Category: life

Where’s There?

Rachel Henry3 Comments

Having an obsession and fulfilling that obsession are two very different things. I’ve been getting ready to go on vacation, which generally sends me into an OCD quest of trying to tie up every possible loose end between 10 p.m. and midnight the night before I leave.

Given the lack of tied-up-ness in my daily life and the late hour at which I start, I usually stay up until I am forced to give up. At this point, I feel a surprising amount of peace.

A friend said in the comments last week that when she’s focused on the future, she gets frustrated that she’s not there yet. I only feel that way approximately 99.8% of the time. I think that’s what’s nice about getting ready to leave: it’s a defined, immutable “there.” The plane will leave at 6:27 a.m. whether you’ve watered the plants or not.

It’s interesting that it’s not so much the getting everything done before leaving as the simple existence of a cut-off point that brings that peaceful feeling. I perceive the “there yet” that I torture myself with as having to do with lack of accomplishment, whether tangible or interior, but this experience suggests otherwise.

It suggests that the ever-changing nature of the finish line causes more anxiety than what’s happening in the actual race. If every moment could be its own finish line, I wouldn’t have to worry about this whole journey thing.

Checking in on Reality

Rachel Henry6 Comments

When you are chronically single, it is good to have at least one other chronically single friend. This increases the odds that, at any given time, one of you will be sane.

I was speaking with one such friend recently, and it was her turn to be sane. Both of us would like to have kids, and both of us are ever more rapidly approaching the age of ain’t gonna happen. The subject came up and my friend said in a hushed, semi-awed voice, “I think I’m OK with that.”

The “OK with it” option had occurred to me but was a little too scary to contemplate closely, like the ingredients list of a Twinkie. I have this idea that thinking will make it so, but here’s the thing: it is already so—I neither have kids nor do I currently find myself in a situation that leads to the rapid production of children.

When do we continue to believe in the possibility of something that isn’t yet and when do we accept life in its current state? On the never ending list of things I don’t understand, the balance between those two is near the top.

My friend’s sanity lay in shifting the emphasis: while she may not have this one thing she wants, she recognizes that her life is incredible. The question is not so much am I giving up on something as am I remembering that right now, my life is incalculably rich. Right now, I have an enjoyable job; I live in a beautiful place; all the parts of my body work well; I have wonderful friends and family; I no longer need to worry about the ingredients list of a Twinkie.

Louis CK does a great comedy routine called “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy.” (On being impatient with smartphones: “Give it a second, it’s going to space.”) There’s always something available with which to play the if only game—marriage, kids, publication, four-foot-high chocolate fountain. It’s just so much more fun to play the everything’s amazing game.

Not So Little Anymore

Rachel Henry8 Comments

I declare this week Little Sister Appreciation Week because my little sister is awesome. In both the really great and fills-me-with-awe meanings of the word.

My sister is six years younger than I, so every time she hits a milestone—driving, college graduation, thirty—it reminds me how old I am. But to make up for that, she amazes me with who she has become. Recently, I keep realizing that she has become a grownup.

The author and her sister under a blooming cherry tree
My sister, me, and some cherry blossoms.

Her most recent demonstration of grownup-ness consisted of caring for my dad after hip surgery. My dad is a lot of wonderful things, but he’s generally unresponsive to people telling him what to do. If they could measure stubbornness, I feel certain he would be in the Guinness Book of World Records. He also resists cleaning even more than I do, which is a strong statement to make.

My mom had a couple of surgeries a few years ago, and even though I mostly showed up at the hospital and smiled, I was pretty much of a train wreck. My sister, on the other hand, had to figure out house cleaning, buying new furniture, modifying a walker, cooking two weeks’ worth of meals to freeze, and coaching Dad through his first physical therapy sessions. And she is deaf.

Deafness gives you a whole new way of experiencing the world; it also makes parts of life more difficult because most of our institutions, services, and processes are designed for hearing people—hospitals and furniture stores, for example. Yet she navigated all this expertly. Color me amazed once again.

Just for fun, here are a few of the many other reasons my sister is awesome:

  • She is a talented artist.
  • She makes me laugh so hard I can’t breathe.
  • She celebrates her deafness.
  • She is always learning more about her profession.
  • She has impeccable taste.
  • She tells it like is.
  • I can’t think of anything that makes me happier than seeing her when one of us has just gotten off an airplane.

Thanks, Little Sis, for being you.

Bring on the Beauty

Rachel Henry54 Comments

I just received in the mail my first in a long time ridiculously expensive relative to my income bracket purchase, perhaps the first ever that is not a bicycle. It’s way too nerdy and grown up of an item for such an event, but I’ve been staring at my new “upcycled wooden desk trays,” vintage distressed French country style, and feeling really happy ever since I opened the package. Perhaps nothing I’ve bought in my life has come with so many adjectives attached.

wooden desk trays labeled "in" and "out" with scrabble tiles
Upcycled wooden desk trays from Vintage Chichibean on Etsy

Let me express my appreciation for the word “upcycled.” I am generally not a fan of creating words unless you can do it as well as Roald Dahl, but upcycled is a brilliant marketing word, appealing to people’s vanity and environmental consciousness all at once.

