More Wishes

Over the weekend one of my dear friends gave birth to her first child.  She and I grew up together and were nearly inseparable throughout grade school and junior high. Neither of us is at all biased, so believe me when I tell you her baby boy is pretty freaking perfect.  I’ve had acquaintances from college start families, but she is the first friend to become a mom. So it’s understandable that I may have gone a wee bit overboard when it came to buying gifts for the new baby, including six pairs of shoes.  But it was so much fun, and so exciting to think of that little dude rocking a pair of superman sneakers that I just couldn’t help myself. Now he’s here, and although I haven’t met him in person yet (his mom has been gracious enough to frequently text me pictures), that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about him, his parents, and all the great things life holds for him.  As you may remember, I’m a fan of wishes, so here then are my wishes for little baby ACE.

I wish for you grand adventures.  Whether it’s travelling the world or getting accidentally locked in a closet (ask your mom or your Uncle Jason about that), adventures make the best stories. Decades later the memory of a great adventure will still be worth telling, and re-telling.  And adventures always teach you something, it might be a philosophical truth, or an as yet-undiscovered aspect of your personality, or it might be something less deep, like the fact that some closet doors lock from the inside. Regardless, have adventures, have lots of them, and tell me stories.

 

 I wish for you a sense of humor.  Both of your parents are hilarious, so I don’t think there’s any danger that you won’t have a great sense of humor.  Your dad is laugh-out-loud funny and your mom has the patience to wait 45 minutes for the perfect moment of comedic timing.  I hope you laugh together as a family, I hope you laugh with your friends, I hope you laugh at yourself.  Just never at someone else’s expense.  Be kind in your humor and laugh often.

I wish for you a questioning mind. The world is full of people who want to tell you what to think and believe; people who know with all certainty that they are right and others are wrong.  The truth is things are more complex than these people would often have you believe.  There are shades of grey and degrees of truth, and what is true for one person may not be true for another.  I hope you learn to take it all in and think for yourself.  Beware of anyone who claims to know everything.  Except your parents. They really do know it all.

I wish for you best friends. I wrote a couple weeks ago that there is nothing in the world quite like a best friend. They’re simply amazing.  Best friends will have your back in the hard times and be there to laugh and share adventures in the good times.  They (along with your family, and if you’re lucky their family) will be your rock.  I was lucky enough to have your mom as a best friend, after meeting her in first grade and immediately engaging in a philosophical discussion about Crayola colors. As we grew, our families became friends, and all five of us kids played together all the time. Your mom and I went to school together for eight years before attending different high schools and then living in different states. But we stayed friends; we were bridesmaids at each-other’s weddings and when she called to tell me she was pregnant with you, I couldn’t possibly have been happier (unless of course she had told me at the beginning of the conversation). Never underestimate the power of a best friend and don’t take them for granted.  You’ve already got a best friend ready made in your pal Liam, I’m sure you two will have lots of fun playing together and causing mayhem. Be kind to one another and try not to give your parents too much grief.

I wish for you a fantastic imagination.  I hope you create games and characters. I hope you run through the back yard with your friends, screaming about invisible lions hiding behind trees or dragons in the sky.  I hope you read books and fall into the world’s they create (this one’s a little selfish, as I can’t wait to give you books), I hope you color (I’ll send you some crayons too!) and draw and dream vividly. An imagination is the key to so much in life, it can serve you later on as an adult in ways you wouldn’t expect, but for now, I just wish for you to have play and have fun.

Finally, I wish for you kindness.  I hope the world is kind to you and I especially hope you are kind to the people you meet.  The simple act of showing kindness to a stranger or classmate has far reaching consequences, not the least of which is it’s good for your soul.  Don’t be mean.  I know it’s easy to do, especially once you get older and into school.  But kindness shows strength and character.  Think of other’s and be kind. And while we’re on the subject, be nice to your parents.  They’re crazy in love with you. Even when you’re a teenager and you could swear that they’re out to get you or just being mean, remember how much they love you and be kind.

