Category Archives: On My Mind

On My Mind

On Resilience

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For quite some time now, I’ve been rather taken by a bit of what is either street art or graffiti that I walk by relatively often. I like it because it’s relatable and because it starts a story in the middle, which is really where most stories start.

An admission of what we want to do but can’t do is a necessary step to learning. We are often best at learning when we want to, which is unfortunately not always when we need to. “I wish I could say beautiful words” means that I want to say those words. “But I can’t” reinforces the struggle. And here comes a choice. Such a claim can either remain aspirational, or such a claim can be a call to do something differently, which is what it means to learn.

A friend of mine often says, “There are two choices: Either accept it or change it.” Sometimes acceptance is of the self and sometimes of the situation, but both are a choice. I can either wish for those words, knowing many wishes remain so, or I can recognize that right now I don’t have those words, but I can do the work of finding them.

In fairytales where wishes are expressed and granted, characters are relatively passive until someone comes along with the power to grant the wish. This is the active agent in the story. To grant a wish means to make something happen that was previously impossible. There is indeed a time and a place for this in our world, but the growth and satisfaction that come from doing something for oneself cannot be overstated. I can wish for beautiful words, I can dream about them, I can lament that I don’t have them . . . or I can work for them. And if I do so, I will likely find many other words on the way.

Of course, we do not always get what we work for. Sometimes, gracefully or not, we fail. That hard work leads only to success is a myth in the realm of fairytales and children’s stories, and there is a place for this in our world, too. But there is also the reality of failure. It is true that we can work hard, that we can accept something or change it, that we can dedicate months and years to a pursuit and still fall short. The task is then in standing up after this experience, recognizing how far we’ve come, and understanding that we worked because it mattered. We may have failed, but we tried, and that’s part of being human. To be human means that there are things that matter to us.

I remember when it was cool to behave as though you didn’t care about anything. And I remember how shallow that felt because if no one cared, what was the point of doing anything at all? The world we live in depends on people not only caring, but caring enough to act. This is how the world turns.

(The danger, however, is in what it is that we want and the work we are willing to do to get it. The satisfaction of desire can very quickly grow dark. (Or maybe I’ve been watching too many crime shows.) For now, let’s leave that out. That is a different discussion for a different day.)

Finding what we care about, working towards it, and continuing to work despite failure is resilience. Sometimes we are stuck in one stage (perhaps mourning failure) and sometimes in another (perhaps fixated on trying again and again). The point is that resilience is not an act, but rather a process. Sometimes just getting up and going to work is victory and resilience, even if it looks like failure and defeat from the outside. And it’s okay to stop. It’s okay to start over. It’s okay to decide that we just can’t be the way we want to be and so we’ll try something else instead. The process of wanting, trying, learning, and trying again remains.

“I wish I could say beautiful words but I can’t” might be an admission of defeat, but perhaps that is what is necessary to move forward. After all, we cannot continue doing exactly what we have been doing and expect different results. “I wish I could say beautiful words but I can’t” could also be a feeble attempt at an excuse – I can’t, so I will stop trying. And in this case, it could open a conversation for those brave enough to have it.

We can wear resilience like a badge, fling it as a weapon, or cloak ourselves in it as a shield. That we have cared enough to do so is what matters.

On My Mind

On Comparison

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That’s how it is because it’s always been that way. And because that’s how it is, and they know that’s how it is, they don’t need to explain. And because they don’t need to explain, they don’t talk about it, and that’s how it is.

Which makes it hard to explain because it means thinking about what it is. What it is.

And that’s what I lose when I’m away, and what I slip into when I’m back. It’s the pair of jeans that’s stiff for just a moment when first out of the wash but soon soften completely, fitting the contours of the body as a skin. It’s a flicker of unconscious observation that things are the way they always were before falling into a groove so deep that there’s nothing to see without a point of comparison.

Patterns are comfortable, easy, normal. Evolutionary, after all. Patterns have been expected for so long that there might be observations made but no questions asked, at least not out loud. It’s the changes that are questioned, the things that are no longer the way they were before, the things that are just different enough to seem jarringly out of place. And it’s only with comparison that we notice, the comparison brought by distance or time or the dramatic life events that have us seeing everything with different eyes.

I’ve slipped in and out of many skins and they snag sometimes, like the way leather boots rub the backs of heels used to the freedom of sandals. Sometimes a sweater deemed cozy in one environment is garish in another, or a favourite work dress is suddenly completely out of place. Sometimes the clash is obvious, and sometimes it takes a moment to put a finger on just what doesn’t fit. But once identified, it cannot be ignored. The broken zipper catches in all the wrong places and tugging it closed is an inconvenience that turns into irritation.

