Category: community

Workin’ for a Livin’

Rachel Henry7 Comments

“Create a life you actually want for yourself,” poet David Whyte says in his Footsteps: a Writing Life CD set. And I think, “Yes!” Who can disagree with that fabulous Yorkshire accent, much less the sentiment?

“Isn’t there something we can do besides working?” a friend and colleague says. “Yes!” I reply and then spend roughly half my waking hours doing just that.

Work offers definite benefits beyond the simply monetary. Some people practice professions they enjoy. Offices or factories provide forced community, teaching us how to live alongside those we might not invite to dinner. I’ve developed skills at work I may never have discovered otherwise. Couldn’t all that happen outside of work, though? Absolutely.

If you take a look at the vast scope of human history, the majority of the population has spent most of its time growing, killing, and cooking food. And cleaning. I’d much rather write novels than the accreditation reports my work demands, but I’d much rather write accreditation reports than beat dirty clothes against rocks in the river.

As a species, we’ve just begun this diversification of tasks, and perhaps we haven’t chosen as wisely as we could have thus far. Perhaps we’re going through a stage, like adolescence, but tell a teenager she’s miserable because she’s a teenager and see how much comfort you’ve conveyed.

So how does one persist in work that is tolerable but not that which one actually wants for oneself? If you have a fabulous answer, please leave it in the comments below.

I try the following, which sometimes help and sometimes don’t: vacation; gratitude for not having the myriad of jobs I don’t have, like bus driver or president; lots of potlucks; sunshine breaks; gratitude for the things work has given me, such as a car, a house, friends, perspective.

And as often as possible, I remember a time when I was sticking small labels on tabs, a task whose eventual obsolescence no one will mourn. One moment life consisted of a mindless routine, and the next I felt I was in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing. I didn’t even mind that the right thing was affixing small pieces of gummy, flexible plastic.

I’ve never felt that way again, but I choose to think it’s always true. That doesn’t mean I don’t hope and pray my job description will read well-paid novelist before the next accreditation report rolls around, but it opens up the possibility that this work we sometimes resist and often don’t understand can place us, against all our expectations, where we need to be.

A Sporting Chance

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Though some may not realize it, the most important sporting event in the world took place a couple of weeks ago: the Women’s World Cup. If you don’t yet recognize the Women’s World Cup as holding that lofty position, you may leave your misguided comments below.

For days following the final, people who have no particular interest in soccer came up to me and said, “Did you see that game?” I don’t know whether they watched the entire 120+ minutes or saw highlights on the evening news, but their comments made it clear that sports create a point of connection.

They’re not always the healthiest connections. People trampled to death at soccer matches or assaults on opposing fans following American football games don’t foster open, accepting community. But if you take the sum total, from AYSO to the Olympics, sports teach both players and fans the building blocks for creating community more often than not.

I recently joined an ultimate Frisbee league. Ultimate has no refs, so players make their own calls, which inevitably leads to contention over fouls, which leads to grumbling, a few snide comments, and a lot of sideline conversation. But then it’s done. No one rolls the previous game’s complaints forward to the next week. Given the fact that for years I resented my sister getting a rabbit when I only had a bird, this letting go impresses me.

The opposing team isn’t always the difficult bunch. At the end of a recent game, one of the young women on our team gathered us together and, in an act of courage I could not have equaled at her age and perhaps still cannot, reminded everyone to respect each others’ opinions, regardless of experience level. My team responded by affirming her request and apologizing—no defensiveness, no ego. Remarkable.

As a kid, I hated both participation and sportsmanship awards because you only receive them when you lose. The more I play, though, the more I realize how sometimes difficult and ultimately rewarding participation and sportsmanship are. Only being competitive doesn’t require much maturity, and winning doesn’t always require the strength of character losing does.

We will all fail in both small and spectacular ways: not get a job offer, get dumped by a boy/girlfriend, make a joke nobody laughs at, do or say something that hurts a friend. These moments may matter more than the dropped catch, the missed goal, but if we’ve practiced how to behave on the field, we might remember when we really need to.

