Tag Archives: Reflection

On My Mind

On Action

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It seems out of place to comment on the situation (conflict? war? – When does the headline reflect reality, and does it even make a difference to the people who are there?) in Israel and Gaza, but also out of character to say nothing. There has been plenty of politics, plenty of musing over religion on this blog. But I think, or I would like to think, more focus on peace. At least, this is what I hope.

But I know that hope isn’t good enough, that the achievement of peace can mean fighting, it can mean anger, it can mean bloodshed. That the world established an international organization to keep peace after the Second World War says everything I think we need to say about what humanity can do; that the organization is toothless, impotent, rife with its own governmental conflict, gripped by fear, and therefore ineffective tells us about what world governments are afraid of – ceding their own power to do what is better for the whole.

And what we see in situations like this, in all forms of conflict, is that the people who are most affected are very often those who are least involved. Don’t we all want to come and go without fear, hug our loved ones without thinking about a ticking clock, believe in the wishes on stars that we whisper together with children?

I am experienced enough to understand that no, it’s not all as charming as this picture I’m painting, that in fact some are so consumed by rage that they have made it their life’s work to spread hate to others. But I am also experienced enough to know that while the actions of single individuals cannot stop the violence that comes from rage and hate, the actions of single individuals can cause others to stop in their tracks, to reflect, to think twice and then again.

Although I appreciate them because they come from a good place, I do not believe that “thoughts and prayers” make a difference; it is rather action that position everyday people as participants in the wider world. If one person makes the choice to do the right thing, that is one more right thing. And maybe one more leads to yet another. And maybe the realities of everyday people dawn a little brighter.

I am, as always, on the side of humanity, on the side of innocent people, on the side of what is, at the core of my being, right. Don’t we all learn to help elderly people cross the street? What I feel in my heart is the desire to wrap my arms around everyone, all of you, but I know that my circle of influence is far smaller than my circle of concern. So I stretch out my hands to those I can reach, and I hope that you, wherever you are, will join me.

Berlin, Germany – December 2021
On My Mind

Voice Memos

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I hadn’t meant to spend the night reading, but that’s what I did, reading punctuated with a phone call and then another phone call, reading punctuated with the smiles I could hear in the voices over the line. I hope they heard mine, too.

I guess I’ve settled in. I’m in the process of, as they say, settling down. And it’s a far cry from the voice memos I listened through recently, the reminders of a searching soul. Maybe it’s the years of memorizing and performing monologues that comes through when I need to stand outside myself to look at myself. Maybe it’s the need to say aloud, quietly and under the cover of darkness, what I would scream into broad daylight if I were braver.

But maybe that’s defeatist.

Maybe I record my thoughts only late at night because the day brings the active work to forget them. Maybe it’s because at night, when the mind is tired, I let down my guard and speak to what’s buried somewhere in there. There’s hope during the day, hope demonstrated by the fact that the voice memos are time-stamped very, very late.

Many years ago, during a particularly turbulent time, I found myself recording voice memos at night when I couldn’t sleep, which was often. The voice memos, most of which I saved simply as “Night”, range from around 20 seconds to nearly 8 minutes, the pitch of my voice swinging between whispers and the scratchiness of unrealized tears. Until recently, I never went back to listen, and I recently listened through only the most recent because of the significance of the dates. Sometimes I want to shake my younger self back to her senses and other times I want to wrap her in a hug. Looking at those dates reminds me how quickly something can change.

I’ve returned to that habit only sparingly, having gotten a bit of a grip on my place in the world and learned to have hard conversations instead of imagining them. What is striking is not that I almost always fall asleep from either exhaustion or relief once my words are out of my system, freeing me from mulling them over, but rather that my hesitancy of going back over these thoughts is quite like the way I don’t read over old journals, except when looking to corroborate something I think I remember. It’s not quite an aversion, but I stay relatively removed.

And I’m not sure why that’s the case. A fear, maybe, of hearing, in daylight, what I don’t want to acknowledge, or maybe embarrassment at the melodrama of lying awake. It’s interesting to notice, and I was not at all surprised when I quieted swirling thoughts recently by recording my first voice memo in a good couple years.

But then I did something differently. I wrote down the thoughts, too. And I said them out loud. And the thoughts became a conversation, and the conversation reached a conclusion, and the vortex stopped swirling. It’s different when the whole thing plays out in real time and not just in my head. It’s a whole rather than parts.

And it means that a solitary night reading is nothing more than exactly that.

On My Mind

On Regret

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We were were sitting at the base of a crag eating apple slices, chatting with another pair of climbers about things like job interviews, health insurance, and courage. After they packed up to go, I mentioned that it was lack of bravery on my part that led me to say yes to my current job. It was not at all what I had imagined for myself after years of the sights and sounds of big cities, and the idea of going someplace so small was not as prestigious as what I’d thought working in Europe could be like. I wanted a better work-life balance, a society with social ideals, and a change of perspective, but I also thought I wanted a bit of glamour.

Fast forward a couple years: It turns out I love living here and am far more comfortable with my role in a small family-like school than I was in an environment with higher stakes all around. There’s a lot more to life than big names and big cities. And Weimar, as it turns out, is known for ideas and culture. It is also home to the people I’ve become close to, who are lovely indeed.

The question surprised me when it came because I hadn’t thought of it myself: Do you regret it?

No, not at all.

We finished the apples, reorganized the rope, and tied back in. Time to move on.

But I’ve been thinking about the question, and what I’ve found most interesting is not that it was asked, but that I hadn’t asked it. That’s not to say it’s been easy moving here, and being in a bigger city would have made certain things significantly easier at the beginning. My early blog posts about the move to Weimar only scratch the surface of everything I was holding inside at that time, and some old voice memos indicate that I’d been lying awake. But regret? Even when it was hard, there was no regret. I’d made a choice, and I’d made the choice for a reason, and that was the best I could do at that time. Perhaps it wasn’t the best reason and perhaps something else would have come along had I waited patiently, but I didn’t want to wait. I wanted the certainty of knowing. I had savings from years in Singapore, I saw a climbing hall when I looked at a map, and that was good enough.

Making choices means that we’ll never know what would have happened had we made a different choice. While I can smile at the question of what my life would have become had I, at 19 or 20, learned Italian and gone to Florence for a semester as I’d planned upon entering university, I don’t need to spend any more time thinking about it. I made a different choice and that was that. It was the best I could do at the time, and the only thing I can do going forward is remain aware of what has developed since. Just because I made a choice once doesn’t mean I have to make a similar choice in a similar situation in the future. Saying yes once because I didn’t want to wait doesn’t mean I have to say yes the next time.

Learning from an experience must not mean regretting having had the experience. Unfortunately, negative experiences are excellent teachers, and I find that we need those sometimes. When everything is easy, there’s little opportunity for reflection, and it is through reflection that we grow. I don’t see that as something to regret.

Do I regret moving here? Do I regret my impatience in wanting a job? Do I regret giving up the dreams of glamour and prestige?

No.

In the end, Weimar had a climbing hall and I’ve always been one to choose the café on the corner over the hot new spot. Maybe I know myself better than I thought.