We recently went to my 10 year high school reunion. I wasn’t going to go, but then Nils pep-talked me into it.
I’m really glad I went, but I am still the same shy person I was. So it is still tough to have conversations with strangers… yet I still thrive on genuine human conversation, and during the time I was at the reunion, there was a lot of that going on. I wonder what our lives will look like in another 10 years.
Mykala and I took a 10+ mile bike ride from Prospect Park, down University, across the River on Hennepin and over part of the Cedar Lake trail through the north part of Minneapolis. It was in the mid 70s outside and the sun wasn’t yet setting but was low enough in the sky to turn things nice colors. Target Field was hosting a Twins game. It wasn’t too humid or windy or hilly or buggy. We just sailed along on our wheels.
We worried about one another, as we always do — I tried to increase our cross section to make us more visible to car drivers by riding on the far outside part of the bike lane, and Mykala tried to get me to fall into line so we’d be safely out of harm’s way. We called out directions and cautions to one another; nothing planned, simply habitual.
I like going no-handed, and with toe cages you can keep pedaling along, sometimes for miles, without touching the handlebars. I love leaning back in the saddle to rest my neck and arms; makes me feel like a superhero, gliding effortlessly along the asphalt.
I love being outside.
I was just reading Spirituality and religion in oncology (Peteet, J. R., & Balboni, M. J.(2013). CA: a cancer journal for clinicians.), which quantifies the positive effects of going beyond the physiology of cancer to the person enduring the disease, especially at the end of their life. Here’s a part that struck me:
Recognizing the broad relevance of existential concerns in oncology, physicians and nurses interested in providing spiritual care can begin by assessing the spiritual dimension of their patients’ responses to questions that address these in the domains of:
identity/worth (“What is my place in the world?”)
hope (“What can I hope for?”)
meaning/purpose (“What is most important in life?”)
relatedness (“Who can I count on?”)
I was thinking, though, shouldn’t those questions be ones we ask our entire lives? It would sort of be like trying to figure out at the last bite of dessert why you were eating dinner — was it just so you wouldn’t feel hungry or were you celebrating with people you love?
Ok, have a seat. This is going to take a little longer than my heavily-edited moderately-stilted prose attempts at wit, wisdom, and condensed life experience. That stuff falls flat more often than not, anyway.
Some things have happened over the past few days that knit themselves into a little ball that I feel the need to tug the strings of. You know that part in a TV show where you know it’s the season finale because you can just feel the writers pulling hard at these strings they’ve strung between characters? I always imagine a sweater, and you have a hold of a few of the pieces and you keep pulling and the fabric is bunching and warping in places. You really see how it is all connected. Ok, this is possibly not edited enough. Starting again…
This past Wednesday through Saturday I went with Mykala and my parents and sister up to a beautiful cottage on Lake Superior. The moment we walked in and I realized I could see straight from the front door, through the back of the house, to the shore I knew it was going to be great. Though we had some very nice outings, this wasn’t a Disneyland packed-with-activities vacation. You know what we took time to do? Sleep. Make coffee the slow way. Read. Stretch. Look through the telescope out into the bay. Talk. Play a form of charades called Guesstures.
Mykala says during a true vacation, you “vacate your life”, and that is part of the magic of it. Stripped of routine and obligation, you climb out of the accretions built up around you and become more of yourself. This trip I was able to actually relax and stop worrying long enough for this to happen. And though I have frequently said it, I finally felt the truth of this: there is not and should not be a destination. Now, I was not laboring under the illusion that financial independence or any other goal like home ownership or a piece of real estate further from the interstate was going to automatically confer a zenlike state of happiness, but I think my instinct still said that that was the case. But there can not be a once I get there any longer. I spent 25 years with that structure: once I get to summer vacation, once I get to high school, once I get to college, once I get through this semester, once I graduate, once I get into dental school, once I get OUT of dental school, once I get X level of experience doing dentistry.
I wish there was a better way to say “the journey is the destination” but I think that phrase can be taken a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way: oh right, enjoy the journey, yep. Now excuse me while I agonize every Sunday night about the week ahead, lose sleep over things I can’t control, become preoccupied with those I can, and quite thoroughly and completely fail to enjoy whatever is happening at the moment. The right way: recognize the tremendous difficulty of enjoying anything during the moment it is happening. Structure your life to maximize these moments. Struggle. Reassess. Keep trying. Let’s see, if I minimize my debt, work becomes less stressful. If I expect less from my job, I won’t find a hole where I seek fulfillment.
