I took this selfie 11 days before today, with today being my 57th birthday. Nine days before the selfie, I was at a lecture by one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott. One audience member asked how best to cope with friends and family who have "problematic" world views. Lamott said that it's important not to allow those who hold opinions different from ours, to get us to hate them. She also said that if God exists, that God loves the cutest little newborn baby that we can think of, as much as God loves Donald Trump.
ESTHER PEREL
Five days prior to the Lamott lecture, I pushed the pause button on the relationship with a man I love. A man who votes differently than me, and who understands my current and urgent need to experience the forest of aloneness. How I ever ended up loving him is not as difficult as I once imagined it to be. This ability to love in spite of differences is brilliantly articulated by Esther Perel during one of her recent podcast episodes where a young woman calls in to discuss her main life problem: her father, who she wants to bring into therapy sessions to have him realize how he needs to change. Change or what? Change ... or ... or ... or no contact. She explains that her father doesn't vote the way she does, nor does he fly the PRIDE flag like she does. And also that she has suffered trauma throughout her life because of his controlling ways. When Perel asks for an example, the woman explains that on one Saturday morning when she was a teen, he repeatedly bounced a tennis ball on her closed bedroom door to try and get her up and moving.
PREACH & PRACTICE
Perel then asks the young woman to describe how she handles life challenges whenever they emerge. And the woman says that the only person she calls whenever she is in need is her father. And that there is never a time when he is not there for her. That whenever she is in need, he rushes to her to love and support her, and to hold her dear. She knows without a doubt that he loves her and she loves him. In spite of the traumatizing tennis ball. In spite of how he marks his ballot.
Perel observes the irony of a young woman who belongs to a generation that seeks (or perhaps demands) acceptance of differences while requiring some people—usually those closest to them, to rigidly conform to views and style that are not theirs. Preaching the fluidity while practicing the binary.
PRAY WALK READ
Another question that Anne Lamott responded to was what she does in order to cope with life. And she said: "Pray. Walk. Read." Curiously, she did not say "Write." Which makes me wonder whether writing is a byproduct of praying, walking, and reading. Making me wonder even more: if I want writing to become my main byproduct, what ought my three Lamotty practices be? So far, it's: Paint. Read. Exercise. Eat. Cook. Clean. Organize. Pray. Cry. Ponder. Sing. I know. It's too long, so. I need to whittle it down.
Toward the end of her talk, Lamott praised Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Demon Copperhead (inspired by Charles Dickens). It is a book that gets me not to hate but to love a white male born in Appalachia to a drug-addicted mama, and his brutal destiny that has largely been characterized by the world as "trash," "hillbilly," "hick," "Deplorable." That Lamott praised this book made me squeal in delight as it is the one that my book club selected as our most recent read. It reminds me of a passage in the new book Filterworld, where its author Kyle Chayka describes how as an adolescent, he loved a particular Manga series. Years later, he learned that that series was influenced by a Haruki Murakami book, an author who he has come to enjoy as an adult.
Hope.
Hope?
Yes, hope. Because when I pursue what I really want (even if there is a mess of books and clothes and music and paint flying everywhere during the pursuit), what I ultimately find isn't chaos. It's beautiful, surprising, paradoxical, ironic, mind-blowing order. There is thread. There is connection. There is fluidity. Lamott. Perel. Kingsolver. Copperfield. Dickens. Chayka. Murakami. Well-read. Unread. Degreed. Self-taught. Democrat. Republican.
Eleven days from now, I'll be way past the one-month mark of confronting my aloneness. I bet I will feel exactly one-month-strong and one-month-wobbly as I continue to Read. Cry. Ponder. Clean.
And everything in between.
