wicked punches, it started delivering a series of VERY painful pinches to the point where I started vocalizing a belief that I have been somehow hexed.  Like in that “Brady Bunch” episode when Bobby finds the tiki idol and they start having a terrible run of bad luck, most memorably the tarantula on Peter’s chest.  But then something funny happened.

RIGHT AFTER I made the Brady Bunch comparison, my husband walked in the house from work one day with---you guessed it!---a GIANT wolf spider crawling on his chest.  After we disposed of the INCREDIBLY ENORMOUS arachnid, I’ll admit I had to laugh.  For something with such atrocious timing, the universe sure does have a good sense of humor.

This humorous out-picturing of my facetious fear (I am under a curse!) made me remember—fearing it is living it.  When we are fixated on what we FEAR will happen, we are essentially giving ourselves the experience of having it happen.  This is why “cowards die many times before their deaths”.

So I decided it was time, as my sister would suggest, for me to “get over it”.

Even though nothing has changed; even though nothing is “fixed”.  Even though there are no answers; even though the future right now looks bleak and uncertain at best.  Time to get over it or keep dying those many deaths.  Not much of a choice there.

Also:  when bad things happen, especially so many at once, there is the immediate response of “shock and awe”—how can this be?  Where am I to go?  What am I to do?  But after this very understandable phase passes, while we rarely have any concrete answers we do have a sense of those bedrocks in life:  family, friends, health, your sense of self.  Family and true friends tend to show up in force when the going gets tough; the security of being at home in your body and mind is no longer taken for granted.

We embrace the “real” and begin to parse out what is less important; priorities slowly begin to emerge and you take stock in all you have already survived in this life.  We humans are built for survival, after all.  Wired for it, actually.  So even though we need to allow ourselves time to process loss, trauma and pain, ultimately we are destined to rise again, like the phoenix from the ashes.  Our fears may cause us to die many deaths, but resurrection is inevitable.

Shakespeare also wrote, “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”  Today I am over it.  Tomorrow my fears may resurge and cause me to suffer, because I am a fool who plays this fool’s game.  But I will get over it again.  Quicker and quicker each time.  And next time I sure as hell won’t be bringing that tike idol home from the construction site, am I right???

 

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

I am just coming off of one of the worst weeks I have had in the last 7 years.  It literally felt like the universe had this great long TO-DO list of atrocity that it decided to dump into my “IN” box all at once.  And it wasn’t just me; several people I love were dealing with some serious loss and trauma as well.  So I am not writing this from a place of Zen, calm, knowing or assuredness.  I am writing from a shell-shocked place of fear, panic and pain.

There is only one time in my life before that I felt this frightened and unsure of what to do—when my son was a baby and he was going through some scary medical testing that took weeks for results.  It was like living in a perpetual earthquake; when will the world stop shaking and what kind of aftermath of destruction will I have to deal with when it does?  At that time, however, my “Mother Bear” instincts were in full force and fighting for my son was my only focus.  Things are different now.

Now the earthquake is threatening all of the structures in my life and to be perfectly honest it is the “flee” instinct that is kicking in.  I want to run away, hide; find a cave in the wilderness, go inside and roll a rock in front of it until everything is over.  I don’t want to be present for this.  I want to collapse into a heap and stay there until a magical solution to all of my problems drops down from the sky.  I feel incapable; I feel weak.

In spite of all of this, I took a road trip to the Philly area this weekend for a family wedding.  I am calling it a “family” wedding even though I am not related to the family involved; but they have been a constant in my life since the day I was born and were such an intrinsic and important part of my childhood that I feel much closer to them than some of the people who are genetic relations.  The matriarch and my Mother have known each other since grade school; her youngest daughter was my dearest, closest friend growing up and I spent more time in their house than probably any other but my own.

Shaken and out-of-sorts as I am, it was very moving to come together to celebrate this first marriage of the next generation.  Sitting in the church, seeing all of these people I love so much looking happy and healthy reminded me of all of the difficult times they had gone through, both individually and as a clan.  I remembered all of the bad things that have happened to these good people and wanted to weep at seeing everybody so well and celebrating an event so full of optimism for the future and joy.