Grow big and strong baby ACE.  I can’t wait to meet you in person

Hugs, Renee

Lessons from a Hacienda

Dearest Clara,

Traveling to Mexico has been one of my most wonderful discoveries since returning back to the US.  After going for the first time last year, I can’t believe that it’s taken me so long into my adult life to discover the richness of this country that’s but a couple of hours flight away.

This year, we went beyond just the beach and the coast to head into the interior jungle and stayed at a Hacienda as a home base, while we explored throughout.  Initially, I had been worried that maybe it wouldn’t be as exciting as the beach, but so quickly, we realized we could have easily stretched out our days into weeks.  The peace of the overall experience is something I will always remember, and the grounds had just enough touch of the mystical that explains so much literature from this part of the world.

In just a few days, I also learned at the Hacienda:

• Always check your shoes before putting them on: While I didn’t actually see any, this is tarantula country.  And scorpions.  And all sorts of critters.  Whenever you’re in terrain you don’t know, it’s good habit to check the insides of your shoes, or anything else you can’t see the interior of.  Just in case.
• And remember that you’re in their jungle, not that they are in your shoes: Our temptation will always be to expect that a hotel or home or our life should have prevented an animal or critter from being in our space.  But in a jungle. . . or other nature environment, that’s not always possible.  And should it be? They were there first and you came to see, not the other way around.
• High ceilings keep you cooler: This makes perfect sense from a scientific principle but I never really thought about the practical application of this.  When we checked in, the head of hotel specifically pointed out that we received a room with one of the highest ceilings---heat rises and there’s better chance for air circulation.  So when in hot climates, seek out the spaces with high ceilings---you’ll need less external intervention to be comfortable.
• People aren’t just part of the landscape: I read this in the hotel’s guide to how to think about when it was appropriate to take a photograph.   Whenever you visit a place, there are people that live there. . . they’re not like statues or landmarks, and they might have different reactions to you taking pictures of them.  Don’t assume that people, regardless of how fascinating or different they might seem to you, are just part of the passing scenery.  When in doubt, always ask permission.   Not everyone will say yes, and it’s okay to respect that.
• Everything re-invents itself over time: The hacienda that we stayed at originally started as a cattle ranch, then a sisal farm, then it fell into disrepair. . . Now it is one of the country’s best hotels and regularly welcomes heads of state.  Where we start is not always where we end up, and where we end up is an evolution.  If we want to stay relevant, it’s our job to figure out where we want to go and who we want to be next.

All my love,

Mom

The Work/Life Balance

Last weekend, I found myself at a bar with a German.  He was in London visiting his girlfriend, and because I’m always curious about how long-distance relationships work, and because I’m nosy, I asked how often they got to see each other.  Their answer?  In the five years they’d been dating, they’d never gone more than two weeks, despite having a sea and a country between them.  “How is that possible?”  I asked.  When my boyfriend and I were long distance for six months, we only saw each other once, during a week-long Christmas break where we both used up all of our vacation days.  “How much time do you get off?” The German waved his hand about.  “Oh, you know,” he said, his accented words lilting charmingly, “it is up to us, really. If we take less than five weeks, they get a bit mad, but other than that, it is up to us.”

I can’t relay the conversation after this point, so stupefied was I by the facts he was casually conveying.  Five weeks was their minimum.  The company got mad if he didn’t take it.  By contrast, not one person in the last company I worked for used up their two weeks of vacation a year.  We weren’t the anomaly---apparently, more than half of people don’t use up their vacation days allotted in a given year.  And the US has some of the lowest amount of annual leave in the Western world.

I remember when, as an adolescent, I flipped through an issue of Time at my doctor’s office (I had sadly outgrown my prime Highlights years, and Time was the only other cover without a cross section of lungs or a colon on it).  It wasn’t even an article, just a small blurb, and when I read it, my largest career aspiration was to somehow gain employment at Jamba Juice.   Somehow, though, the sentiment struck a chord, and it became a go-to group conversation topic for years to come:  when given the choice of more time off or more money, the majority of Europeans chose more time.  The majority of Americans chose more money.