These pure moments of insight are so damn fleeting that is enough to drive you crazy! There’s a delicate little bubble and inside is the truth and value in stepping off the treadmill of More. Then that bubble immediately collapses under the pressure of the exigencies of one’s return to normal life. I do not know how to do it, but the fact I’m getting closer to keeping that bubble seems promising.
Simple to understand, maddening to apply: “There is no goal. There is you and now, and those you have.”
Having covered the “no goal”, I turn to the “those you have.” Notice I never said “once I get a lovely, wonderful girlfriend.” That’s because that’s a goal involving people, which seem to be more rather than less valid the more you pursue them. I can look you in the eye and say with total certainty that my life would be worse had I not met such a wonderful woman, and had we not thrown our lots in together.
And that brings us even closer to the lynchpin: you can pursue wordly goals at the expense of others (they are always at the expense of others), and the magic is, you can hold them so tight they’ll never leave you. You can insure that bank account or that building or that business, you can invest and save with such tenacity that the numbers in your accounts always rise. You can surround yourself with all of it, and it. will. be. there. until you die. But your efforts with those around you can disappear in an instant. You become vulnerable when you say: “Wife/sister/mother/father/brother/friend, I will give of myself to you, I will commit to your wellbeing. Be happy when you are sad, elated when you’ve found joy. And I know I will lose you.”
My cousin Beth died recently. Having cut ties with our families years ago, she passed before any last words of resolution could be exchanged. Mykala’s grandma has cancer. My dad has a type of cancer. Nils’ dad Garry has cancer, a tenacious and cruel variety that is stealing him away from his family day by day, without the mercy of a clean break. Driving home today, I just found out that John’s wife Kellie, her brother Keith just passed away. She learned sign language for him, and they talked that way. I was at John and Kellie’s wedding, and Keith’s speech was wonderful.
There is no way to vacate the part of us that has lost. We can leave behind the bank accounts and businesses, but those we know and those we lose are part of us. I may not be able to introduce folks to Garry Espe or Keith Rosenberg or Beth McAulay, but I can tell you what they were like. And all of us who are left wrap our tattered threads around one another, and we fill in those spots of the tapestry. There is no insurance, no assurance, no certainty, and I wish that wasn’t what made these people all the more important, but it is. It has to be. And it makes me sad and happy to have known who I have, and sad to lose, and happy to love, and sad when I turn away.
And I guess that’s what I learned on vacation.
I looked down while waiting at a stoplight today and somehow was surprised to see a wedding ring on my finger, dress clothes on myself, sitting in a car I own, coming from a full time job.
Where did the time go?
If your goal is to impress, you’ll never stay motivated.
And it was only at day’s end
Upon hearing joy in her laughter
That the sting of the day
Healed to a scar
According to Mark Seeley at MPR, these first 6 days of June have been the “least sunny ever recorded” — and I believe it. I hope the days get sunnier before they start to get shorter later this month.
It’s been raining, dark, and cold all day but when I arrived home today, Mykala had put together an indoor picnic. I walked in the door and there was the love of my life in a floppy sun hat, wearing picnic clothes, cold drink in hand, Beach Boys playing in the background, picnic blankets on the floor, Roman Holiday queued up on the television.
We’ve been trying to figure out our budget and our next place to live and I’ve been drowning in details of financial planning and adulthood. Yet, if we’re safe and warm and happy and in love, well, then those are just details, aren’t they?
When I was in the college dorms from 2003 to 2007, students could freely exchange music between their libraries: I’ve ended up with over 20,000 songs this way, over 2 straight months of music. Running low on hard drive space, I recently took a closer look at my music library. I’ve listened to 7,033 of those songs. The most number of plays on a single track is 3572—that is the pink noise loop from SimplyNoise I used to block ambient noise when I was in school and studying in noisy public spaces. Anyhow, in college I grabbed entire discographies from artists just because I thought I should like them. The Who. Bob Dylan. 146 Bob Marley tracks.
Critics rave about these artists, all of the musicians they’ve influenced and the paths they’ve pioneered. I just… didn’t like a lot of the music. There were a few nice songs, but I had these enormous, comprehensive collections from artists I didn’t even really like. I just had them because of this powerful should. If only I had time to understand, to listen, I’d learn to like them, right? I was the problem, the music is spectacular. I’m annoying and boring, the music is enthralling and exciting. The music is great, I’m awful. Yes?
Well, it turns out I just don’t like some songs.
I’m such a peacemaker, a compromise and consensus-seeker, that I sometimes don’t even have enough confidence in my position to stubbornly disagree. I’ve always feared that somehow my position, if frankly stated in opposition to another’s, would destroy any potential for an amiable relationship. It’s not true. I may not like it, but it’s the human condition: we disagree and it is OK.
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