I won’t pretend it made me feel better about my life in that moment; it did not.  But it did make me feel grateful and connected to grace in a way I hadn’t in many days.  On my way home from this beautiful event, I stopped to visit with another dear friend of many years.  She is the ultimate embodiment of the “Mother Bear” and fate has forced her down to the mat on her kids’ behalf ad naseum; like most parents, her greatest fear is always that the challenges her children face will somehow “ruin their lives”.  I am always quick to contradict her when she vocalizes these sorts of thoughts, even as I myself am wondering if my own life is going to ruin.

We went out to dinner with her son and daughter, both of whom I have known and loved since birth; she and I somehow got to reminiscing about my parents and the home my family lived in when she and I met.  In describing it to her children she said, “When you walked in the door, you felt the love.  You felt loved.”  Her daughter’s response was this:  “Well, I can believe that, because that’s how Aunt Kara’s house is now”.

Sometimes in life you have a moment that takes your breath away; this was such a moment.  I had been so caught up in my anxiety and fear and wretchedness that I had completely lost sight of myself and the premises upon which I have built my life.  It took this beautiful girl who I have known and loved for all 16 years of her life to remind me of a critical fact:  I am a good person.  And just because bad things are happening, I can’t let them change who I am.

Even the Bible offers no special protection to anyone trying to live a good life; in the book of Matthew it says that God “makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust”.  Same goes for earthquakes; the earth is shaking for me right now and will continue to shake for the foreseeable future.  But I cannot process this as a judgment; I cannot accept this as a final verdict on my soul.

Bad things happen to good people.  We all know this and understand it is a part of life.  I have no idea where I will be standing when the shaking stops, but I do know I will still be standing.  When I went through that scary time with my son I stood up because I had to; this time I will keep standing because I want to…I want to continue to love and work and become myself, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.  I want to commit to myself the same way I just watched two young people do with each other on a grand altar.

Just like them, I have no idea what comes next; but I know it won’t be the same as before and I won’t be the same as before.  Unlike them, I don’t feel excited or optimistic or full of plans.  I don’t even feel brave.  I just feel like a little kid who is waiting for the shaking to stop and wishing someone would pick me up and carry me until it does.  But I will not let the bad things convince me that I am bad, or life is bad.  I will wait for the shaking to stop and believe that maybe, just maybe, I can find treasure that was previously buried in the rubble.

 

Why Accidents Will Happen

I am a driver.  A road warrior.  I once drove from Rhode Island to DC to visit with a relative in the hospital then on to Wilmington, N.C. in one day with a 7 year old in tow.  Distances don’t faze me; heavy traffic is an annoyance, not a phobia.  The 95 corridor is my well-beaten path but my son and I have regularly taken other 6 to 10 hour drives on roads less travelled.  I have driven in Boston, New York City (and the boroughs) and drove the mean streets (and meaner highways) of L.A. for nine long years.

And I have never had an accident.  Or even been ticketed with a moving violation.  Until last weekend.

It was a routine, 6 hour trip from my Mom’s (once my grandparent’s) summer cottage (cottage too grand a word, so we refer to it as a “camp”) on Lake Ontario.  I have made this exact same trip every summer for the past 7 years with my son.  This year we were heading home to celebrate his 11^th birthday the next day.

I was tired from our week away and deliberately made several stops; gas, Costco, restrooms, even some ice cream for the almost-birthday boy.  We were about an hour and 15 minutes from home when it happened.  In a flash.  A flash that left me shaking uncontrollably while whispering, “Oh my God, I just had an accident” over and over.

Once the helpful and courteous police and paramedics had done their jobs and the most badly damaged car had been towed away, the kid and I were on the road again.  Seatbelts locked in the crash position, airbag light blinking (although no airbag deployed), glove compartment askew.  But most of all the surreal sense that life was changed, that I was changed, forever.  And not in a good way, either.

Once I got home and unloaded a week’s worth of luggage and laundry and treasures from the vehicle, the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s began in full force. 

If ONLY we had left 15 minutes earlier.  Or later.  If ONLY we hadn’t stopped for ice cream.  Or gone to Costco.  If only I had done just one little thing differently, I would not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and all of this chaos and destruction could have been avoided.  So many situations that if they had taken a few seconds less or more would have gotten my son and me out of harm’s way.  Instead, we found ourselves quite squarely the victims of a horrible machination of fate.