I admire not only the description but also the physical presence of my desk trays. I like the size and shape of them, the heft, the way they’re cleverly slotted together. I like the unevenness of the paint and the yellow-green color that is more attractive than yellow-green has any business being.

The way buying new stuff can make us happy used to worry me. I have a complicated relationship with the physical, which I suspect I share with many Americans. On one hand, we are deluged with marketing telling us that our appearance matters more than anything else, and on the other, we hold onto our Puritan forebearers’ attitude that physical things are not particularly worthy or holy and possibly downright sinful.

But we are physical beings, and we are drawn to and enlivened by beauty of various types, many of which we experience through our senses. Few would argue that a painting by Rembrandt or Monet is shallow because its beauty is physical.

I’m not saying I’m going to sprinkle holy water on my desk trays (that would be blessed vintage distressed French country style), but I welcome them both for the enjoyment they’re already bringing me and for the reminder that beauty comes in many forms, and we need them all.

What’s the Use?

Rachel Henry1 Comment

There is a story about a bunch of trees on a hillside, and all of them are cut down except one that is so old and gnarled it’s not useful for anything. Despite the wisdom of this story, I recently discovered I’d rather spend a lifetime thinking M&Ms were the pinnacle of chocolate-dom than have people consider me useless.

gnarled pine tree in sand
Photo by Dan Mahr. Used under Creative Commons License.

This idea of usefulness did not come from me but from someone in a dialogue group I attend regularly. In this group, we often experiment with interrupting something we habitually do, and my reaction to the possibility of not being useful to people was panic. Why would anyone like me if I no longer did the things they counted on me for?

I suspect the only human beings who don’t worry about their usefulness are kids lucky enough  to be raised in a loving family that has the means to provide for them. Even then, the time to enjoy a state of uselessness is brief.

We start training our children to be useful early in their lives, as soon as they are able to put away their own toys. Then we give them small chores to do and ask them to carry their own backpacks at the airport.

It’s not unreasonable training. We’re social creatures, and we’re teaching our kids how to get along in society, how to become valued and integrated members of the tribe.

I wonder, though, if part of what Jesus meant when he counseled us to be like little children was to put down our usefulness occasionally, to give ourselves some time and space to be undefined, to allow the possibility of being valuable for some other reason than our contributions to family, friends, society. Parents don’t, after all, love their children because of their ability to do the dishes; they love them simply because they are who they are.

In the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie explains to one of the other children that the great thing about candy is that, “Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”

It might be that we don’t have to have so much of a point as we think we do.

Falling into Place

Rachel Henry2 Comments

I bribed my family to forego skiing in Colorado and come to California for Christmas. The winning offer: Dungeness crab at $6.99/lb.

We’ve never before gathered in California, and the four of us haven’t been together in quite a few years. When reflecting on what made the week so much fun, it appeared to me that we’re all at a point where we want to be with each other or are at least capable of enjoying the company. With the possible exception of the cat, who made it clear he objected to the disruption of his usual routine.

It’s not always easy to remember that things happen in stages. My sister is six years younger than I, and for years I didn’t want her around. In my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t want any of my family members around. By the time I returned to the fold, my sister had had about enough of all of us. The two of us have been close for years now, but it took some time.

The cycle turned again this year, and it felt as if things I didn’t even know were missing fell into place a little.

That’s not to say we’re perfect. My sister and I had to stop speaking about a photograph because we disagreed so strongly about its contents. My parents are divorced, and though they did us the gigantic favor of not hating each other, they are not those people you see in the movies who remain close friends.

Yet we all seem to have come to a place where, most of the time, we don’t need each other to be any more or less than who we are. The other side of the coin, I think, is that we all have some acceptance of our own failings. We can, mostly, listen to stories about ourselves and say, wow, did I really do that? A gentler reaction than, I did not do that!

The future undoubtedly holds anger and frustration along with the joy and love, but this Christmas felt like a healing, as if something was sewn together that will make our relationships stronger in the future. And that is a remarkable gift.

On Big and Small Steps

Rachel Henry3 Comments

Any sane person knows that “a.m.” shouldn’t really be combined with “5:30” in any sort of active sentence. Nonetheless, I sometimes run with friends around this time before work.

Some days are harder than others, not because we run farther—we don’t—just because they are. On these days, I talk us through the last few blocks about 20 meters at a time. It goes something like this, “Just make it to that car, now to that mailbox, now to the tree.” It’s amazing how much more possible it feels to finish these small chunks than to finish the whole run.

But do I replicate this practice in my day to day life? Not so much. I prefer to concentrate on the end product as a giant, overwhelming thing to freak out about.

Never mind that everyone from the Buddha to E.L. Doctorow to David Allen to bad ‘70s sitcoms have pointed out that it’s not actually possible to complete an entire journey, novel, project at once. They all subscribe to that one step at a time philosophy. When else have an enlightened being, an author, an efficiency expert, and Hollywood ever agreed on anything? I mean aside from the time they all shared a box of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate sea salt caramels.