Relationships Unplugged?

Rachel Henry5 Comments

This post marks my entry into the Post A Week club, an exclusive group that, like so many online communities, requires little more than signing up, in this case by committing to post to one’s blog once a week. Ironically, I almost missed my Tuesday deadline because my sister is visiting from out of town and I can’t resist late night board games with her.

Balance between real and virtual relationships often eludes me. I try to err on the side of more time with people who are physically present. Many of my good friends live elsewhere, though, and those relationships might wither without the Internet.

As Michael Wesch points out in his From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able TEDx talk, we can technologically connect online with very little effort, but creating true connections is no easier than it’s ever been. Viewing the latest cat video to go viral does not help me understand or care for the other million or two people who watched the same video.

A friend summed it up well once, saying, “One more report on the Middle East, one more TED presentation on happiness, five more posts on the legal blog, three related YouTubes of lemurs. The clickage SO rarely synthesizes itself into a satiety—unlike conversations with good friends.” Of course, she said it in a Facebook message.

Online communities do good work in this world. A woman in Seattle and her soulmate who happens to live in Tampa can meet on match.com. People can encourage sick or dying friends on Caring Bridge. Lives are saved using Ushahidi. And without Facebook I wouldn’t have had dinner with the above-mentioned friend or know nearly as much about my sister’s life during the 358 days a year she spends thousands of miles away.

So perhaps we need to consider the www-ness factor of our online time—are we really spinning a web? Virtual communities can’t substitute for real ones, but they can create and maintain threads we then haul in, hand over hand, until we stand again in each other’s presence, or, if you’re like my sister and me, sit on the floor and get fiercely competitive over a game designed for ages three and up.

Creating Possibilities

Rachel Henry4 Comments

I don’t often celebrate my birthday by discussing the demise of the world, but that’s where the conversation turned during one of my many birthday meals (remember that bit about eating). Most of the table agreed that, given the current political and economic situation, the future looks bleak. Those factors alone, however, do not determine our fate.

A quick scan of K-12 history books, which record largely political and economic affairs, might lead one to wonder how the human race has survived this long. I think we’re still around because the way we treat each other on the small, daily scale makes as much of a difference as those forces we generally consider global. (One political scientist’s research on disaster survival supports this idea.)

Of course politics profoundly shape people’s lives. I just finished reading Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane, his autobiography of growing up in Alexandra, South Africa, under apartheid. Arguing that sharing a meal together would undo what he and others suffered under those laws is ludicrous, but by the same token, no political or economic shift allowed him to survive. His mother’s dedication to his education and an American tennis player’s friendship and follow-through brought him to the U.S. well before the end of apartheid.

How does the removal of one young man from an oppressive regime contribute to the end of that regime? I don’t know, but perhaps one person spared from the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual starvation imposed by that system is one more person imagining something better. Perhaps that person tips a balance we can’t measure.

When Mathabane left South Africa, he could picture a world without apartheid, but he probably couldn’t describe how that change would happen. In the middle of the Cold War, who would have predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall? Transformation happens regardless of our ability or inability to foresee its exact nature.

None of the people at lunch that day live as if they believe their choices and kindness don’t matter. One offers gracious and impeccable hospitality; one supports and enjoys an unusually close-knit family; one radiates enthusiasm and joy wherever she goes; they all provide compassionate leadership at work. They don’t believe these actions will save the world, but maybe their caring, and that of others like them, is as powerful as a failing economy and a divisive political situation.

I believe the communities we create on a daily basis and the generosity and good humor we offer one another create possibilities. William Stafford captures this idea in his poem “Yes,” a more eloquent closing than I could hope to write.

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

Morning Matters

Rachel Henry1 Comment

The other night I stayed up past my bedtime, which happens often and generally leads me to resent having to brush my teeth. Sometimes, though, when I’m too tired to be useful, small epiphanies arrive. On this particular night, a peaceful feeling bubbled up and with it a thought: maybe the little things we do in the morning are enough.

Morning isn’t really complicated. Many of you may have figured this out already. Tasks tend to repeat on a daily basis: shower, brush teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast. Remarkable.

