Choose to Do You

I’ve been experimenting. For the past week, before I make any decision—even the smallest—I ask myself: What do I want to do?

Sounds like a ridiculously obvious way to make a decision. But try it. In this culture of shoulds and musts, it can be shockingly difficult. Shocking because this is also a culture that encourages you to “do you”—so you think you’re doing what you want to do. At least I did.

I'm not one of those women who selflessly devotes all her time to her children or who is married to her job. I love my crew and I like my work, but I make sure I zip out for yoga class at least twice a week. I make time for coffee with my girls. I’ll buy myself something pretty when I get a notion. I make time for my own pursuits.

But for many of us, doing what you want to do means fitting your stuff around someone’s staff meeting, someone’s piano lessons, someone’s doctor’s appointment, someone’s nap schedule. And that someone isn’t you.

This week I realized it was impossible for me to make a decision without first thinking about what was on Said Husband’s schedule or Little Bitty’s wish list or someone else's agenda. I’d said yes to baby-sitting, an out-of-town shopping trip, a graduation ceremony, and a pot-luck before I could stop and think of myself.

The more you start working your stuff around someone else’s stuff, the further back you fall in line and the more likely your own stuff is to be bumped or back burnered. If you’re not careful, you start to forget what it is that you really want or like to do. You start to think that your happiness lies in how well Junior performed at the piano recital or how much lower hubby’s cholesterol is since you’ve been cooking more.

And you are happy about all that. You love these people. You are glad to support them.
The problem is not saying yes to other people. The problem is when it means you’re saying no to you.

What about me? That is the question that’s going to stop you from drifting into a totally co-dependent state where you cease to exist outside of the people around you—an invisible state that evolves from ignoring your own gifts, talents, passions and desires until they finally atrophy, shrink and wither.

My friend Renai, who does a fabulous job of executing her own creative energy—despite running around after an ailing mother, an ailing man and two busy kids—admits that “doing you” is a hard job to manage.

“I was thinking the other day that I know why women/moms just opt to put our needs on the back burner or nix them altogether,” she says. “It's damn hard. I always feel like I'm trying to squeeze in a little bit for me and not a day goes by when I just don't want to throw my hands up and say, “Forget it.” But I eek out 5 minutes here and an hour there; maybe that's the way it has to be for now.

The point is that she’s...eeking. Which means she’s asking herself the magic question. And she’s answering it. And she’s doing the hardest part of the experiment: choosing to do what she knows her own heart desires.

There will be folks who find this amazingly selfish and practically impossible. In the real world, no one can just do whatever she wants to do, we think. But that’s guilt-rooted thinking. Instead, think of it this way: what you want to do is what your spirit calls for. And if you’re moving in Spirit, everything else will move in Divine Order. That makes way for the possibility that you can do what you want to do WITHOUT HURTING ANYONE ELSE. You can do what you want to do AND everyone around you will be fine.

It’s true. At least it has been for me, for this week.

Falling and Failing in Love

We’ve fallen out of love. It happens to everyone, apparently. I’ve read at least one expert opinion that is doesn’t take but 18 months of constant contact to change the chemistry from blazing to blasé. They also say it’s not the end of the world—nor necessarily the end of the relationship. Couples can forge strong, lasting relationships based on a new kind of love—one that simmers comfortably, even if it never returns to a boil.

(According to Reva Seth, author of First Comes Marriage: Modern Relationship Advice from the Wisdom of Arranged Marriages, many people in arranged marriages seem to have the opposite experience. They enter a relationship with no expectation of feeling “in love” but grow closer and more loving over time. Lucky them.)

All that sounds reassuring. But when you watch your partner’s mouth move to form the words "I'm not in love with you," it’s like being dropped into an elevator shaft—without the benefit of an elevator. And it’s just as sickening a sensation when you have to admit that the feeling is largely mutual.

That said, my world actually did not end when I got this news. Said Husband is very adamant that “in love” and “love” are two different things and that he retains the latter feeling for me. (That, too, is mutual.) And we’re both optimistic—and have been assured by many folks who’ve been married longer than we have—that this is just the proverbial “bad patch."

In a way, I’m glad all this is out in the open. Call me odd, but for me hearing the worst is better than imagining the worst. For months, we’ve had a hard time talking, touching, even looking at each other. I just couldn’t figure out why—so my mind ran wild with unresolved speculation. But somehow for me, once I know what I’m actually dealing with—the cold, honest truth of it—I feel like there ought to be something I can DO about it. I feel like I have some power in the situation.

