37days

Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, you and I

If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let's ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big world out there, ripe for the dancing and for the floating. That's real air.

J is for jijnasu

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan

In 2008, I want to be a jijnasu, a seeker of wisdom, an inquirer.

When I was preparing to talk with Billy Collins the other day (doesn’t that sound casual?), Mr Brilliant was holding the paper bag while I hyperventilated, metaphorically speaking, helping me think about what questions I wanted to ask the dear poet of my dreams.

“Ask him what his favorite word is,” he said, excitedly. Mr Brilliant is a great cataloguer of such information.

I blinked at him.

Tess ran by. “Tess!” he shouted as she sped by. “What’s your favorite word?”

“WHY!” she yelled without stopping, making a tiny circular path from living room to family room to dining room and back. Just as Mr Brilliant started to answer her, she shouted again: “WHY IS MY FAVORITE WORD!”

He beamed.

“What a fantastic favorite word,” he murmured, contentedly. “You should tell Billy Collins that ‘why’ is your four-year-old’s favorite word.”

I blinked at him.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that right after I pass out when he answers the phone.”

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

And no, that title isn't a reference to overeating.

In the U.S., today is Thanksgiving Day (and my friend Karrie Manson's birthday, so a shout out to her for being so powerful that the nation stops when she ages). This year, I'm not spending Thanksgiving at a long table full of vegan alternatives to turkey, but hunched over a computer screen like a madwoman, panicked at my book deadline next week and snarking at my family when they breathe too loudly. What was I thinking?, I'll be thinking, in one of those beautiful infinite regresses of thinking, the fear that emerges from finality, essays congealed into book form.

Soon, I'm sure I'll give in to the overwhelming urge to eat cranberry sauce from a can, as detailed last year this time on 37days,and will pop the Tofurky into the oven. But not before being thankful, and deeply so, for all of you who come here and read my few words and email and comment and hold me up when I'm falling. My deepest thanks.

My glorious friend Sid Jordan sent a Thanksgiving message this morning that I'd like to share with you this fine day. Let us lift each other up.

Becoming Larger Than Our Skin Allows

We seek metaphors
To describe our friendships
But alas, even these fall short of our true emotions
So we joke, tell stories, and hold each other
Accepting the inner weaving of our connections
As part of the evolving tapestry of our lives

What is amazing to me
Is how little it takes to impact another human being
In profound and deep ways
Simply by being present
By witnessing each others stories
By honoring each others thoughts and feelings

It is physically possible to lift each other up
And hold each other under a starlit sky
Enough to feel the power of the universe enfold us
Wrapping us up with simultaneous feelings of love and immensity
Yes, we are only a speck in the whole of things
Yet, our love mingled with the love of others
Is more immense than we can ever intellectually know

Our ability to tap into the collective energy of the world
Allows us to transcend our language
Each of us becoming larger than our skin allows
Each of us finding power
From the source of our humility and awe
But mostly from each other
As our hands work to lift each other higher

-Doc Klein

Leave your base camp

“Money often costs too much.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last Tuesday, I found myself in the unusual position of being at the very top and very bottom of Maslow’s Happy Hierarchy of Needs at exactly the same time.

I can’t recall ever being in two places at one time like this, not since 1986 when I was in Scranton with a young Chinese man who was threatening to defect, watching him waver as he decided between two distinctly different worlds.

Find your saxophone

"Follow your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it." -Joseph Campbell

If you’ve read 37 days before, you might have picked up on my love affair with actor Johnny Depp. Beautiful, talented Johnny. Quixotic, funny, odd, quirky Johnny. Did I mention beautiful? Ooh-la-la.

What can I say? There’s no defending it. I won’t pretend it makes sense, this long-distance obsession from North Carolina to France, this enormous, smothering, consuming disdain for that little fragile wispy twig of a French blonde he keeps taking to awards shows and having children with for some unimaginable reason. Why, I could take her out in the blink of an eye, the bat of a more well-nourished eyelash, were I the least bit inclined toward violence, which - of course - I am not, having attended a Quaker college (whose football team was paradoxically the "Fighting Quakers," but I digress).

Celebrate every orange flag

“The truth is that everything that can be accomplished by showing a person when he's wrong, ten times as much can be accomplished by showing him where he is right. The reason we don't do it so often is that it's more fun to throw a rock through a window than to put in a pane of glass.” - Robert T. Allen

Three stories, one theme:

The first story

One afternoon a few weeks after my older daughter started first grade, I picked her up from school and drove to my husband’s bookshop to say hi. When we pulled up, John ran out to see us, leaning in the car window to give Emma a kiss. “How was school today, Buddy?” he asked.

“I had my first test today!” she exclaimed brightly. (How wonderful, I thought. A whole lifetime of testing has opened up for you…).

What was our first question to her?  “How’d you do?” (Yes, let’s get straight to the bottom line.)

Don't stop to wave, you'll drown

“Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, “You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission.” –Eve Ensler

This week, I watched a videotape of Eve Ensler speaking at the 2004 Omega Institute “Women in Power” conference. Ensler is a playwright most famous for “The Vagina Monologues,” which has played in 76 countries, with 35 translations, in places like Karachi and New Delhi and Cairo. It’s been described as a poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery.

Finding your (com)passion

”Do not ask what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.”

--Thurmond Whitman

 That quote came to me from someone I don’t know, quite by accident. A few weeks ago, it came across my email inbox on a listserv about diversity in architecture.

The woman who sent it wrote about feeling for a long time that her work as an interior designer didn’t really add value to the world – that it wasn’t going to change the world, solve world hunger, or promote world peace -- and that she felt bad about that…until she read this quote and realized that her work made her feel alive, and that was quite enough.

This quote made me stop and think about my own work. Like her, I feel inadequate sometimes—that my work doesn’t light the world on fire, that I should be doing more and that I should be making a bigger contribution to the world. But Mr. Whitman has a point. If more of us followed our real dreams and passions rather than those created to impress others, without worrying what others think or whether it’s good enough or important enough…imagine not only how freeing that would be for us personally, but how much more positive energy it would create in the world, too. What makes you come fully alive? Are you doing it? Or are you postponing it until you finish doing the work you think the world expects of you?

That was my original message for this newsletter. However, the recent news in Southeast Asia has caused me to think about another derivative of the word “passion.” And that is “compassion.” Focusing on my life’s passion seems pretty high up on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs when there are mothers wandering the beaches of Sri Lanka every morning waiting for the waves to bring their children back, and millions of people without food, water, or a place to live. And so, as we find our passion, let’s find (and act on) our compassion as well.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

Compassion is the deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. How are you showing compassion to others around you? If your energy is centered only on yourself and your own needs, use this week to examine ways you can externalize some of that passion to help others.

Every day this week, show compassion to another human being—whether a phone call to reconnect with someone who needs you, a donation of time or money to a charity that helps people in real need, reading what you can about the people affected by the tsunami disaster and how you can help, an unexpected thank you to someone, or taking the time for a real conversation (without distractions) with someone who needs to talk.

It’s not enough to feel compassion; we must act on it, as Rabbi David J. Wolpe reminds us: “There is a story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. ’Dear God,' he cried out, 'Look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in the world. Why don't you send help?' God responded, 'I did send help. I sent you.'” By showing compassion, you may re-find your own passion.