Crash and burn—we are more than what we do

Once upon a time, we all planned to be rockstars, famous artists, novelists, actors and actresses. People told us we were silly. People told us to work toward the achievable, the responsible, and the practical. But what people never helped us learn is how to be comfortable in our own skin, and able to define ourselves by something other than our careers, our bank accounts, or how we compare to others.

As we grow up, we often realize that our hopes and expectations don’t fit on the plate in front of us. Who we are changes—often without informing our dreams. We develop connections with people, and those connections turn into roots, and we are no longer accountable only to ourselves. When we take risks, we are no longer taking them alone. And sometimes, we crash—hard.

We live in a time where it’s possible to share every aspect of our lives with the rest of the world, whether anyone with whom we share cares or not. When we see what our peers share, instead of interpreting it as their personal reflection of their lives, we allow it to be a reflection on our own. And in doing so, we somehow miss some importance facts.

Just as we choose what stories to tell, what photos to share, and how well we are succeeding, we also choose what stories we tell no one, what images we want to hide, and what failures take us into the dark. It’s not that we intentionally lie or mislead, it’s simply a matter of careful editing.

The combination of unrealized expectations, and seeing the edited versions of people with whom we compare ourselves can be a toxic one.

As children, our parents see us as an extension of themselves, and their beacon into the future. They worry that they will fail us if they don’t encourage or push us to do well. They encourage us to achieve more than they did. They want us to be successful. I don’t think it’s maliciousness, but when we attach those efforts to our dreams, we often find ourselves feeling like we failed if we settle or land somewhere short of those dreams. If something doesn’t feel or seem perfect, it can’t be right. It can’t be good enough.

At many different points, our family—especially our pre-child family—looked like “couples goals.” We traveled here and there, flitted off to this concert or that, and appeared to be the picture in the Pottery Barn frame. People didn’t see the unedited version of our lives, and even when we did try to share that version, it didn’t convince people that we were just like everyone else.

When my rock bottom hit six years ago, all the pictures became ugly, distorted, and I felt everything in my life had been a waste. The failure I felt sent me into a tailspin of disillusionment. In my mind, I had done everything I was supposed to do, but I hadn’t achieved any of my career goals, or dreams, and I had sacrificed half of my life on earth spinning my own wheels. All I had that I valued was my husband and my dog. Without those threads, I honestly don’t know if I would have made it. They were the only reasons I got up every day.

After crashing and burning up, all I knew to do was just try to breathe and put one foot in front of the other. It has taken me years of distance to understand that nothing was a waste, and sometimes bad things and situations just happen. I also learned that no career goal was worth sacrificing my own life for. The craziest part of believing that it was, is that the goal had absolutely nothing to do with my dreams. It was an accidental job that I thought I could turn into something more, since I hadn’t succeeded at becoming a famous foreign correspondent or bestselling author.

It’s hard to find the light of what’s real,
when the fog of what you think you should be gets in the way. 

How distorted does your vision of self, and your attachment to unrealistic expectations have to be to try and fill the void of being a famous writer with advancement in a veterinary company? Yeah, that was definitely not working out for me. I found myself nowhere that I had ever wanted or planned to be. I was honestly really good at what I did, but it was also true that I was the only one I should be trying to please. For my whole life, I had believed everything I did needed to be more.

Over the last year or so, I have watched expectations and reality crashing with someone I love. I have watched him struggle with being somewhere he didn’t want to be, the disillusionment and self-doubt that resulted from reaching for something that wasn’t really there, and the displaced dust rise from his thud back to the earth. And just like when I found myself at rock bottom, he is lucky not to be going through it alone either.

The distorted reflection of what success is blinds us to ourselves, and all that we actually have accomplished. It steals the simple satisfaction of doing well at something, even if nobody else is watching or cares. That distortion can drive us to chase after phantom goals—phantoms we never really wanted, but thought would put us further down the path to where we really do want to be.

It’s hard. When we meet new people, one of the first things we ask the other person is what they do. In reality, what most of us do in our working lives is a very tiny line on the map of where we have been or where we are going. And yet, we rely on that line to draw a picture of who and what we are. It’s no wonder it’s so easy to feel incomplete. We leave so much of ourselves out of the picture.