The thing is, I have a little reality problem. In the evening, I arrive home around six. My evening to-do list generally reads something like the following:

  • Exercise
  • Sell novel
  • Clean entire house
  • Cook dinner
  • Play with cat
  • Answer all emails
  • Go to bed by 9:30

This list produces mostly guilt and a doomed attempt to stuff the unfinished items into the following morning. My vanmates can attest to the success of this approach.

I did not invent the possibility that getting dressed and eating breakfast is enough. Wise people have been telling the rest of us that for a large chunk of human history (most notably for me Paula D’Arcy, Kathleen Norris, and William Stafford). But despite hearing them say it, I’ve practiced it precious little.

The word “enough” often connotes just the opposite for us Americans. “Enough” in this case means “holy,” not “only.” Which inevitably raises the specter of the G word: God.

About God: I do not claim to know how you should call that power or connection or love, how you should interact with it, or even whether you should believe in it. The previous admissions make clear my lack of qualifications for that judgment. I will write only about my sense of and experience with God. Please translate freely into any language or frame of reference that helps you.

In my way of relating to this existence, God gave me a tiny taste of what it would feel like to honor daily tasks, an enticement, a temptation. If I could welcome the morning instead of launching myself against it, that peaceful feeling might seep into the rest of the day and, one can hope, outward to those I meet.

Did Someone Say Food?

Rachel Henry5 Comments

If I go past entry number three without talking about food, those who know me will begin to question the honesty of this blog. I love to eat, especially other people’s food.

In his book Brain Droppings, George Carlin suggests world peace through formal introductions. I believe potlucks could accomplish the same end. Eating together is an intrinsic human behavior, like language, perhaps because of the bonds it forms. We may say all sorts of critical things about someone, but if he or she brings a fabulous spinach artichoke dip to the party, a lot can be forgiven.

I once took a long, overnight, third class train ride in China. The very accurate Chinese term for third class is “hard seat,” but they sell far more tickets than there are seats, or did in 1997, and I was sitting on the floor with a crowd of fairly cheerful Chinese people, far more cheerful than I. I spoke Chinese well enough to get around but far short of fluency and often understood my fellow passengers’ questions but didn’t have the vocabulary to answer them.

At one point during the night, the two people nearest me, better prepared than I, broke out their food and offered me some. I declined. It’s good form in China to politely refuse a couple of times and then accept, but I continued to say no. They hadn’t planned on feeding me, and I didn’t want them to spend the night hungry.

Then they asked me a question I couldn’t have answered even if I had known the words. It went something like this: What’s wrong with you Americans? You think you always have to look out for yourselves, but here we look out for each other. Needless to say, I accepted the orange soda and the sausage stick and redoubled my Chinese efforts. (A sausage stick does not belong to the sausage family. It resembles a cold hot dog wrapped in red plastic the way some cheeses are wrapped in red wax. It has the shelf life of a twinkie and tastes as delicious as it sounds.)

Closer to home, one friend in my office recently made my day when she brought me a breakfast burrito for no other reason than that she had made one for herself. Another brought me peas from her garden because she knows they’re my favorite.

Their thoughtfulness reminded me to follow suit, and I delivered banana bread to another office during a stressful time. I’m as capable of believing I don’t have enough as the next person, and sharing what I do have cures this feeling faster than anything else I know of.

We are a species capable of incredible generosity and incredible selfishness, and both are contagious. Offering and receiving food opens that generosity within us. So let’s eat!

Hitchin’ a Ride

Rachel Henry8 Comments

I am the Dagwood of my vanpool. The van leaves the parking lot at 7:27. On a good day I arrive at 7:26:58. My vanmates generously find this habit amusing rather than annoying.

It seems like a small thing, the ride to work in the morning, the ride home at 5, only an hour a day, one twenty-fourth. The more I think about it, though, the more I think our van family, as we call it, is not a small thing.

“Family” rings a bit hokey in cold, hard pixels, but the title fits. Like family, we didn’t choose each other but are stuck with what we got. Also like family we enjoy each other and watch out for one another even though we do not all share religious beliefs, political convictions, or lifestyles.