Because of this, and because of some media-driven idea of the overworked, bustling American eating a muffin on the treadmill while reading three papers and frantically replying to emails on their phone, I expected England to be a welcome change of pace from the life I’d become accustomed to living in New York and San Francisco before.  At all of my jobs, I was expected to be on for approximately 24 hours a day, available to answer emails and take calls even in the late evening hours.  Why not? I remember many a boss saying.  You should love what you do.  Your work should be your passion; your work should be your life.

I remember, when I was moving to England, telling people how much I was looking forward to a more even work-life balance.  “The Europeans just get it,” I said to anyone who cared and a lot of people who didn’t.  “They care about their jobs, but they realize there’s a world outside of it.”  And then I got to England.  Everyone was on their cell phones, and expected to be available 24 hours a day.  Everyone was rushing to and from their offices; everyone was stressed out. While they had, on average, more time off than those in the US (three weeks to the US’s two), few people took it.

“What’s the deal?” I asked one of my friends, a PR executive in her late 20s.  I told her about my expectations, about the European work-life balance I’d idealized and coveted.

“It’s still there,” she said, “in mainland Europe.  Here, we’re more like the US.  If you want to be successful on a world playing field, you need to work like it.   If people in the US are working till 8 or 9, we can’t be competitive with them by leaving at 5.”

Studies suggest, however, that this is more the perception than the reality.  A recent New York Times article suggests that relaxing more, recuperating, sleeping, and allowing your brain its much-needed resting time, improves overall output, even when less hours are actually invested.   By not having it all be output, output, output, you allow your brain to regenerate, to become stimulated. You catalyze new ideas and forge new neural pathways.  It’s healthier for you, healthier for your company, and, to be frank, more fun.

Yet, this is easier said than done.  While the writer of the Times article is working with companies that have a start-up mentality, companies like Google and Apple with beanbag chairs and on site basketball courts, it’s much harder to tell your boss that you should take a longer lunch break, and maybe a nap time around three.  It’s harder to say, I’m leaving at five because my work will be better, and it’s harder to shuffle out amid the glares from your coworkers.  The attitude is prevalent enough that it permeates the self-employed---despite making my own schedule (or perhaps more so because of it), I feel guilty whenever I’m not at my computer, actively writing.   I feel like I’m missing out on some opportunity to do better, and to be better.  Better than what?  The norm?  The ever increasing standard?  Maybe.  Or maybe just myself.

It’s sad then, when my PR maven friend tells me proudly that the UK is moving in the direction of the US.  It’s sad when my friends brag about spending the night at the office, or how they’re so busy they forgot to eat.  It’s sad when Zack and I are talking about his summer vacation and he’s listing off projects and internships, ways to get ahead.  “What about a vacation?” I ask.  “What about a little rest?”

“No one else will be resting,” he says.  “If you don’t move forward, you’re left behind.”