The painful truth is that we aren’t all intended to be rockstars. We’re not all placed on this earth with the capacity to cure cancer. Not every one of us is going to Mars. And somehow, we have to embrace that not being those things doesn’t make us less.

Nearly fifty years in, I still want to be a rockstar—or at least some version of rockstar. So, I in no way exempt myself from moments when I ask if what I am now is all I am ever going to be.

Right now, I am trying to learn how to be a badass mom, to a badass girl, with big challenges, and I am trying to nurse the person I love most through the pain of a jump that landed short of his hopes. I have to lay my daughter’s foundation, while helping my husband rebuild his own. I don’t know how I will define myself a year from now, but who I am now, is vital to who these two people in my life will be, and no matter how much my own dreams mean to me, they’re never going to be as important as what I am doing right now.

Sometimes, it’s okay just to be good at what you do, or even just really working at it. It doesn’t mean you pack away your dreams, it just means you color your hair with red streaks to remind yourself that you’re not done—you’re not in a box. It means that you stay up after everyone else is asleep, and try to apply the concept of “use your words” to yourself, so that flickering dream doesn’t burn out along the way.

It’s up to us how we define ourselves, not to someone else’s perfectly edited image, or the worry that we aren’t living up to some imaginary mark on an imaginary measuring stick. Sometimes, we someone to tell us that, and then someone to keep reminding us.

Coming out of the attic—The weirdness and oldness of being kind.

We live in a world where cynicism has become the norm, and if someone does something ordinary, we often think they have done something amazing, or that they have some underlying agenda. We don’t expect anyone to help us. We don’t expect anyone to think about us. We don’t expect sincere, random kindness. We don’t expect someone to care.

I think we have so disconnected from each other that courtesy, gratitude, kindness, and just simply lending someone a hand has become uncommon. Instead of these ideas being a common thread, they have come to seem bigger than they were ever meant to be. The mere idea that someone would help us out or do something kind for us is so uncommon and unexpected that it feels more like a gift.

I know this, because I feel that way almost every time anyone helps me out in a pinch, or does something for me that I didn’t expect.

Hand made card from Kat Hodes. 

Five years ago, we moved from a large city to a comparatively small town.The town we live in now happens to have been established as a village for retirees who wanted a nice, quiet place to escape to—and to play golf. I almost immediately noticed that people treated each other differently here. I never associated it with anything but the fact that we weren’t in a big city anymore, and this is just the way small towns are. But in waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about it, I think it’s less about geography and more about time.

We bought, and moved into our house here just a couple of months before we had our daughter. Within a day or two, there was a knock at the door, and a plate of homemade baked goods arrived from our neighbors. We had lived in our previous home for about sixteen years, and we barely knew any of our neighbors, so this plate of cookies, and sweets seemed like a big deal.

The weirdness of people being kind didn’t stop there.

In the years since our daughter was born, we have gotten to know both of our next door neighbors very well. Our daughter frequently asks to visit one or the other, and she is almost never turned away. One evening, I was out on an extended errand. My husband had been battling an issue with one of his shoulders, and earlier in the day, had been given a steroid injection to help alleviate the pain. While I was gone, he had a bad reaction to the medication, and became acutely ill. I was more than a half hour away, and he really felt he needed to go to the emergency room. He was at home with our daughter. I wrapped up my errand as quickly as I could, and headed home. Within a few minutes, he texted that our neighbors were watching our daughter, and he was headed down the hill to the emergency room.

All the way back, I kept thinking “It’s so late. I’ve got to get to the house and get our daughter, so our neighbors can go on with their evening.” I drove right past the hospital, and directly to the house. I headed to the neighbors to get our daughter, apologizing for the inconvenience. My neighbor’s response was “Why don’t you go back down, and be with Jeph? Willow’s fine here with us. Don’t worry about it.”

Those precious books from Julie Lancaster.

I think my jaw hit the floor. As it happens, not only were 
they watching our daughter, but their son, who was there for a visit, had driven my husband to the hospital.