In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen explains how you can’t actually do a project, say landscape a yard, you can only do the smaller actions that add up to some state you consider done—pull out the old plants, fertilize the soil, etc. So the idea of focusing on the journey instead of the destination may simply be practical advice instead of deep and mysterious spiritual direction.

And yet it’s usually my last resort, somewhere after pulling out my hair and before drinking. My resistance might have something to do with the previously discussed lack of patience or perhaps some slightly unrealistic expectations. If you have suggestions on how to join the ranks of the contented and well-organized step-by-steppers, leave them in the comments. In the meantime, pass the caramels.

Note: The blog and I will be on vacation next week. Merry Christmas, belated Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice—enjoy your various celebrations of the returning of light.

Why Wait?

Rachel Henry2 Comments

My life would be a lot easier if impatience were a virtue. Or if I could learn patience faster.

Recently, I’ve been telling myself to buckle down and do more of approximately everything. Myself and I have had this conversation often with no discernible results. So for Advent I decided to stop trying to figure things out and wait and listen instead. This may be what some people refer to as praying.

Our culture doesn’t particularly value waiting, and after two weeks of practicing it, I understand why. The first couple of days you can feel all la-dee-da and enlightened about it, but beginning day three it’s just not fun. The subtitle on the Advent reader they handed out at church says, “Waiting in joyful hope.” I’m not sure where the joyful hope people are, but I’m hanging out in the annoyed get-it-over-with-already camp.

Today I decided that two weeks is quite enough time for God/the universe/whatever to have straightened out my life and revealed at least the next few steps in a clear, concise road map. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, God/the universe/whatever doesn’t appear to be on my timeline, despite my having told her/him/it very sternly in the car on the way home that I’d had about enough of waiting.

But here’s the thing, the point of these four weeks is for people to make a straight path for God, not the other way around. We’re getting ready to celebrate a birth, and though I don’t have any kids, I’ve attended enough baby showers to know that requires a lot of preparation.

Once it happens, your life, as I understand it, does not get easier. Suddenly your time is no longer you own, and this tiny being has the power to disrupt your sleeping and eating and showering in ways previously unimagined. It also has the power to open up a richness and a depth of love that little else can provide.

So that’s what we’re preparing to celebrate, that opening of love in our lives. I suppose it might be worth waiting for.

What We Need

Rachel Henry3 Comments

You have everything you need was the theme of our church retreat this week. Apparently it’s going to take me more than one day to master that concept.

To find out how truly bad you are at knowing what you need, go to a buffet. I went to two very good ones in one fabulous day this week.

In case you’ve forgotten, at a buffet, all the food is infinitely replenished. You cannot run out. The person in front of you cannot take the last piece of Tandoori chicken because the kitchen will bring more. Because it is a buffet.

Is my reaction to this state of abundance relief, peace, and contentment? Do I think, wow, there is more food here than I and everyone else in the room could ever eat in one sitting, what a wonderful, relaxing, rare, and magical situation in which to find myself?

If you guessed that the answer to the above questions is yes, thank you. You must be new to reading the blog. Alas, you are also mistaken.

My first instinct is to load up my plate to ensure that I get my fair share. I worry that I won’t get enough when too much is guaranteed. I avoid painful overeating only by holding myself strictly in check, like Dr. Strangelove fighting down his arm as it tries to salute. (If you haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove, you’re leading a deprived life. You can find out how deprived by watching this clip.)

So my judgment of what I need may be a tiny bit off, say three or four stomach’s worth. I might try remembering the buffet problem when my mind is working to convince me I can’t live without the latest whizbang whoozewutsit.

Of course if it’s a chocolate whoozewutsit, bring on the buffet.

Life is Good

Rachel Henry3 Comments

‘Tis the season to remember everything that makes this life fabulous. My gratitude list for 2012—partial of course:

Colors, all types, from Rothko’s squares to that electric turquoise fashionable in purses a season or two back to the jacaranda tree’s purple flowers.

The days Elm St. is inexplicably empty allowing me to catch the van despite the the space-time continuum’s attempts to thwart me.

The way that people’s creativity flourishes in different mediums—paint, clothing, conversation, leadership, gardens.

The rotations of nature, from seasonal changes to a single day’s palette of light, morning’s yellow, speaking of promise, distinct from evening’s paler shade of repose.

Food—that it exists, that we are required to eat it, that one of its subcategories is chocolate, that said subcategory correlates with production of Nobel Prize winners. I am not making this up. Read the article on chocolate and Nobel Prizes. Thanks to my aunt for passing on this essential knowledge.

The times I remember to pray instead of attempting to solve something far beyond my powers.

Quirky things—people, movies, my cat, possibly all cats.

The astonishing difference a smile can make in someone’s day.

The times I remember to have a sense of humor about myself.

People—the ones who are passionate; the ones who do jobs I never could, such as home healthcare worker or probation officer; the ones who are incalculably kind; the ones who love me and tell me I’m doing a wonderful job of being human on those days I can’t find that belief anywhere in my universe.

The stunning abundance of all these things in the lives of so many. Here’s hoping that this time next year, those who lack food or love or the chance to express their creativity are sharing in the abundance.