Strive

Photo by @floretflower

I start following her when a gorgeous photo of an old pickup makes its way into my feed; the truck bed filled to the brim with a carefully curated rainbow of dazzling dahlias.  Instagram is my social media of choice; it is all about the pictures.  I follow artists, bakers, foodies, travelers, yogis, writers and photographers, and I’m particularly drawn to women who chronicle the stories of their entrepreneurial highs and lows. I can’t get enough of the intimate details they share about what it is to be a small business owner.

 

I watch her remodel, turning what looks to be an old greenhouse into a workshop where her wares are stored, seed packets pulled and packaged for shipping. I live through the crush of her crashing servers, hear the thunder as she’s nearly trampled in a stampede of on-line orders she can’t fulfill when technology fails her. I feel her humility and despair as she shares her dismay at both her overwhelming success and her inability to keep up with it.

 

Today I question my own success. I drag myself home after dark from my latest assignment, mulling over problems this intense, non-stop day of onion peeling reveals, only to hole up in my office for another hour replying to all the e-mails stuffed in my in-box.  My commute is nearly 4 hours round trip, trapping me in my car with that voice in my head primed to beat me up with a merciless critique of my day.  The one who likes to scream loudly that I’m not enough.

 

I find inspiration in the creativity of my fellow humans on Instagram.  And she doesn’t let me down when I scroll through my feed tonight. She tells the story of her most recent failure and why she plans to jump right back into the fray, quoting “The Man in the Arena”, delivered by Theodore Roosevelt on April 23, 1910 at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. In the few moments it takes me to reacquaint myself with his words, I’m reminded the voice in my head has no business bringing me down, for it can never stand on its own in any arena.  There is no success without failure. I’m out here trying and I’m certain I will pick myself up tomorrow and do it again.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” 

Twinkle

She strategically places timbers around newspaper and a pile of sticks and branches our little boys transport in a small red wagon from the woods to the clearing.  With a match she sets the kindling ablaze and settles in, furiously waving a makeshift bellows she crafts from the cardboard box recently emptied of cans of soda, or some sort of imbibing adult beverage. She’s called the President because no one does this better than she does:  I have learned everything I know about building and maintaining a campfire from her.

   

Sometimes little effort is needed to grow a tiny flame into a steady, crackling blaze. Other times painstaking patience and earnest tenderness are required for flickering sparks to catch and finally roar. 

She’s invited countless new friends to join this warm circle around her fires.  These flames have witnessed the gamut of emotions:  Raucous laughter, shameful admissions, fierce debates, bitter regret, hopeful promise and wild celebration. If they could talk they would surely tell the stories of joy and pain, fears and dreams, aches and desires both sated and starved.

Light fascinates me with its determination and deference, its positivity and promise.  Gleam, Efficacy and Trove are past year-end ponderings I’ve posted about glittering, sparkling, glorious light. My favorite message this year, by a landslide, comes from Krista Tippett’s “Becoming Wise”. She connects a plethora of fascinating interviews into a collective wisdom for our time, and maybe for all time, including the recounting of Rachel Naomi Remen’s take on “Birthday of the World”, a Jewish teaching about repairing the human condition. It’s the story of how a giant ray of light creates the world, and soon after, an accident breaks this light into countless sparks that bury themselves inside every person on the planet. It’s our responsibility as humans to uncover this hidden light in others and bring the world back together again.

I read this section of the book over and over; it is a lodestone for me.  This is a message I’m compelled to spread, and my Christmas card is the vehicle. I love that while this story’s roots are Jewish its meaning is religion agnostic. It speaks to the power we have as individuals.  It is proof, yet again, we are enough to change the world if we each do our part. I am willing to bet this light buried within us is the powerful gift, unique to each of us, that when unlocked and released fulfills our purpose.  Many of us spend a lifetime searching for this.  What if those around us chose to listen, to question, to seek to understand us, and in doing so helped us find and release our light? 

I want to say now, more than ever, this message is needed and should be heeded.  But instead I have to believe each generation’s storytellers have felt this just as strongly as I do in this moment.

   

It is hard work, striving to listen for common ground, seeking the light I know is inside every individual I encounter. It requires extraordinary self-control to tamp down my own opinions, especially when I’m cleaved to them so completely, and make room for another to unleash his equally passionate beliefs.

The light within us, like the light of the campfire, is ever-changing.  Maybe this is what makes us so complexly compelling and wonderfully sparkling as humans. At times we flicker nervously, struggling to survive in challenging conditions; other times we are a stoic, steady burn.  We can soar to spitting and crackling heights, and die down to smoldering embers.  Sometimes we’re certain even the glint is gone, only to be surprised when the wind kicks up igniting us back to life.  We all have a spark inside, this I know for sure.  The question is how do we find the courage to raise our voices, to put ourselves out there, own who we are and what we’re about, and allow those around us to help stoke that tiny flame into a brilliant blaze?  As I reflect on what I want to be different in my life in the coming year, answering that question becomes paramount, for this is where it becomes obvious we are enough.