Over the last couple of years, they have watched our daughter at least two or three other times. One of those times, there was a knock at the door, and my neighbor said Willow was more than welcome to come over and play with their grandson. I was in yoga pants, with a mom bun, and I am sure looking God-awful. I quickly straightened myself up, and headed over. I didn’t want them to have to manage both their toddler grandson and mine. The least I could do was help out.

When I knocked on the door, my neighbor was surprised to see me.

“Why don’t you just go on home, and take a little bit of time to do whatever you want,” she said. Even now, when I think about it, I feel tears welling up in my eyes. It was the simplest thing in the world to her and her husband, but it felt like everything to me that someone would offer me an hour or two to myself. I don’t remember what I did, but it felt like I had been offered a new dress, shoes, and a night on the town.

My safety pin Lularoes from Amber. 

One day, as I sat at their kitchen table, chatting, I thanked her for letting our daughter just come over and “invade” their home—because when Willow goes to people’s houses, it is often a “home invasion.” My neighbor explained that it was no problem, and that they were returning the gift. When her husband was in the military and they were stationed in Europe, their children had spent almost as much time at the neighbors’ as they had at home. It seemed fair to them that their home should be open to their neighbors’ kids as well.

I could immediately picture her in a little European town, with her kids, and without a lot of personal connections to rely on. How amazing was it that her neighbors had made her children
welcome, and given her the break she really needed?

People just don’t do that kind of thing anymore.

That, I think, is the reason why it seems strange when people do something simple for us. It’s just not something people do nowadays.

When I was young, I spent a lot of truly happy times with one of my grandmas. When I went to her house for a sleepover, she let me be involved in anything she was doing. I was in the middle of her baking, cooking, and sewing. She always had Nesquik strawberry milk mix, and vanilla ice cream for shakes. She always had crunchy peanut butter, and Seven Up.

My grandma worked in a factory for more than twenty years. She always talked to me about the people with whom she worked. She would tell me about the cake that she had taken to work for this person, or the sock monkey she had made for this one’s grandkid. Of course, she would also tell me about the practical joke she had played—leaving a rubber bug on the seat of the woman who worked next to her. My grandma was always doing something for someone else. She didn’t have much—she still doesn’t—but she always had thoughtfulness for other people.

When Ginnifer gives you the moon.

If she found out you liked something, and it was your favorite, she would make sure you had it when you visited, or got it as a gift from her. Sometimes, it would be something silly, like a jar of crunchy peanut butter, because your mom and dad only bought creamy. Another time, she would give you the aluminum tumblers your great-grandparents had that you used when you visited them decades earlier—just because she remembered how enamored of them you were when you drank orange juice out of them in the mornings while you were there. It didn’t matter if you hadn’t thought of something in years, because she would remember that it had once meant something to you.

It’s easy to say that of course she would do those kinds of things for me because she was my grandma, but she would do those kinds of things for anyone. She didn’t have a lot, but if she could do something small to make someone’s day, or help someone out, she would. Even after I grew up, if she ran across something that reminded her of me, or that she thought I might like, she would gift it to me.

It’s rare when people do those kinds of things now. It’s rare to do something for someone without occasion, and that rarity perpetuates our feelings that small, kind gestures are strange.

As often as I have been on the receiving end of these rare gestures, I have probably more frequently been on the giving end. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back, or qualify myself as a professional kindness administrator. I just think that maybe a little of my grandma rubbed off on me. I can’t count many things that my family passed down to me that were positive, so I will happily note anything, no matter how small or quirky.

I am a deep feeler. I see that a lot in my daughter. I form attachments to people quickly, and those attachments often run deeply. I don’t know how to just care a little bit. From time to time, it hasn’t worked out well. I think it’s the strangeness part of kindness that makes people uncomfortable, or uncertain.

I lost my dearest friend for a while, in part because of my inability to measure how much I cared for her, and how much I just wanted to spend time with her. Somewhere along the way, she mistook something I wanted to share with her for something I didn’t intend. She had no idea how important she was to me. It was the start of my learning that I have to make clear to people who I am, and what they mean to me. I consider that lesson a gift, and that gift gave back when we were able to get back in touch with each other, and I could tell her all that had taken for granted that she knew.