This, of course, isn’t something that can be changed on an individual level.  It’s a wide-scale shift in psyche; a probe into our values and what makes us happy on an individual and societal level.  But for my part, at least, I’m going to try and go outside when the sun is shining.  I’m going to take walks in the morning before I check my email, and I’m not going to give people my contact information with an assured, “You can reach me anytime.”  I’m going to try, at least, to do my work and live my life, and I invite you to join me.  If we all stay behind together, maybe, eventually, we’ll all end up ahead.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Sarah Brysk Cohen, owner of Blossom and Branch, is obsessed with flowers. She has been working in flower shops on the cutting edge of floral design, from New York to California, for 20 years and opened the Blossom and Branch studio in Brooklyn, New York in 2009. Her designs have been featured in various online and print publications, including Style Me Pretty, 100 Layer Cake, Brooklyn Bride, Brides Magazine, The Knot, New York Magazine Weddings and The New York Times, as well as in the San Diego Museum of Art. In addition to providing event florals and decor, Sarah teaches floral design classes and is a regular contributor on the internationally renowned blog, Design*Sponge. Before launching her design career, she obtained an MSW and worked as a licensed clinical social worker in two states. Sarah currently lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with her husband, one-year-old daughter and English Bulldog. TO REMIND YOU OF SUMMER Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead I read this novel a couple years ago and it filled me with longing for my sun-bleached 1980s youth.  It also tapped into my fantasies of what moneyed people do on Long Island.  I love Colson Whitehead’s writing style – he is wry without being jaded and broaches the sensitive/heavy with a sense of humor.  He takes seriously the internal struggles of a teenage boy and makes them relevant for all of us. I also get the sense that this novel must have been semi-autobiographical and I love wondering about which elements come from his experience.  Plus, I met him on my bus once!  BIG UP, BROOKLYN.

BECAUSE I AM A MEMOIR FREAK Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn Whoa.  WHOA.  This memoir by Nick Flynn is about managing his homeless, alcoholic father and the intersection of their lives when the father comes to live at the shelter where Nick is employed as a social worker.  Having worked in and run homeless shelters, this book had me imagining what it would have felt like to try and maintain boundaries with a family member as client.  Despite living a tale of intense pain and loss, Flynn is able to tell his story with clarity, humor and a clear sense of empathy for his nearly impossible father.

BECAUSE I LIKE SMART GIRLS How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley A series of totally hilarious and charming essays by Crosley and a very quick read for commuters or people like me who pass out after 2 minutes when you get into bed at night with your book.  Her snarky voice masks tender observations about human nature, which rings familiar to me.  I kind of wish Ms. Crosley would be my best friend, but until then, I will have to settle for a glimpse into her world through her writing.  And I will obviously continue to lightly stalk her on Facebook.

BECAUSE I LIKE SMART BOYS Live From the Campaign Trail by Michael A. Cohen OK, OK, so my husband wrote this book.  But it is actually totally fascinating and perfect for reflecting on the 2012 presidential election.  It is a history of the most important and influential campaign speeches of the 20^th Century and how they shaped modern America.  If you like history, politics, speeches and/or want to help us send our daughter to college, you should pick this up at any fine bookseller.

FOR A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF RACISM AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA All God's Children by Fox Butterfield This is a stunning non-fiction work about violence and racism in the South told through the multi-generational struggle of the Bosket family.  This book was first released in 1995 but feels particularly relevant today, as we have experienced a recent spate of gun violence in this country and our conversation about how to address anti-social behavior has been brought to the fore.  You will be riveted by the first-person accounts of Willie Bosket, the centerpiece character of the book, and as the author digs back into the Bosket family history (all the way back their slave roots) you will see the legacy of violence continuing to produce dysfunction in modern times.  Please read this.

FOR THE EDWARDIAN CHILD INSIDE The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett When life gets too complicated for adult for my taste, I return to this children's classic book.  I have it downloaded on my iPad and just tap my fingers in anticipation of reading it aloud at night to my daughter.  This was the first "chapter book" I recall as a child that grabbed me and got me interested in reading.  It is, of course, a tragic, romantic and fanciful novel that combines many of my favorite themes - the mystery of a manor on the English countryside, the magic of gardens and the power of friendship to inspire healing.  The story is likely familiar to many of you -- two young cousins brought together by parental deaths are trapped in a vast and lonely English manor.  They figuratively and literally blossom together with the assistance of household staff and ultimately are bonded through the work of rehabilitating a long-dormant garden.  The characters are heartbreaking and timeless and it is worth a re-read, if, like me, the first time you read it was in 3rd grade.

Does Being an Adult Totally Suck?

