Acknowledging the Darkness

In the wake of multiple losses, I haven’t had a choice. The darkness clings to me like a fog, like vapor. The shadow is that space between what I thought I wanted – between the life I would design, were I the intentional architect of my own destiny – and what is.

Disappointment is the result of expectations. We all have them; our minds work overtime devising the best possible future for ourselves. We will find fulfillment in our careers and our relationships, we tell ourselves. We will live to a ripe old age and die peacefully in our sleep, hands clasped, a faint smile playing about our lips. Those we love will enjoy similar longevity. They certainly will not suffer, and neither will I.

Then something happens that clashes with this optimism. Our rose-colored glasses are rudely torn from our faces, and we squint, disbelieving, in the glare of reality. Someone gets sick. Someone gets hurt. A job, even an entire career, evaporates. We throw up our hands and rage at the heavens. “Why me?” we demand. “I don’t deserve this.”

Maybe not, but the universe doesn’t operate on some moral balance sheet, doling out challenges and tragedies only to those who are deserving or feel able to “handle it” at the moment. These things that help us grow – that make us resilient, compassionate, and deep – they hurt like hell and we’d never sign on for them willingly. We are much more content to doze in the back row of the classroom of life.

Ben Franklin said, “No pain, no gain.” To that I reply, “No shit.” Experience tells me he was absolutely right.

Going Through the Motions

Can we do things without really doing them?

I’m not trying to be abstract.  It’s a valid question.  Behind this question is another: Is good enough really good enough?

I believe that we can do something with so little conviction that the results are as bad as if we hadn’t done it at all.  Maybe even worse.

Take my gums, for instance.  At my latest dental checkup, the hygienist whined that my gums weren’t that great in a couple hard-to-reach areas.  When I described my oral care routine and asked what might have caused the problem, she replied that it might be my “flossing technique.”

After that, I paid attention.  It was true that there were some places where I jammed floss between my teeth but didn’t really work it around.  I was going through the motions of flossing, but it was lazy flossing.  And it wasn’t enough to keep my gums healthy.

I have never been a person who can get away with laziness or shortcuts.  If I don’t give my full effort, there are consequences.  Going through the motions, it seems, really isn’t enough.  I have to go “all in,” living life (and performing all its minutia, it seems, even flossing) with care and intention.

And if I’m punished by oral care lectures (or worse) when I fall short, conversely I’m richly rewarded when I do put forth the effort.  The lesson is clear: How we do things does matter.  Perhaps even more than what we do.

Why we look, and what we hope to find

This morning I am walking the dogs.  I take a different route, just a small deviation from my regular lopsided figure eight, a short trip down a side street.  I want to walk past the house where the murder took place last week.

We’re all rubber neckers, I think as I wind my way down the mossy sidewalk beside the pink and white oleanders that bloom in front of the house.  These are actually their oleanders, trimmed before it happened. There is a crime scene inside, and outside the grass is cut and the sprinklers are going on timers. As if its inhabitants went to the store, or to the lake for a day of boating.

I question my own motives – why do I detour down the street to see the quiet house where something awful happened?  Will someone notice me strolling by, a way I usually don’t go? People might think I have an unnatural interest in the misfortune of others.  Do I?

I don’t think so. I think I’m like everyone else, wanting to catch of glimpse of that place.  It is the place where what we think we know and what we believe we understand meets the unknown, the unfamiliar. It’s the departure point, the place where the ocean meets the sand. There’s some overlap in that moment when the surf slides up the beach, some commingling. A little sand gets caught up in the ocean; a little salt water sinks into the sand. But then the ocean retracts, pulls back into itself. The beach is still there, but it’s different. It looks the same, but microscopically it’s changed.

That’s how it is with a murder, or a car accident, or someone who has fallen grievously ill. They are on that shore, touching that deep unknown. It’s lapping at their feet, or maybe they’re already deep in it, caught in the undertow. And we want to see it, as if witnessing their struggle, their transition could help us understand.

