Minkgirl Muses

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Today is the first day of spring on most calendars. It is also my half-birthday. That cosmic convergence makes the day extra special to me. The 21st of every month is a fresh start day for me though. Since I entered the world on a 21, the possibility of rebirth seems a bit more graspable on this over all other days. I love new beginnings. In addition to the 21 days, they also seem possible after holidays and retreats. How many have I had in my life? How many moments of hope?

“Aha! Now I’ve got things figured out. This time I’ve got life where I want it. I’m going to eat right, exercise, send thank-you notes, be responsive to friends and take the time to be really present with everyone I meet!”

It sounds like a good life. I don’t know why it fades so quickly from my view. Today, as I contemplate the new beginnings mindset, I am aware of two things.

1) A good life only seems possible when one is in a generous open state of being – rested, well fed, and satiated with affection and beauty.

2) Daily life in America is a “grind” that wears you down and uses you up. Despite all your best efforts toward health and optimism, again and again you find yourself in survival mode – tired, poorly fed, lonely, disoriented. In this state, it is all you can do to take care of your basic needs. Even if there is time (which there usually isn’t), there is no energy or will to be kind to other people, to make sustainable choices, to be curious or open to what life puts in your path.

Related to this is the over-stimulation factor. When I first return home from a trip, it seems possible to remember things – call my friend back, drop a note to let someone know I enjoyed their company, take the car in for servicing. But after a few days, everything seems overwhelming – there are more errands than time, more people to connect to than I can emotionally stomach, more things to do than I can remember. This chronic over-stimulation is a lifestyle norm in our culture. And in this state, something new is virtually impossible.

One of the great gifts of moving to a foreign country is how the strangeness of your new environment shatters your sense of familiarity and comfort with your old environment. My friend Jen says:

”When you go to a new place, your senses are heightened. You don't know where things are, what to expect, what is expected of you, how to do things. To compensate for your inexperience you have to really concentrate the way a child does, mobilize all of your senses. And when you do that, you wake up.”

The part of me that has woken up in the relative stillness of my London life is a girl I haven’t seen in a long time. She may have disappeared during college or shortly thereafter – right around when I entered the “world of work.” She is a girl who’s greatest pleasure comes from looking at the sky, from reading, from taking long flights of mental fancy. She measures her days in terms of experiences rather than achievements. She is not ambitious, productive or efficient.

1st Corinthians instructs:

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.”

And this is what it means to be a grown-up in American culture – to put away a part of ourselves, to hide her in a cupboard, starve her into submission, and pretend that she is no longer us.

But that child is the source of all our creativity and goodness. She recognizes and yearns for beauty. She is addicted to joy. If we sprung her from her long captivity, she just might rescue us with an ingenious scheme, a daring contraption that could catapult us into a more imaginative and satisfying life.

And that is what I’m trying to do here. I like to tell people I’ve just met that I’m on “sabbatical” or that I’m trying on full-time mothering. But really, I’m trying to overcome my enslavement to a modern lifestyle that demands that I work and sweat and strain to acquire and achieve until I explode or expend myself completely. I’m a ripe candidate for this kind of cultural hari-kari – a first born, slightly anxious, overly analytical, good-girl who likes to please others and derives her primary sense of self-worth from work. I come from sturdy peasant stock. I have tremendous endurance and can deny myself everything and just keep going and going. But for the past 15 years or so, every 21st, I would look up and wish for something else – another kind of life with a slower pace, more light, and more room to breathe. And the new perspective that the strangeness of London allows, the possibility of seeing like a child again, seems like an absolute life-buoy to me – one that I reached for intuitively last fall when Boss Dog (my husband has asked for a cool blog nickname too!) was unexpectedly offered the job here. The only catch was that to grab the buoy I had to let go of everything else – friends, family, artistic community, and any kind of place on any kind of ladder. The vertigo of this decision still has me reeling. And yet, it reminds me of a favorite long-forgotten quote from my college years:

“They say it’s prudence to gain the whole world and lose your own soul, but your soul sticks to you if you stick to it, and the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.”

- Captain Shotover (Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw)

So my wish for today, on the first day of Spring 2007, is for the ability to remember next month and next year what I can see and feel so clearly now. May your wish, whatever it is, come true too. And may you be blessed with an extra helping of joy this week.

Be well.

Labels: Rebirth