And I had never had an accident before.  After the hundreds of thousands of miles I had driven, NOW I realized the bizarre and statistically improbable glorious good luck of it.  How suddenly an accident happens, with no warning, in that flash; I had certainly experienced near-misses in the past and although I had appreciated those moments of grace, they had instantly been elevated to the miraculous. 

So many tiny things that can go wrong, so many tiny decisions that can influence a devastating impact (literally and figuratively)… “Hey, accidents happen”….those parting words from the State Trooper have taken on a mythic quality.

I have heard a lot of people say that the words “Everything happens for a reason” are an absolute punch in the stomach when grieving a loss, enduring an illness or recovering from a trauma, and I understand those feelings.  But I am the sort who does search for meaning in everything and I find comfort in doing that. 

The relative I visited in DC at the hospital on that marathon drive day was a young cousin of mine who would later succumb to her illness at just 27 years old, leaving a tiny daughter behind.  I was lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time with her when I was living in Charlottesville and she was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia; she and I were in many ways “birds of a feather”.  After her untimely death, a local newspaper printed a story about her called “The Meaning of Life”.

The article discussed, among other things, a video she had made for her father’s birthday with the same title.  A video depicting people from all demographics and walks of life that emphasized we are all “in this thing together”.   In my travels, this has always been a point that impresses me.  Highway service areas are such a fascinating cultural phenomenon, even more so than airports, because the road weary are so courteous to each other.  We hold doors open and make eye-contact and share “moments” because we have literally walked a mile in each other’s shoes that very day and want to show some kind of support.

At highway service (rest) areas we all know that the “other” has been driving too, at least long enough to require a break and probably a lot longer than that.  We are hungry, tired and need to pee.  We are “fellow travelers to the grave” as Dickens so poignantly put it, and we take comfort in each other and whatever niceties we can extend.  We are all “in this thing together” and for a moment we remember how a smile can make a difference.

I thought I had never had an accident before.  But then I had an accident and realized that (to paraphrase something Einstein may or may not have said) either all of life is an “accident” or all of life is NOT…in other words, I have either had millions of accidents or else every little thing about my life, every moment has impacted and built on others in deeply meaningful ways I may or may not ever fully comprehend. 

I am choosing to believe the latter.    I have always been in awe of people who face personal tragedy and trauma with courage and grace…they stand in such sharp contrast to those of us who allow ourselves to be undermined and overwhelmed by daily nuisances and inconveniences.  But now I understand:  to survive anything is to know grace.  When we are confronted with our fallibility, our vulnerability and our mortality in an undeniable way, it ironically makes us stronger.  And more humble.  Much, much more humble.

My “accident” has changed me forever; I realize above all that while every decision I make has some kind of influence on the world, I am not in charge or “in control”.  Accidents will happen.  In a split second, life will be changed.  We will lose people we love too soon. 

The best we can do is to consider that we are all "in this thing together”, as my wise young cousin put it, and make decisions that reflect that knowledge.  Like the butterfly that flaps its wings, we can never know how far-reaching our influence truly is…so we become ever mindful that “all for one and one for all” is the best approach. 

To everything, really.

 

WHY YOU SHOULD BUY THE RED DRESS

My Dad was a fan of the well-worn expression.  Also, the catchphrase.  And: the cliché.  He had so many sayings, slogans and mottos and he trotted them out on such a regular basis that he effectively brainwashed my siblings and I into “being all that we can be”!  No, actually, that wasn’t one he used.  Dad was more prone to tell us, “The good news is, life is a do-it-yourself project!  The bad news is, there may be an idiot in charge.”

I get a big kick out of the fact that whenever I hang with my brother’s children, inevitably at some point I will dish out one of our Dad’s golden oldies and be told with awe “My Dad says that too!”  This last visit I got to use “I SEE, said the blind man…but he didn’t see at all.”  It’s a classic.  And it applies to SO MUCH of the stuff that comes out of a kid’s mouth, am I right???

I have related before that my Father’s rallying cry was “This is it!  This is what you’ve been trained for!” and I have to admit it was subliminally very successful; my siblings and I all have a general “can do” attitude about most things.  Not a princess in the lot, and I’d say that was quite a parenting accomplishment when you consider that 3 out of 4 of us are girls.  But in spite of Pop’s desire to raise a prepared and practically competent brood, he also used to preach that when given the opportunity, we should “buy the red dress”.

