About this time last year, I saw a gull get hit by a car along the Embarcadero. It was going after an abandoned bag of McDonald’s when a car going too fast slammed into it. It hobbled away alive, not bleeding, thank God. I don’t know the average lifespan of a city gull, but I like to think it survived all of 2023, at least.
If the gull was my guiding metaphor for last year, I also survived 2023. Probably not elegantly, as I hurried toward things that perhaps weren’t the best choices, but I survived nonetheless. And, as often happens for me in the more wintry months, I have been reading a lot. And reading always gets me thinking and reflecting.
One thought—a memory, really—that keeps returning is from 2012, when I was in seminary. I was taking a course on Aliveness with Dr. Ann Belford Ulanov. Aliveness as a topic is just what you think it might be: trying to understand that quality of being alive that makes us feel, well, alive. The quality that makes food taste amazing; that allows us to experience awe; that enables us to disappear into a hug as if there is nothing else that exists but the love between people; that quality that frees us to laugh so hard we can skip our core workout for the week. To feel pain and grief and cry and know that it comes because joy also comes. That quality that gets us out of bed in the morning, excited to be in a new day, come what may. The quality that allows us to truly connect with others—to understand and be understood.
For a long time, my good friend and I would often talk often about feeling “dead inside” —a phrase she coined a long, long time ago as shorthand for the other side of aliveness. So when I saw that class offering, I had to take it.
On the first day, Dr. Ulanov had us go around the room and say why we were there. When it got to my turn, I didn’t want to talk about “dead inside”, which doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, and could too easily be misinterpreted from how my friend and I mean it. So I said something like, “Sometimes, I see people walking down the street, and they just seem so unbothered. Like the weight of the world is not on their shoulders, and they’re just happily going about their day.” Then I paused, before adding, “I wish I could be like that.”
All I really wanted was to be happy. Back then, “happiness” meant, if I just worked hard and focused I: would reach my career goals; could work in a non profit without ever feeling burned out; would embody the famous Reinhold Niebuhr quote, that “nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.” Essentially, being happy would mean never feeling hopeless, or faithless, or belief-less; never feeling so burdened by the world’s problems that I couldn’t live my own, happy life. And all of that is fine—not terrible life goals at all. But, back then, I thought what would get me there, get me to this happiness, was to make my life “look” a certain way—with a particular career, a long list of publications, a fancy home in the right city, etc.
In that class, when I said, I wish I could be like that—a kind of unbothered—there were nods all around the seminar table, including Dr. Ulanov. I think we all had a kind of sensitivity to terrible things—that constant weight on our hearts and minds of all in the human world that ought not to be. It was probably one of the reasons we found ourselves around that seminar table in the first place. And I wish I could say that what I learned in that class made me feel alive, less weighted and numbed by the awfulness. It did not. What it did do, though, was help shift my perspective—not so far as to consider this weight of the world sensitivity as a “gift” (because it is incredibly painful to be so in tune to the violence all around). More, the class helped me see this aspect of myself as something I could dig into, better understand, and forgive—rather than something I had to (or could!!) get away from. The act of forgiveness allows me to accept and love all the parts of myself—because I cannot cut off what makes me, me. Despite that my sensitivity causes me to suffer, it is who I am.
But forgiveness is also not an end. It is a process. Probably a lifelong one. So, now, where I once wished to just be happy, I practice accepting my mistakes—those thoughts that go bump in the night, reminding me of all the moments I was not my best self, that I wish I could take back, and never can. I am, after all, a part of this world that weighs on me! But my sensitivity to suffering in the world is greatly reduced when I stop trying to fix the unfixable and focus instead on being alive.
Now, I recognize that to focus and work hard on the things I value is to live in a particular direction; as opposed to living to arrive at a societally sanctioned end point. My sensitivity to suffering in the world is greatly reduced if I do not wait for external rewards or validation—like from hiring committees, publishers, landlords and banks. This doesn’t mean I don’t do the work to get a job or publish a poem or get an apartment or a car loan. It just means I uncouple my worthiness and value as a human and an artist from the result.
Now, I recognize that I have a particular set of skills that can be plugged into an effort that is so much bigger than me, the aim of which is a future different than the life we humans now live. Hopefully, with far less suffering in it. Therefore, my sensitivity to suffering in the world is greatly reduced by remembering that I am a worker among workers, a link in a very, very long chain.
—MBF
My "meanders" are so much more meander-y than this. Here is the meandering that your meander triggered.
I think forgiveness is such a misunderstood concept. So often we treat it as an exoneration, or letting off the hook, or reconciliation. But, isn't it really more simple than that? It is detaching from something that causes us pain. Releasing the hold that some "wrong" has on us. It is a choice we make for ourselves. So, self-forgiveness is a choice we make to release the shame, guilt, disappointment, criticism, and wounding that we do to ourselves. It is the recognition that self deprecation serves no purpose, so why do it? Release it. Let it go. Unburden ourselves from it.
I'm trying to make that kind of release a habit. I screw up. I see it. I reflect on it. I learn from it. I let it go.
Love this...just what I needed to read. Also I love the idea of "living in a particular direction" as opposed to a destination. Yes!