Dear Sibyl, I finally feel like a real grown-up and I find it horribly disappointing. I can't imagine a better husband, my two-year-old daughter is awesome, and I love my work. Unfortunately, there's a big but. I was prepared to have a big, important career and I don't think that's possible as a mother of a small child (without being independently wealthy).

My parents told me I could be anything I wanted to be and my husband regularly says he's waiting for me to strike it big, so he can retire. Unfortunately, my career options are high in intellectual, social, and personal rewards, but not so much in financial rewards. My husband isn't going to be retiring on my salary anytime soon, which means his job needs to be the priority.

The part that really gets me is that I will never fully realize my potential career. If there are two working parents, one parent always has to be the one who will figure it out if the babysitter is sick. One parent has to make sure there is food in the fridge and favorite pajamas are washed in time for bed. One parent has to sign on as parent #1 (at least to provide the kind of support that I envision providing to my child). Maybe there is a system where both parents share all child-related responsibilities, but I'm not sure I can imagine it. After all, one of the major tenets of management in a professional context is maintaining individual responsibility: if everyone is responsible no one is.

Most big, important careers demand to be the priority. And I think the realization that made me a grown-up is that you don't get to have two priorities at once in life. I want my child, and eventually children, to be my first priority, but I also want to know what I could have done with my professional life had I been able to give it my all.

Sincerely, Two Paths, One Life

Dear Two Paths, One Life,

Are you sitting down?  Okay, because I’m about to deliver a series of blows that may hurt at first, but hopefully will settle in as the best kind of truth.

First of all, no wonder you are disappointed in adulthood, since you are completely missing the point.  The goal of life is not to be a big, important person who is responsible for everyone and amasses wealth for retirement.  I totally understand why you believe this, as this is our culture’s greatest falsehood, one we shout and whisper and slip into the food we serve.

But, Honey.  Oh, Honey, no.

The choice is not between being a mother and being a big shot.  It’s about being a person of substance, no matter what tasks you find yourself doing.

First of all, we need to address your sign off name.  There are three lives you are talking about here, and three paths, but you have submerged them all into one life---yours.  Of course there's no space to spread your wings!  You have both your husband and your child on your back, and you're stumbling around blindly.

A better metaphor for what should be going on is: One root, three vines.  Your husband and yourself formed the roots of your family tree when you bonded yourselves to one another.  Your lives climb like an ivy plant, branching off in some places, intertwining and holding one another up in others.  Your daughter's is an offshoot, that right now gets all of its nourishment from the roots of your marriage.  However, she'll branch off on her own more and more, and eventually she'll start her own vine, on some other wall.  The way things are now, both of their branches are choking yours, and no one can grow.

I think the problem is that you need to redefine success.  What is “making it” as an adult?  Is it a life of growth, or one you read about in the newspapers?  Because the people making headlines, especially ones with big, important careers, are always falling from grace, in big, important ways.  Just this month: Jesse Jackson Jr., Oscar Pistorius, THE POPE.

You don’t need a big, important career to be a happy adult, you need to be a big, important you.  Be the biggest star of your life.  Be the most important person in your child's life.

Do you want to make something happen?  Then follow your passion and do it!  But if you just want to feel important, then I don't think you will find that kind of validation in a high-paying, high stakes job.  That kind of validation only comes from within.

I want you to let this dream of being this powerful figure die so you can see what rises from the ashes.  I want what rises to be you.

In order to do this, you cannot use management tenets to run your family---your family should be be run on love, and love means everyone pitches in.  So, let go of some of the responsibility for being “Parent #1”, and let your husband plan back-up childcare for once.  And tell him to stop putting pressure on you to strike it big so he never has to work again!  What the hell?

So, perhaps you are not going to be on the cover of TIME magazine.  But, I doubt very seriously that that is because you are devoting your energy towards being a mother, instead.  I believe that you can still have what you want---have a feeling of being a successful adult who makes waves in the world, while still showing up for your children---but it is going to require a worldview shift.

Being an adult means we get to weave together the life we actually want, which, yes, is really difficult, but has the potential to create something totally unique and beautiful.