I am sure that I have inadvertently “chased off” other friends who didn’t understand me, or who were just used to people doing things for them with an occasion, or an agenda.

People often talk about “old souls.” I don’t think I really considered myself to be one before. I just thought I was weird—that I am weird. I know I my path got twisted by trauma early on, and then twisted more later. I know that continues to color who I am. But I think the “weirdness” of simple kindness, a willingness to lend a hand, or to remind people that they matter is “oldness.”

It comes from thinking in a different time. It comes from the place in your mind that stores the stone you picked up in Limerick, the screw back earrings you fell in love with when you went garage saling with your lifelong best friend and her grandma when you were kids, and the Lularoe leggings with safety pins another friend surprised you with when you were just starting to become an activist. There is nothing that someone does for me that doesn’t get stored in that dusty old place. There is no memory or gesture that doesn’t find its way into that trunk. I don’t know how to quantify or meter out caring about people, and thinking about what I would want or need if I were in their shoes.

Some people might skip the mental “attic” and call me an empath. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I do know that it is sad that we have gotten so far away from realizing we’re all in this life together that we are surprised when someone does something human for us. It’s not a judgment about individuals, backgrounds, or socioeconomic identity—none of those things. It’s not even necessarily a judgment, but an observation.

Does it really require magnanimity to help someone find the right person for a job they need done? It’s maybe a text or a phone call—not crossing a highway in heavy traffic. Is honoring someone for their selfless hard work under sometimes tough conditions generous? Is a friend mentioning something they love, and you diving into the internet to find it, or learn how to make it a grand gesture? Is a friend or neighbor offering to watch your child for an hour or two a wild imposition on them? Should any of these things be strange or uncommon?

Call me old fashioned, but when you look at the world around us, and the direction we seem to be going, isn’t it possible that a few more simple gestures of kindness, or a willingness to help someone out of a spot might actually be the way to really make things great again?

Things don’t get better, and the potential of humankind isn’t realized by keeping our heads down and staying in our own lanes. Our children don’t grow up knowing to step up when a classmate is being bullied when we keep to ourselves. Our friends don’t always know how much we love them if we don’t put ourselves out there and say the words. We don’t live the words so many claim in faith when we just take responsibility for ourselves and expect everyone else to do the same.

If all of these things seem like more, I think no matter how much we have—money, houses, stuff—we don’t have anything at all.

I can’t just watch: the fall of a nation

I have really been struggling the last month or so. The path we are on as a nation has begun to feel as overwhelming to me as it was in the early days following the 2016 election. Just like those days, I have been finding myself daily in tears. I have felt fearful about the future. I have several times thought to myself “But for the grace of god.”

There hasn’t been a day since November 8, 2016, that I didn’t wake up feeling an undercurrent of dread. But with the murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi, and our president’s continued friendship with Saudi Arabia, due to self-interest, my dread has been freshened, and my worry about our path renewed. When it was followed by the bombs sent to Democratic leaders and opposition, people being shot because of their color, and others being killed while they worshipped, I have increasingly felt worn down.

A couple of months ago, I was coming home from a trip to Kansas City. I stopped at a Walmart in a small town to grab something. I had decided that I wanted something fizzy, but not a regular soda, and I wanted a healthy-ish snack that would be easy to eat while driving. After two days of fast food, and too much soda, I just wanted something “nice.”

As I walked toward the entrance, I passed a truck with a bumper sticker declaring mistrust of the mainstream media. The truck was really beat up, and had seen better days. For whatever reason, I imagined what the owner must be like. I thought of a rough, over tanned, middle aged man wearing a Mossy Oak hoodie, and walking stiffly through the aisles of the store. He was a hard worker who had trouble making ends meet, and every time he almost made up a little ground, something would happen, and the little bit of extra cash he had would be gone.

The person I imagined made me feel guilty and sheepish.

I struggled to find anything like the blood orange soda I had picked up at a specialty store in Kansas City, and the only snack that kind of seemed nice was a small bag of Dove dark chocolate covered almonds. Again, my feelings of dissatisfaction about what was there made me feel guilty.