So I did what I tend to do when my life feels like it’s running away with me: I sat down and starting writing, trying to map out a resolution. I decided that perhaps we can push past this phase if we stop wallowing in the painful, disappointing feeling of it and start thinking about what is really going on. To that end, I’ve made myself a list of questions for each of us to ponder.

1. What are the things that I’m not in love with? (Buy a fresh ream of paper and make a list.)

2. Are these things annoyances or things I truly disrespect? (Get over the annoyances. Deal with the deep stuff.)

3. Can any of the “disrespect” stuff be discussed and resolved? Am I willing to understand these things differently (i.e. from the other person's perspective) and accept them, too?

4. What are the things that I do love and respect about my once-beloved? (Make another list and really do your best to fill up another ream of paper.)

5. If I weigh these things with an open heart, are they substantial enough to outweigh the other?

6. Can I be patient enough and stay open enough to make sure the answers I give to these questions are really, deeply true?

I figure that if I really stay deep and contemplate these questions, only one thing can happen: We’ll discover that there are things about one another that just cannot be overcome. And those things will be the ones that tell us, with certainty, that were not meant to make a life together. Or they will be the ones that remind us that nothing can tear us apart.

My objective side says that, either way, we’ll benefit from having a clearer idea of how to move forward. The optimistic side of me hopes that the process will reveal something beautiful and valuable—a new way of thinking that will open our hearts wide to love again.

The Easy Button

My good friend Renai and I were commiserating the other day about the trials of 21st-century school selection. Gone, for us modern mamas, are the days when you packed a peanut- butter sandwich in a Holly Hobby lunch box and sent your child off to the school down the street. Now we have School Choice. Which means we have to choose: Public school, private school, neighborhood school, magnet school, charter school, home school, even un-school.

Can we afford private school? (No.) Can we get financial aid? (The answer for me, after turning over more paperwork for preschool than I did for grad school: No.) So, charter school? Magnet school? For magnets, you're supposed to attend the Choice Fair to learn about your options. Then you have to go to open houses at each of the schools you might be interested in. I thought open house meant a chat with the principal and a peek into some classrooms. Um, no.

Tuesday I spent an hour and a half at a school taking in a Power Point presentation. Listening to gifted kids describe their day. Participating in a Q&A with a panel of teachers. Hearing from the “enrichments” specialists (who were called art and music teachers in my day). Listening to the school band—the elementary school band—play three selections. (Three.) Walking down halls where outside each classroom door is the teacher’s name and the name of the college(s) from which she or he graduated. (As if the teacher’s alumni status would matter to my child who will be five when she enrolls.)

That’s if she enrolls. Because, this being a “choice” school, we have to fill out an application, participate in a lottery and wait to see if we’re selected. So, after having participated in the exhausting process of exploring all my options and making the very best possible choice for my child—I have, in fact, no choice in whether she attends the school or not. (Of course, if she doesn’t “win” the lottery, she can go to her neighborhood school. In which case we’ll have to choose whether she should go to the year-round school or the traditional school….)

What I want to know is this: Where is the easy button?

Why has everything gotten so complicated? I don’t mean just the school stuff. Right now I’ve got to make choices about my career, about what kind of car to buy, about which contractor should build the French drain in my yard, even about marriage. (We think of marriage as being a choice you make once, but I’m learning that even that is a choice I have to keep making over and over again.) And each decision seems to require research, reading, evaluation, pricing things out, mulling things over and double-checking your facts.

Some things—like where your kid should go to school—warrants a bit of research and rumination. But so many other things just aren’t worth the effort. How much time did I spend in the baking goods aisle the other day trying to decide whether to buy natural sugar, organic sugar, free-trade sugar, dried sugar cane or to go to the nearest Harris Teeter for a bag plain old Dixie Crystals?

Sometimes the choices are difficult because we don’t make the one choice that could make things easier: The choice to simplify. Choosing to join the one committee that you feel passionate about instead of spreading yourself over too many obligations. Letting the kid play in the yard instead of signing her up for nine different extra-curriculars. Skipping the obligatory luncheon. Letting Saturday actually be a day off.

What would be wrong with choosing the thing that is simpler but just-as-good? The evening I bought a rotisserie chicken and served a bagged salad for dinner with my friend, I had just as nice a time as I did at last year’s multi-course brunch for 30 on New Year’s morning. (In fact, the impromptu chicken dinner was probably nicer because my back wasn’t aching from standing up washing collard greens until after midnight the day before.)