You are not missing out on fully realizing your potential career, if you are fully realizing your potential self.  You will need to give up the goals of prestige and leisure and take up the goal of love, but I promise you, it’s a better investment.

Love, Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Lessons from South Africa...

Dearest Clara,

Sometimes when you travel you’ll feel that you have gone just about as far as you can go before circling back around again on the other side of the globe.  My recent trip to South Africa was exactly like that---16 hours on the way there, 18 hours on the way back.  Between the many hours and changes of time, and days that turn to nights and then back to days again, you end up wondering where you really are anyway.  And this time around it was such a blur---so many hours seem even more when you end up on the ground for only four days.

But four days is still plenty of time to make observations, and in South Africa, you can make a lot.  Of all the places I go to for work, South Africa is by far and away my favorite.  Maybe precisely because it is so far.  I'm hoping that one day soon I get to come back all of this way, perhaps even one day with you, to stay in this beautiful country for a bit longer, so that I can really get to know this part of the world that I otherwise have so little exposure to.  In the meantime, I've taken these things home with me:

• Always stop for a sundowner: the first time I really saw this was during my first trip to South Africa when I went on safari (all by myself no less!) No matter where we were driving, when the hour for sunset came, the South Africans were always insistent that we pull over the car, stop what we were doing and have a drink.  This trip, when I was mostly at the hotel and meetings, it was no different.  I was alone again, but seemingly everyday, people were having a moment of their own, usually over a glass. I don't know if it is meant to celebrate a day passed, or whether it is intended perhaps as a moment of gratefulness.  But I've come to love this small acknowledgement of another day that we have been lucky enough to have.
• Anyone can talk about the weather: When you're in a place that's different, and other potential topics plucked from the news or the social fabric might be perceived as unwelcome when broached by an outsider, you can never fail with the weather.  In Johannesburg, it rained every late afternoon when I was there, right around the same time.  A conversation about that day's rain, how it compared to the previous days, whether it would rain again tomorrow always seemed to fill any conversational void I had, no matter the person or their relation to me.  When in doubt, bring up the weather.
• Galleries somewhere else can inspire you: I didn't have much time to do anything other than my work on this trip, but I was lucky to have a few well-known galleries as I was out and about town in meetings.  The great thing about galleries is that they don't take long to see, and they're free. So while I didn't have the time to be a full-on tourist on my trip, I did make time to squeeze in twenty minutes here, half an hour there to pop into galleries.  You can learn a tremendous amount about art from a place, the topics its driven by, the way media of art differs just by taking a few minutes to look.  And chances are, you'll leave inspired to see things differently.
• Every city has a quiet corner: Any city that you don't know, Johannesburg included, can grow to be overwhelming when you don't know your way around.  It's true everywhere.  Sometimes cities give us the opportunity to blend in seamlessly, almost as if no one sees us.  But sometimes cities draw attention to us---in my mind, I can sometimes see a myriad of red arrows pointing at me, screaming to others that I don't belong and I don't know where I'm going.  But any city has a quiet spot---it might be a garden, it might be a coffee shop.  If ever you feel like you don't belong, just find your quiet spot, and recompose.  And every city always looks quiet from up above---if you can't find anywhere else, just go to the highest spot you can find.  You'll always find quiet there.
• Together is better: I had so many people say this to me on trips I've made to South Africa.  In a country that is still working through so many differences that history has left them, when people tell me that despite everything, "together is better", then it serves as a good reminder to me to make sure that I apply that principle in my own life.

All my love,

Mom

Ps  - And in case you might be wondering...no, that's not a real hippo.  It's a hippo I saw at a gallery!

On lentil soup and economizing.

