Life with a Light Laugh

I take myself too seriously. I take my writing seriously, my parenting seriously, my exercise routine seriously. I analyze my mistakes in all areas of life seriously. What have I done wrong? Why have I gone wrong? And most important of all: how can I fix it? Heaven forbid that I should make the same mistake twice! And if the fix for a problem has not worked -- I tremble to think of the consequences to my state of mind.

It’s like having a judge next door who works around the clock to give his opinion: what I’ve done well, what I’ve done wrong, and how my solutions are working. This judge is ingrained in me, ever willing to step up and pick up responsibility for evaluating my performance. He never sleeps, never pauses, is ever alert and ready for business.

I like to think that I get along well with my judge. He (yes, he is male) pronounces his opinion as to my laziness, my failures, my inactivity, and I return the favor by becoming depressed and not doing anything whatsoever. If he’s going to be so difficult about every little thing I do or say, why, in all the fairies’ names, should I even bother?

In the past few weeks, however, I started a conversation with the judge. Perhaps if he stopped pushing so hard, there will be room for me to write, grow, laugh. Turns out that the judge is quite willing. I never knew how much he longed for me to have the freedom to do. “I feel so frustrated,” he says. “I just want you to fly, to reach the sky, for your writing to flow.” He looks at me, confused rather than critical, almost ashamed of himself. “I don’t know where it all went wrong,” he says.

Fortunately, at this juncture, my friend Rebecca came for a visit. We decided that since we were having a girlfriend to girlfriend, heart to heart talk, there is no better place for us to sit than the treehouse. The sky slowly darkened as we laughed and shared stories. Moths fluttered about our heads. The grasses crinkled, and I thought deer might be near. I felt happier than I have felt in a long time.

Life is not a one-key door, nor a treasure chest with seven different locks. The keys to life come at random, when we are ready, fitting the keyhole with an unexpected precision and serendipity. And last night, sitting and chatting in the tree house, Rebecca gave me a key that was just right for what I am dealing with now.

“My teacher, Chophel,” Rebecca said, “always says: ‘We are all wrong. We might as well take ourselves lightly.’”

To laugh at myself is perhaps the greatest lesson I wish to learn, to take myself lightly. Next time I get all serious, critical, and dramatic about my life, please remind me that I'm all wrong. That it’s just so much better to take a breath, and let it out in a laugh, lightly.

Take a breath and admit that you're all wrong. Laugh about it.  Take yourself lightly.

Chasing Life Bubbles

A moment I remember. Rain drizzling. Mud swirling round my feet. We are dragging many parcels out of the Roatan vacation rental and into a taxi van. I squeeze in the back with the children, waiting for Dar to hurry in from the rain. Instead, he turns to the driver and introduces himself, finds out the driver’s name, his son’s name, shakes both their hands, explains where we want to go.

A moment of courtesy. So simple and real, and yet a revelation to me. In my eyes, the taxi driver was a means to an end. I wanted to get out of that resort, and he was literally the vehicle taking me away. To Dar, however, the taxi driver was a fellow human being with whom he was going to spend some part of morning and who he therefore wanted to get to know.

A moment of insight. My heart told me that I wanted to go through life meeting people in the same way, reaching out to each individual as equal in importance: a stewardess taking my ticket to scan, a waiter serving me a meal, a friend I meet for a gossip-laden lunch. Catching a person’s eyes, asking a meaningful “how are you?” and really pausing for an answer have gained me feelings of closeness and appreciation from a seat mate on the plane, a fellow writer in a conference, and the checkout lady at the grocery store.

A moment of contact. I follow my path in life, meet other people, and my bubble of life touches theirs and then separates, departs. The longer I linger with every encounter, the more I am part of the myriad puzzle of life. Each contact opens an opportunity for knowledge, for growth. I ask myself, “is there something I can learn from this meeting, from this homeless man on the street or the old lady who began talking, clearly in need of some loneliness relief? Was there a point to the irritating girl who tried to convince me to donate to Greenpeace and wouldn’t let me go?”

A moment of gratitude. Sometimes that’s all, and everything, I can reap from this touching of life bubbles. A feeling of well-being, of inter-connectedness with others on this world. An awareness that kindness exists, generosity, good humor. The realization that I am not so different from the mother of the little boy who is screaming and crying and kicking his legs on the floor of the department store, from the frustrated little boy himself, or from the saleswoman behind the counter who pretends not to see the chaos unfurling right there before her eyes.

Amazing how we are all one and we are all unique. All interesting and worth getting to know. All worthy of being loved and listened to. The garbage collector, the mortuary manager, the dog walker and policewoman, the president of the USA, the bus driver, the computer guy in the next cube. Me and you.

Insightful Morning in the Rain

I had an AHA! moment this morning, a shift in perspective that I would like to keep and apply in my life. It dawned on me that my weaknesses are my greatest strengths. Amazing, right?

I was talking to my mom on the phone, as I often do on my way back from dropping off the kids. And as usual we began to discuss the children’s schoolwork. Sighing over the long hours they spend doing homework, my mother commented that I never had to study. “You did everything chik-chak,” she said. Chik-chak is an expression in Hebrew for quickly, but it could also mean carelessly. “I didn’t want to tell you then,” my mother said, “but I admired how you learned so fast.”

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy tells Mr Bingley: “The power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.” Rather than appreciate my quickness, I had always taken Mr. Darcy’s reproof to heart. Quickness was bad. Secretly I was proud of how quick I was, yet I felt ashamed of what I perceived as careless and wholly underserved results. I should only do well if I work hard, right?

I longed to become meticulous and studious but did not wish to put in either the time or the effort that was, to be truthful, barely required in order to get much better than good-enough results. See the dilemma? Why work hard if I could get 100% on my history exam without studying? This was the beginning of my flakiness. Never having had to work hard, I never learned how to work at all.

And yet -- can flakiness become an asset? a talent? a tool for moving ahead in the world? “The family tree project you created in seventh grade is more beautiful than your sister’s,” my mother said this morning.

A morning of revelations! My project, more beautiful than that of my meticulous and studious sister’s? See, I remember this project exceedingly well. I started it, I believe, the day before it was due. And I still remember it as a very loud project from how much my mom yelled at me while I was working on it. I remember the crooked titles I made for the photos. Blah.

So is it my mother’s memory that is remiss, or was I overly critical of myself? Is it possible to do well and quick at the same time? Can I finally be openly proud about how fast I am?

And more important, if I can view my greatest weakness, my flakiness (translated to speed), as a strength, can I also switch my point of view on what I perceive as the children’s weaknesses, and begin to see those as assets, strengthening and praising them as talents? If I could do that, I’d finally reach my mothering ideal. Perfection. Or maybe just an acceptance of who we are as we are.