When a van member’s dad died, we passed the hat for a gift, and a few of us attended the funeral. When a spouse was diagnosed with cancer, someone remembered to check in after each doctor’s appointment until she went into remission. At my novel-finishing party, some of my vanmates helped me celebrate.

We recently had a baby shower, the first van baby since I’ve been riding. “It’s so nice to get to spend lunch with everyone,” the mother-to-be said. There’s no particular reason this statement should be true of sixteen randomly selected people, but it is.

In a world as polarized by insignificant differences as ours is—and probably always has been—I find it remarkable that everyone in this group decided to bear each other goodwill. The vanpool policies do not require kindness; everyone came to this behavior on his or her own, unprompted. And yes, there are vanpool policies. Seriously.

Not to say that we are a community of saints and bodhisattvas. I’m sure I’ve said things that cause others to roll their eyes once they’re off the van. We have our periods of drama and our moments of pettiness, but we show up for each other in small, important ways.

In The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron talks about paying attention as a means of connection. On the van, we pay attention to each other’s lives, and, for me at least, it helps.

Inspired by a Hobnobber

Rachel Henry8 Comments

For a while I had a quote from Anne Lamott on my refrigerator: “As we live, we begin to learn what helps in life and what hurts.” I’m afraid that many of the stories we tell each other every day hurt, not because they are necessarily untrue but because they do not contain the possibility of hope or change. I’d like to tell some stories that help. They may be purely joyful or they may contain some sadness or pain because without those we wouldn’t need help.

I believe help surrounds us in many forms: the generosity of a houseplant that continues to thrive despite my best efforts to neglect it, that last streak of pale yellow rinsed from the sky just before dark blue gives way to night’s black, the perfect gooey sweetness of a well-toasted s’more. And perhaps most importantly, community.

Communities are like weeds–they spring up all over the place in uncontrollable and unpredictable ways. Last night, I attended my first hobnob. The couple who organizes these gatherings uses the etymology to explain the evening to newcomers: “in the sense ‘drink together; drink each other’s health.'” The practice is to show up, munch on whatever arrives, and chat with whoever comes–no stressful preparation for hosts or guests.

I confess that I went mainly in search of single, straight men in their late thirties or early forties, of which I found none. I did, however, meet a number of delightful men and women, gay and straight, in their fifties and sixties. Among them was a man, we’ll call him Tom, whose son is a poet and who overheard me talking about the novel I recently finished. (Kudos to the host and hostess for creating such a welcoming atmosphere–revealing my secret novelist identity to strangers still scares me.)

Tom found me later in the evening to ask about my writing, and I gave the elevator speech description of the novel’s plot. In return, I had the privilege of hearing the love and admiration in his voice as he talked about his son. Tom is a retired physician, and his son’s life as a writer–working as adjunct faculty, going through the process of submission and rejection–is a new world for him.

I think parents may worry, and with good cause, when their children announce they want to do something as financially risky as writing, but Tom is thoroughly impressed with his son and the lifestyle he’s chosen for himself in spite of, or perhaps because of, its difference from his own. He enjoys discovering who his son is, and I imagine being in the presence of that enjoyment would raise anyone’s spirits; it certainly raised mine.

At the end of our conversation Tom said to me, “It’s nice to know there’s someone like you here.” Talk about a ray of light in the darkness. My current litany of self doubts runs something like this, “No one will ever buy this book, especially since I don’t spend enough time sending out query letters, and what’s this crazy blog thing and how can I have time to do any of it between my day job and exercising?” So knowing that someone besides my mom (sorry, Mom) thinks my existence, both as myself and as a writer, is worthwhile helps, a lot. Community at work.

Thank you, Tom, and thanks also to your son for having the courage to pursue his writing and by so doing to inspire and remind me to pursue mine.  For all of you artists and writers and everyone who feels as if the rest of the world has it all figured out while you find life rather puzzling, someone in your community, whether you’ve met this person or not, is grateful there’s someone like you here.