Believe that light inside of you is bright enough. 

The light of the world breaks open,

Buries fragments within us all.

When we choose to discover,

This light in each other,

We heal the world,

We answer our call.

Relinquish

She’s cited this research many times, my former weekend running partner, the woman in lockstep with me all 13.1 miles of my one and only half-marathon:  It doesn’t matter whether we walk or run, it’s the miles we cover that keep us healthy and fit, not how fast we cover them.

Every time I see her she tells me the same thing. She’s a clinical massage therapist, trained to unfurl and smooth out the muscles we stiffen and shorten in the name of physical fitness:  The best exercise for our bodies is to stretch for 20 minutes daily.

 

By my rough calculations of classes attended, I’m pretty certain I’ve heard this no less than 300 times; it’s the mantra each instructor repeats verbatim in the opening posture of the Bikram Yoga series: “Breathe as much as possible, as long as possible, as slow as possible.” 

I know they’re right. I’ve realized the benefits of being kind to my body, heeding the warnings my knee began to whisper eight years into constant running. And yet there’s a part of me still wincing in guilt and shame as I admit I’ve quit because I needed to dial it down a few notches.

It’s not just the way I look at exercise.  It’s the way I look at life:  The growth strategies I’m plotting for my clients, the search my boys are on for the right pair of wings. While I know it all takes time, I can’t help but feel like I should be moving things along faster. I can’t seem to accept that slower is better, that less is actually more.

 “Where has the year gone?” we ask in puzzled amazement.  We’re here, on the brink of New Year’s Day, and can’t understand what happened to the last 12 months.  It seems a little ironic to be so surprised time moves quickly when we spend so much of our time with the accelerator pressed to the floor.

 

We are conditioned to attack life with speed and intensity.  We want to graduate early, win all our races, ascend up the corporate ladder on jet packs, we want our relationships to zoom into commitments, our families to grow on demand.  The ticking of a biological clock is deafening. The knell of the grave is terrifying.  What if we die before we’ve completed the bucket list?

I wonder if life gives the appearance of moving so fast because we’re so unwilling to accept a slowdown.  Is it a vicious cycle?  If we stopped trying to cram so much in, stopped trying to be so many things to so many people, if we stopped intervening in the name of moving life along, would we actually feel like life moves itself along at a more reasonable pace?

 

What if, instead of shaking down the tree of life for all the fruit we can knock loose, we could learn to rest and reflect in the shade of its branches until the fruit falls on its own?

In 2017 I want to become comfortable with slowing down, with giving life the time it needs to reveal all it has in store for us. Ultimately it means giving up this illusion of control I think I have over the universe, and calling a truce on what I know to be true:   Slower is better.   

Cloying

“Hurry and look at the moon while it’s still low,” the text message implores me, in the secret language spoken between my boy and me. I can’t count how many years it’s been since we made this satellite our own.  It’s always felt mystical, this idea that even when we’re apart we’re looking at the same moon. I dash out the door; this isn’t my first sighting.  I know how fast she rises, how quickly she shrinks, how critical to catch her in her exact moment of ephemeral beauty.

Tonight just may be the most perfect night of the year, certainly of this particular autumn to date.  To quote a not-so-prolific songwriter of my youth, “there's a warm wind blowin' the stars around.”   It’s nearly 80 degrees on the backside of October. The brisk breeze rustles persistently, attempting to coax from the branches leaves still reluctant to share their brilliant fall color.

I spot her, just above the trees, at the end of my backyard pond.  Her light shimmers in the water, her shape fades, then brightens in the clouds. That my son finds this piece of our cosmos as intriguing as I do and chooses to engage me is no small feat.

It’s not just the moon that’s so magical to me, it’s this seemingly insignificant yet everlasting connection we’ve made, my boy and me.  

Hail

“You didn’t win,” she winces. I wish I had one word for the expression on her face as she skillfully rips off this band-aid.  It’s the cringe that goes with “ouch”, along with the assurances that everything will be okay, yet surprisingly I don’t feel any sting.  Watching television and movie awards shows as a kid, I used shake my head at the celebrities who would say what an honor it is just to be nominated.  Who are they kidding, I would think to myself, how can anyone be happy without the win?

Receiving an award can be both monumental and mundane.  We complain that our kids don’t know how to lose gracefully; having grown up in a world where everyone gets some kind of token just for showing up.  The taut tape marking the finish line has never come close to grazing my sweaty jersey, yet I’ve got quite the collection of medals from 5Ks, relay races, and my one and only half marathon.