Late at night is usually the time when everything feels wrong, where the life chosen and celebrated is under the microscope of inquisition, its only fault being that its course is reality and its outcome unknown. (This is living, after all.) The life not chosen, the path not taken, is the one full of possibility and because nothing is known, anything is possible. The life chosen and experienced in medias res suddenly seems written to conclusion. The allure of the other choice is just that, allure, because we can neatly conclude everything when we know nothing. The mind spins patterns and the patterns reveal themselves in stories, compelling for their certainty despite the gossamer substance of dreams.

In the morning it’s easy to see the dreams for what they are, to dissolve the wisps into smoke and settle back down to earth. But what doesn’t go away, what never goes away, is the swell of questions that comes from the lofty heights of comparison. It’s easy to find fault with what there is when what there could be only exists through rose-coloured glasses. And it’s easy to forget that the forks in the road were once obscured with weeds, or that the signs were old and faded. It’s easy to forget that the choice was to walk through the open door because another door had closed. It’s easy to be nostalgic for what is no longer, and easy to fall for what never was and couldn’t be.

It’s having the courage to look forward instead of sideways, to go confidently while the world turns, that is somehow obscured late at night. To commit to what was chosen and to let that path shape itself around a body that has itself changed. The jeans might need to be let out or taken in, held up with suspenders or cut down into a purse, but the jeans shape themselves to the body they’re given; we either fully embrace where we are or run the risk of forgetting to live at all.

And because it always, always helps to remember, here I end with words borrowed:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost

Bad Herrenalb, Germany – February 2023

On My Mind

Are you okay?

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I didn’t think much about the interaction after it took place, but I’ve never forgotten the email I received years later. It’s an important reminder of what it means to be part of social groups and what it means to look out for one another. I believe in the possibility for a peaceful world through the purposeful, intentional building of peaceful societies and communities. And I believe this requires us to step outside of ourselves and care for those who share our communities with us.

After reading and rereading an email that I was surprised to receive, I thought back to the interaction that had taken place one afternoon. I saw a student sitting in the hall in front of the lockers, a completely normal thing for a student to do, and something about facial expression or body language prompted me to follow up my greeting with, “Are you okay?” The student reassured me that all was fine, and we went our separate ways.

But, the student wrote in an email years later, all wasn’t fine and I had noticed. This student was now older, wiser, happier, and more confident in themselves and was writing to thank me for noticing them. I appreciated the email not just because of its contents, but because it indicated that the student remembered something I had forgotten, something that was more significant than I had recognized.

And this led me to think about other interactions, other moments in which we catch something in others that is, perhaps, not quite right. And then we make a choice. We can make the choice to dismiss what we see, to assume that people will come to us if they need to. Or, we make the choice to engage. This can be as simple as asking that question, “Are you okay?” or opening a conversation that we find challenging. It can be hard to share our impressions of others with them, to ask people really big questions about their lives or their choices. Sometimes we don’t realize (or won’t admit) something is wrong until somebody stops us to ask.

Even if we don’t want to have the conversation, or if the automatic, “Yes, why?” remains the response, I think there’s something really important in having been asked how you are. Like my student, I’ve never forgotten the Italian night class professor who took one look at me and asked if I was okay. I remember blaming whatever “it” was on having had a long day at work, and I don’t remember what was actually wrong. I just remember that she noticed something and she asked. On another occasion, I remember the relief I felt at someone else noticing a situation that I had tried to brush aside. “Are you okay?” meant that I didn’t have to be, meant that someone else saw what I saw.

One might argue that a simple “Are you okay?” is only good enough if the response is then acknowledged. What do we do, for example, when we were secretly hoping the person would simply reply, “Yes, why?” or when we realize that the ten minutes we’re available to talk might not be enough? I don’t want to say that there’s an art to asking this question because I don’t think there is. I think people understand when a question is genuinely meant. There is then a respect in interaction that opens an invitation when an immediate response is not possible. “Are you okay?” could indeed arrest a moment of crisis, but I don’t know how commonly that is the case.

I don’t think it has to be complicated to be a good person or to live as part of a social society. Rather, I think it is the aspect of acknowledging one another’s humanity in a natural, real way that creates such societies. There’s no harm in pausing for the moment it takes to ask someone how they are, and the ask itself might make all the difference.

Bikovo Nature Park, Croatia – October 2022