He said it as often as anything, and we quote him on it whenever it is appropriate to the occasion…but I have to admit, of all of the madly effective conditioning my Father employed on us, this was the least successful for me.  It definitely worked for my siblings, but somehow my closet Puritan/miser would always manage to wrestle the red dress out of my hands while screaming, “HOW can you even CONSIDER buying that?  Don’t you want to EAT???”

Of course, in my poverty stricken, starving artist 20’s, that was actually a reasonable question.  But as time went on and the budget increased, my attitude did not keep pace.  “Buying the red dress” seemed frivolous to me…grandiose, almost.  Whatever the red-dress-of-the-moment, I could always quite easily talk myself into something less—or just as often, nothing at all.  I told myself I was emotionally healthy because I didn’t need “things” to make me happy.  I was a bit smug because I had never been bitten by the “retail therapy” bug.

As my life continued to grow and expand there was definitely the occasional splurge; but it never brought me much joy because I felt so guilty about it.  My husband and I had decided early on in our relationship to live without credit card debt, so everything we bought (apart from cars and houses) had to be subsidized by cash-on-hand.  We never purchased ANYTHING we could not pay for immediately, so I began to understand that my guilt was probably not the healthiest response; why was it so difficult to “treat” myself?

Then I had a significant exchange with my Dad in the last few months of his life; I had expressed contempt for a young starlet who had just spent $100,000 on a watch.  A WATCH, for crissake.  After I finished my rant about how the thing “better have the ability to stop time or at least make her breakfast!” my Dad very calmly reminded me that it was her money to do with as she pleased.  Cue my second rant, imploring that if she had an extra $100,000 lying around to spend on a watch, might she not have budgeted maybe only $50K for the watch and given the rest to a worthy charity?

My Dad countered—would I be okay with her spending the 100K on a watch if she had additionally given 50K to charity?  Now I’ll confess:  I still wasn’t okay with the watch.  It seemed frivolous and grandiose, wasteful and stupid.  So then I had to admit it…I had been harboring a deep-seated prejudice against red dresses and the people who think it’s okay to buy them when there is so much suffering in the world.

I continued to pinch pennies, shop at TJ Maxx and roll my eyes at anyone who purchased anything that wasn’t on sale.  I continued to refuse to replace anything that was still working, no matter how “outdated” or shabby.   I started using the phrase “I’m not externally motivated, I’m internally motivated” to justify my disdain for people who took pleasure in material objects.  I lived life on a tight budget and like Scrooge, took pleasure in THAT instead.

Then, we replaced the showerhead.

To set the stage for this dramatic, life-changing moment, I will inform you that when we bought our current home, the showerheads were original to 90’s construction and cheap, flimsy affairs.  Additionally, we have a well and at the time had an inadequate pressure tank, which meant water had to be meted out in the most parsimonious of fashions.  Naturally I was very comfortable with all of this.

But some inciting incident that has slipped my mind prompted us to replace the showerhead in the master bathroom.  And you know what?  I actually didn’t buy the cheapest thing available!  I threw caution to the wind and bought the second or third cheapest thing and once it was installed was amazed by the luxurious phenomenon of taking a shower that didn’t approximate a Great Dane drooling on my head.

The sheer bliss!  And the utter wonderment that I hadn’t forked over the 50 bucks years earlier in order to experience a halfway decent shower!  I finally had my A-HA moment, as Oprah with her totally frivolous, grandiose, wasteful list of “favorite things” would say!

I finally understood that “buying the red dress” is not at all about the shameful disregard for other people’s suffering.  It is about taking care of yourself so that you can go forth in life in an empowered and joyful way.  It’s amazing what a nice, long, hot shower can do for your soul, isn’t it?  We just replaced that inadequate pressure tank too, btw.

And I did actually buy the metaphorical red dress, two years ago NOT ON SALE.  I have worn it so often I have lost count, and it always makes me feel pretty and happy.  My Dad was right.  Go ahead and buy the red dress.  You can’t play Scrooge with yourself and call yourself a generous person. 

Go ahead and be happy, even though there is still suffering in the world.  As Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, “It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

Never go hungry again!!!