Thursday, September 16, 2010
Gratitude Project
Day 15 – Off the Hook
So, this blog project isn’t working out quite the way I had imagined it would. I thought that surely I would be able to find 30 minutes everyday, or at least every other day, to write about what I’m grateful for and to reflect about the deeper meaning of my life in the 40 days before turning 40. But as it turns out, this was wishful thinking. My life has about 30 spare minutes every 2 weeks, not every day. I’ve been behind on this project from Day 2, back-dating all my posts, continually promising myself that tomorrow or this weekend I’ll catch up. But I never do.
And so, this seems an appropriate moment to express my gratitude for being let off the hook. Throughout my life, many people have offered me some kind of essential relief in a moment when I felt stretched to the breaking point. Sometimes these heroes and heroines of forgiveness were relatives or friends. But often they were people I barely knew. Like the Dean of Students at my undergraduate university, who I visited at the end of nearly every semester, asking for an extension on a paper or exam. “Um…I’m doing this play, and it’s been taking up more time than I expected, and I haven’t really had the time to study properly, so I was wondering…” In my memory, she barely even hassled me. She just looked me in the eye and asked “Is this important to you?” And when I shyly and truthfully answered that theater was the most important thing in the world to me, she signed the extension papers, and gave me the out I needed so that I wouldn’t collapse. I wish I could remember her name. I know that I made her chocolate truffles – by hand – as a thank you gift when I graduated. I try to channel her calm and forgiving energy whenever I have an exhausted and over-wrought student in my office making desperate excuses.
One of my mother’s most inspired sayings is “You can renegotiate your choices at any moment.” This idea – that it is never to late to readjust, rewrite, revamp or otherwise transform one’s choices – is a critical mental escape hatch that has prevented me from suffering as much as I might have in my life. Because I am my own worst torturer. I badger, berate, and belittle myself about goals unaccomplished, plans gone awry, hopes unfulfilled. In my 30’s, when I was often working 6 jobs at the same time for too many hours and too little pay, I internalized the concept of letting things go. But they were always little things – items on the to-do list, small goals. In my 40’s, I hope to discover the value of letting even bigger things go – of letting myself off the hook as often as I can.
So, I am letting myself off the hook about trying to finish this project before I turn 40 (in 5 days!). Instead, I will aim to complete it while I'm 40. So that I can spend more time savoring and less time wiggling and worrying. I will appreciate and uphold the goal, and forgive myself for not succeeding at te first attempt.
Photo: Jorden Harper
Labels: Gratitude Project