There is no doubt we are a population starved for appreciation. The annual physical is about identifying the markers of good health:  Cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure.  Everything has a tolerance, a range that’s considered healthy.  I think about how we might measure the levels of appreciation an individual absorbs into her being. I have a feeling we’re all achingly deficient. Yet trying doesn’t seem to be enough anymore absent of stellar results, leaving awards for participation feeling false and hollow.

   

Maybe we have blurred the lines between true competition and recognition for the effort?  Between achieving the desired results and the experience we deliver as we strive to earn them?  Between actually winning and creating a winning experience?

When we compete in a race, a game or some other kind of challenge parameters for winning are clear, calculating results is objective and transparent.  There can only be one winner, and therefore one prize. Recognition is an entirely different animal. There are no points to tally or time to keep. Selection committees evaluate subjective submissions.  There can be heavy debate to get to the award of the prize.

In competition not only do we know who we are up against, we know we are in the race. With recognition, in the name of surprise, the winners are often clueless until the moment the award is in their hands, and all others who were under consideration never even know they got a nod. In both instances the golden statue is bestowed to a winner, yet recognition has the ability to reward so many more than does pure competition. We fail miserably with recognition, and miss out on huge opportunity, when we don’t notify the nominees that they are (or were) actually in the running.

The beautiful thing about recognition is that it occurs not just in the award, but in the nomination itself.  It is not only an honor to be nominated, it is an absolute gift to know someone out in your universe believes enough in you, notices what you bring independent of the results, and appreciates what you are doing enough to take the time to flag you for consideration.

Recognition looks to inspire, to reinforce positive behavior and habits, to help us feel good about ourselves and the way we go about doing what we do.  It’s a catalyst spurring us on our path to greatness. It coaxes out of us those unique qualities we’re tempted to hold back for fear we won’t be accepted; the magic that allows us to achieve our full potential.

 

 “You didn’t win,” she winces.  Yet the minute the words come out of her mouth I know I’ve already won.  I’ve won because she wants so badly for me to hear her words of recognition. I’ve won because she knows that in order to share with me her appreciation for all she sees worthy of winning, she needs to be brave enough to tell me I lost. I've won because she inspires me to press on.

 

Bellows

I sort of gave up on her.  No, not sort of, I really did give up on her.  My house, that is.  She is heaven on earth when we move in, just a babe at barely 5 years old.  I fall so in love with her abundance of big windows I can’t bear (or afford) to cover them. The regal pedestal sink in the powder room and the tub in the master bath made to soak a mermaid’s tail make me feel like a newly crowned princess not quite sure she’s deserving of such luxury. Fifteen years later the honeymoon is over. She’s lost her polish, her girlish figure, doesn’t bother with make-up anymore and sits around in yoga pants like she’s been living with an absent spouse, the one who walks in the door and doesn’t really see her anymore.

 

I’m a designer by both education and birth, but only glimpses of this are evident anymore between these tired old walls.  She’s weathered climate change over the past decade, much like slow global warming breeds wicked flooding, tumultuous natural disasters borne by a family reinventing themselves. We’d become reclusive by our own standards and bad behavior. While the high water has long since receded, we’re still picking through the wreckage, bewildered at times about out how to let the outside world in.

He shows up on my doorstep one crisp and cold March day, a friend of a friend of some random repair guy Nick plucks from the phonebook, and he immediately breathes new life into us. I’m a fixer by nature, of complex business operations and relationship challenges, yet I don’t have a clue how to fix anything with my hands. He does. My house knows this and I can feel her sigh in relief.

Today he and I are in the midst of creating a new bathroom.  I say “he and I” loosely, as he is pulling me along.  He is doing the work and I am letting him.  It’s all I’m capable of after the storms the house and I have weathered.  I awake in the morning, pretty regularly now, recalling snippets of dreams about being exposed.  Remodeling scares me.  It’s something about tearing off the packaging, the façade, whether it’s shiny and new or dull from years of wear, until all that is visible are the bare bones.  The flaws in construction are revealed. It’s time to critique quality at the very core. Will she measure up?

We are learning how to work with each other.  He is frustrated when I won’t describe my style.  It’s always been hard for me to ask for what I want.  But here it is:  I am vintage, retro, a subtle mixing of unexpected textures and patterns.  I’m bright colors, mercury glass, shiny metal and crystal light fixtures.  I’m tiny glass tiles requiring extra grout and care to install.  I’m a statement and I am quality. When the next couple tears down what we create, I want to reveal good bones eliciting nothing short of admiration, and work that demonstrates we care about what’s on the inside; we do the right thing even when no one is watching.

He believes in prep work.  He indulges me with my design composed of three sizes and types of tile, drawing life-size elevations on the walls until we’ve worked out a finished product maximizing factory cuts while still resembling the vision in my head. He temporarily wires my light fixtures and mounts them at standard height so I can take a look with the white-washed walnut and chrome mirrors to make the final call on placement.  He’s been doing this forever; he’s experienced every customer revision and regret.  His patience for this project, for my house, and for me is boundless.