It doesn’t. What we are left with are only our perceptions, which defy understanding and utterly confound us when we try to express them with language. The house looks the same, but it isn’t. How can that be?  We are left saying absurd, typical things like, “I just can’t believe it,” and, “How can things like that happen to such nice people?” As if there is some moral balance sheet in the universe; I have decided that if there is, it doesn’t follow our logic.

My mom recently died. I feel the urge to attenuate that statement because it seems to shock people. They want to hear softer terms, like “she passed away,” or my least favorite, “she passed.” The truth, to me, is better, however stark it sounds. She died.  She was alive, and now she isn’t.

The first thing I wanted after my mother’s death was the shirt she was wearing when she died, soft and worn like only an old T-shirt can be.  It had been washed along with the bedclothes.  I found it and brought it home.  First I put it on, but that didn’t feel right, either.  I just wanted to be close to where she is now, wherever that is.  The shirt held her body as she made that transition.  Maybe somewhere in that shirt, I felt, was the answer.  That place we want to witness.  That empty house with blooming oleanders, sprinklers ticking in the yard.

Mom’s shirt hangs in my closet.  I don’t want to wear it, but I do want to see it.  “Mom died in that shirt,” I tell myself when I look at it.  It’s still just a shirt, just like the murder house is still just a house.  I could give that shirt to someone and they could wear it, never knowing it held her last breaths, never knowing that shirt is my shore, beyond it the ocean, never knowing that is the shirt that bore her out on heaving waves.

I don’t know where she is, but I know where she departed from. I guess that’ll have to be enough.

Being Mindful

I’m trying to live intentionally.  By this, I mean I’m working on being “in the moment,” mindful of my thoughts and actions.  I say “working on” – mindfulness is not easy for me.  I can be very distractible, prone to nervous habits like nail biting.  Although I no longer bite my fingernails, it’s a good example.

It’s impossible to be a nail biter if one is mindful.  Activities like that are things we do when we are unaware, preoccupied with stressful, anxiety-provoking thoughts.  I suggest that no one sits down and says, “I’m going to bite my nails until my fingers bleed.”  Rather, they gnaw away while thinking of something entirely unrelated, then look down and say, “Oh, darn.  I’ve done it again.”

Think of all the elements of our daily routine that we do mindlessly.  It’s staggering.  Not all these things are bad things:  We unplug the coffee maker.  We lock the door on the way out.  We brush our teeth.  Often we can’t specifically remember doing any of these things.  We presume we did because we always do.  It’s habit, routine.

Habits are useful and make space for lots of abstract thinking.  While I’m mindlessly making breakfast, I’m envisioning a flyer I’m designing for a client’s business or working on a poem I’ve been turning over and over in my mind, smoothing it out like a tumbled stone.  I love multitasking; it accommodates both my busy mind and my busy life.  Sometimes I wonder, though: does it make me more productive or just distracted?

Multitasking involves doing at least one of the activities at hand by rote (i.e., mindlessly).  Is this really a good idea?  Or is even the smallest activity, like making toast for breakfast, worthy of my full attention?

I’m not suggesting standing in the kitchen and watching the toast as it browns, thinking of nothing but toast and its toastiness.  I don’t think I could do that.  But perhaps I could be in the kitchen, thinking about breakfast, puttering over the dishes or browsing cookbooks while I wait for the toast.  This might not be wasted time, and it might prevent trips to the refrigerator where I open it and entirely forget what I was looking for in the first place.  Sound familiar?

I believe there is much more value to mindfulness than we give credit in our overachieving society, where children are rewarded for perfect attendance and adults are encouraged to “power through” fatigue, illness, and tragedy.  What if how we do things were as important as how many things we accomplish and the nature of our achievements?

Maybe there are no small moments, and maybe the spaces between things are as important as the things themselves.  Yes, maybe there is something to be said for doing things – even small things – deliberately, intentionally, one at a time.  And doing them well.