If you’re not careful, doing the easy thing can seem like cheating. We think we're supposed to do the thing that takes the most effort, the most time and the most life blood in order to prove that we’re doing our all and giving our best. Hey, I don’t have anything against doing the best you can. But sometimes—probably most times—what we do best is what we do with the most ease. Sometimes we need to give ourselves a break, see the rat race for what it is and take the easy way out.

Just say know.

You want him to know. Know what? Whatever. Just know. Know that sexy lingerie seems like an intimate gift, if he really knew you intimately he’d know you’d rather have the newest book by your favorite author. That you’d die for your children, but you’d give anything if he’d take them completely away for a long weekend. That though it looks easy to keep all the balls in the air, it’s nearly killing you. That you’re worried. All the time. About everything. And that it would mean so much to you that, even if he doesn’t know, he wants to know.

When you call your best friend and utter half a sentence, she can finish the rest of it. Because she knows. But she’s not your partner. It’s not her life you’re sharing. It’s his. And you want him to get it.

But he doesn’t.

Some experts say he can’t. Sounds sexist, but some research says he’s not programmed to think the way you do. It's a fact of genetics that what seems logical to you just doesn’t make sense to him. (No, he’s not nuts. He’s just wired differently.)

That’s not to say that he can’t learn. With some practice, he can start at least to hear. But that’s his work to do, if he chooses it.

Your job is to stop thinking he’s just going to know. In fact, to quit worrying about whether he’s going to know or not. Your job is to make sure you know.

I’ve found that since I’ve been partnered—and especially since I had a child—it’s harder to think about myself as an individual. Somehow, when I start to think about what I need, what I want or what I want to do, the needs and wants of the rest of my crew creep into my reflections and decisions. It’s as if, when I married and had a baby, my own desires got taken from me and poured into a mixing bowl with my family’s. And for the life of me, I can’t unmix myself.

Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. But I just don’t want to completely lose myself in the mix. I don’t want to forget what I want. I don’t want to forget what I know about myself.

I believe you need to know your true needs—from the inside out—and to speak them first to yourself. To look in the mirror and say:
I need four days alone.
I need cotton pajamas and the new Toni Morrison novel.
I need to find a way to rest my worries.
I need to stop needing to juggle.
I need to let some of this Super Woman stuff go.

You need to know. To admit what you know. Then give yourself that. Without guilt. Without apology. Without self judgment. Accepting that it’s okay to need what you need. Understanding that giving yourself what you need is okay, too.

Insist Upon Your Life

“You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.” —Odetta

Odetta, the legendary folk singer, died on Tuesday at the age of 77. Her interview for the New York Times' "The Last Word" is a video worth watching. She is a beautiful, strong, wise and elegant woman in the way the Earth herself is beautiful, strong, wise and elegant.

Sounds Like a Plan

I like to think of myself as a planner, since I operate best when I can have things laid out before me. But, in truth, I don’t plan so much as I actively look for and affirm interesting opportunities to present themselves. The plans come after the fact—based on what I can envision around the next curve in the road.

This paradoxical combination of creative calculation and reliance on faith—not blind faith, but faith that peeks through its fingers at the possibilities that lie ahead—has worked well for me.

Until recently.

For the past few weeks, the future I’ve seen and the plans I’ve laid have ended up in a multi-car pile-up. A job that seemed meant for me dissolved before I could claim it. The book proposal that generated so much excitement is still waiting for a publisher to claim it. When a potentially career-changing writing gig fell through, it wasn’t a simple matter of that magazine’s editor not liking my story idea. The whole magazine folded. How’s that for having a door slam on your foot?

And that’s just the work-related stuff. All around me—in my home, in my relationship, with my child—things are breaking down, springing leaks, sputtering, fizzling and wobbling unsteadily. My life is, as we say in the vernacular, a hot mess.

I don’t know whether to blame the ineffectiveness of my planning or the astigmatism of my faith. I tell myself that if I had planned more effectively, maybe my life would be on more solid footing. Or if my faith were less blurred, maybe the need for solid footing would be moot: I’d be flying on wings.

But maybe not.

Maybe blame, with its negative implications and guilt association, is unnecessary, because maybe what I am experiencing is just the dip and dive of life. Maybe this is me falling free of a plane I’ve been pushed out of, dropping from the sky toward the open arms of earth and feeling the fierce pull of gravity in the long moments before my parachute opens. (At least I still have enough faith to believe the parachute will open.)

Today in the mail, I got a little postcard that says: “We affirm that divine order is at work and that Spirit is guiding us each step along the way.”

Maybe all this is just part of the plan.