As we get reacquainted, whittling away at the work she needs, I see her possibilities and I’m falling in love with her all over again. She’s been a dependable safe place, harboring me and mine, before I knew him, against the relentless pounding from a sea I wasn’t sure would ever calm.  There’s a part of me wanting to abandon her and all evidence of the struggle.  And there’s another part of me compelled to restore her to a glory so richly deserved, tenderly removing her rags, touching her core with his hands and rebuilding her with the same degree of care and courage that goes into rebuilding me.

He wonders sometimes how I can put so much of myself into something I’m going to sell to a stranger who may want to dress her in completely different clothes.  And I don’t know how I can possibly give her, when she’s so wanting and warranting of a new wardrobe, one that’s just basic and plain. She's so much more than that, and so am I.

Suffrage

Being the political junkie he is he experiences the moment live, his television tuned in to any and all coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month.  Me, I google it.  But I can’t say it’s any less powerful on the small screen:  The faces of the 43 men who have served as President of the United States, culminating in Hillary Clinton breaking the glass as our first female nominee. She is a symbol for how far we women have come.

Yet in some ways our progress feels glacial:  The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified on this day in 1920.  It’s been nearly 100 years since women in America won the right to vote, and we’re just now getting a shot at the highest office in the land. Really?  But when I think about the resistance we’ve had to fight, the power and passion around denying women this right, and the behavior change still unfurling today to fully embrace all it encompasses, I’m not surprised.

 

I can’t say I appreciated the magnitude of the movement until watching “Suffragette”, a movie about the battle for the same in Britain.  Women weren’t just looking to cast a vote, they were second-class citizens seeking the power to change laws materially diminishing the quality of their lives. And those few but mighty voices leading the charge paid a heavy price for the justice they would not be denied.  Getting to where we stand today is in large part thanks to these courageous women willing to speak up for human rights, to repeatedly raise their voices until they are heard, to stay strong in spite of threats to their existence.

Our Constitution grants us freedom of speech in the very first amendment.  Each one of us has the right to say what is on our minds without fear of retribution, no matter how eloquently or tactlessly our words spill out of our mouths.  I hope that every one of us exercising this right demonstrates common courtesy and respect, but it’s not a requirement.  And somewhere along the way those with opposing views decided it is okay to squelch, even persecute those invoking this basic right.

Voicing a contradictory point of view can be a lonely place to be. A modern-day case study, “Shut Up and Sing” is the 2006 documentary film about the Dixie Chicks in the aftermath of a political opinion expressed from the stage of a concert hall that threatens to ruin the most successful female band of its time. A few small words strung together irrevocably alter lives in a flash:  For the Dixie Chicks it is, “I’m ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.”  For those of us less famous, it is words like “I’m going to work for the competition.” or “I’m leaving you.”

  

Sometimes we know exactly what we’re doing, considering carefully our statements, contemplating expression until we’re ready to accept the consequences we foresee. Other times we forget we’re on a stage, or we’re the understudy shoved into the limelight at the last minute.  We underestimate the fear or anger our voices will unleash. Or we don’t expect our whisper to be overheard. May it’s not until we hear ourselves speak the words out loud that we realize our conviction.  When we’re called out we have two choices:  We can scurry back into the protective shell of the mainstream, scripting a half-hearted apology about how we didn’t really mean it and we’re deeply sorry.  Or we can choose to stand our ground, to own the elephant we’ve just put on the table, and to manage the fall-out our gumption creates. The repercussions aren’t always anticipated, fair or deserved, but they are there all the same, and our lives don’t move forward until we deal with them.

We take a giant risk when we utter an opposing opinion, watching doors close on resources and relationships we’re not certain we can live without. And sometimes we close the doors ourselves creating a self-imposed solitude borne from shame. It’s pretty normal to go underground for a while, to wonder:  Was it smart to speak up?  Maybe I should have just kept quiet?  But those of us with true conviction won’t back down.  We can’t. We’ll never again be the person we were before we showed ourselves. And so we begin the long process of reinvention to become a truer version of ourselves.

For many of us, the lengths to which our opponents will go to punish us for our views only make our voices louder.  The suffragettes became more determined than ever, and so did the Dixie Chicks. I’m incredulous, really, when he speaks of a friend who won’t vote for Hillary because she is a woman.  Tell me she lacks experience, tell me she’s focused on the wrong issues; tell me anything about her views, her record, her network, her approach.  But don’t tell me she hasn’t earned your vote because she’s a woman.

While it can take a while to embrace it, there is an undeniable peace and a power that can never be wrestled away from us when we stand up for what we believe in.  In being so fiercely and painfully heard, we find ourselves. Our world does in fact change when we raise our voices, yet what we don’t expect when we raise our voices is we change, too.