I thought about the owner of that truck again, as I made my way back to my car. I considered that many of the people I disagreed with who are like the truck owner I imagined are in a similar situation to those living in an American inner city. It’s easier and cheaper to grab a soda and a Snickers bar than to find or afford something “nice.”

I quietly vowed to myself that I would be more conscious—that I wouldn’t allow my difference of opinion, beliefs, and circumstances to dehumanize people like that truck owner. It occurred to me that when I slip, and judge someone for who they are in that way, I am no better than they are when they dehumanize blacks, immigrants, refugees, and people who worship differently than they do. I also felt angry that rich powerful men had so successfully exploited these folks by planting and fostering the idea that they are struggling because blacks, immigrants, and refugees are “stealing” something from them. They foster the idea that those people who are different somehow have it better than they actually do.

I still feel that way, even after the violence of the last several weeks, but now, my fear is getting stronger.

Eleven worshippers from The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania we’re shot down during Shabbat Service last weekend. One of those eleven people had survived the Holocaust, 
and come here to live without fear, only to be murdered by another man who hated her because of her faith.

In the early days of this president’s administration, I often saw these quotes turning up:

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” ― Albert Einstein

“If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done during the Holocaust, you’re doing it now.”

In the early days, the hateful rhetoric and actions by the president were strong enough to make many of us feel that we could not just stand by. Many conservatives—Republicans—thought we were being hysterical, or crazy. But we felt we were witnessing the initial steps down a dark path.

I am still trying to uphold the silent vow I made in that Walmart parking lot, but it’s hard. It’s hard to counteract ignorance, fear and hatred with kindness, understanding and forgiveness.

And now, I am so worried. I helped canvass for a local candidate last weekend. Aside from my introversion, and insecurities about talking to people I didn’t know, I also worried—“What if someone gets angry? What if someone has a gun?”

I have been thinking all of this week about the thousands of our troops being sent to the southern border. I thought about the kind of strength and fortitude it would take to stand up and disobey a direct order or deployment. I wondered if there are people strong enough to do what is right.

I thought about the days of the Gestapo rounding up Jews, gypsies, the mentally disabled, and gays to go to concentration camps, or to be killed. I thought about how easy it would be for that to happen here—even without our military’s participation. I thought about the people who always talk about how the Jews were left defenseless because the government disarmed its citizens, and the frequent reminder that this is a perfect example of why gun safety reform is actually an attempt to take away people’s guns. Because there are more guns than Americans, it would be easy for this president’s base of supporters to take action, and start rounding up people in a show of support and strength.

Thinking about all of that, and my feel real sense of fear about that also made me feel angry, because it makes it hard to keep my vow. And it makes me think of the wealthy conservative Republican who just wants to keep every single penny he can grab, and how much he benefits from this level of fear, upheaval, and hatred. I thought about how often they try to take the moral high ground and talk about their love of Christ.

If you’re a Republican in the House or Senate, and you are quietly pretending that the worst isn’t really happening before your eyes, and you don’t need to change course, you are doing, right now, what you would have done in Germany as Adolf Hitler rose to power, and foolishly led its army into Russia. If you are an evangelical Christian ignoring all evidence that the president is black to his core and evil, because he promised to end abortion, you are doing what you would have done when your Jewish neighbor’s were being driven from their homes in cattle cars. If you are turned off by our political system, and think all of the choices are equally bad, and people who want to hold our leadership accountable for homegrown terrorism are crazy, that’s how you would have felt when piles of books were burned in town squares. If you are a white woman voting like your husband, because you don’t want to make waves, and you don’t want your way of life disrupted, you are doing what you would have been doing while children were being ripped away from their mothers as they were led away to die.

There are plenty of people who might read my words and say that I am just extremely paranoid and crazy. I’ll bet there were plenty of people just like me in Germany.

If we allow this downward spiral to continue, we will all be to blame, and the results could be dire. If you ever wondered what you would be doing if you started to see that your country was crumbling in front of you, you’re doing it right now. How will you face yourself? How will you face your children? How will you face the world?