We've been on a lentil soup kick lately. Red lentils, french lentils, any old lentil we can find for cheap in the bulk section of our grocery store, we've been buying it. There's not a recipe that we've been using so much as a series of habits: sauté some amount of savory onion or shallot or leek in butter or oil, add lentils and other scattered nubs of carrots or leafy greens, add sea salt and water and heat until a soup develops that's nourishing and warming and everything that wintertime food ought to be. Last week I made one such batch of soup and served it to friends. I won't say I wasn't a bit shy at the prospect. Somewhere along the way, I've gotten the impression that food served to company should be better-than-usual fare. Even if you're on a tight budget, heating up a packet of ramen noodles and inviting friends for dinner doesn't seem like quite the right thing to do. Serving bowls of lentil soup seemed like the slightly more healthful equivalent. 

When you're still relatively young and childless in this city---or maybe at any time---going out with friends can be almost astonishingly expensive. Cocktails at one bar run you a day's food allowance and before the end of the night you can easily spend as much as you've allotted for the entire week's groceries and then some. Inviting friends to your home for a pot of lentil soup seems terribly boring in the face of artisan cocktails and mustachioed waiters and oozing cheese platters. 

But when my husband and I realized that our plan to live frugally in 2013 had meant that we'd allowed January to slip by without spending substantial time with any our friends, we resolved to reassess. Our conclusion is utterly predictable: invite your friends over for lentil soup. The truth is that no matter how humble the ingredients, lentil soup is delicious and having friends to your apartment for any kind of meal is better than never having them over at all.

There are some lessons I'm not sure why I've taken so very long to learn.

A Beautiful Life

Dear Sibyl, What do you think is the best and most gracious way to keep social life simple? I get a lot of requests to do things both for fun and on the professional level (i.e. sit on a committee or board) and I also want to have a good amount of unscheduled time, because I know that is what works for me, to keep me sane. But what is a good way to do this in a world that encourages frantic activity?

Sincerely, Lil’ Miss Popular

Dear Ms. Popular,

The most frequent answer to the question "How are you these days?" is "Busy!"  What if people answered this question a bit more accurately and said, "I have a lot of tasks to complete all the time, but inwardly I feel a little disconnected."  Because that is the true definition of a busy life.

Time is social capital.  First of all, I'd like to commend you for taking the time to consider your social commitments and seek to knit something together that supports you individually as well as helps you feel a part of a greater community.

Much of our lives are made up of the people we spend it with.  Some of that we don't have a whole lot of choice about: the co-worker that is hired after you and talks your ear off about their skydiving obsession, the fellow dog owner who tries to get you involved in puppy politics at the dog park, the neighbor with the backfiring van who will never move out.

So, when you have a rare hour of free time, you want to be sure you are investing it in something or someone who will add depth and continuity to your life, rather than feeling like you are flitting around from one commitment to the next, always playing catch-up with each person.

Personally, I often find myself falling head over heels for a person or an organization, and throwing myself into that friendship or activity with great fervor, only to find out a year down the line that they were not who I thought they were, or that I've outgrown them.  If I stopped doing this, however, my life would remain stagnant, and I would eventually feel isolated from my own lack of willingness to risk and put my whole self into my relationships and endeavors.

Carl Jung had the idea that we are drawn to people who have something that we need, and can help us realize those parts of ourselves.  Over time, we are meant to start doing those things on our own, and when we do, we may find that what we were meant to learn from that person, and what we had to share with them, has made the relationship redundant.

Does that mean you need to stop calling your best friend from elementary school, who have little in common with now but love seeing, for the tether she gives you to the past?  No, but I would suggest saving visits with her for special times: her birthday, when the band whose songbook the two of you have memorized comes to town, or a holiday you love spending with her.

This may free you (and your old friend) up to do some new things.  When you do, consider, "How is this going to help me grow as person?  What is it about this activity or friend that I am particularly drawn to?  Is that something I really want more of in my life?"

For instance, you may be excited about a certain couple because they have great parties that look cool on Instagram and give you blog fodder.  If that is really your only connection to them, I suggest giving them a very slim slice of your life, perhaps accepting only every third invitation.  However, if you have a friend who is exceptionally kind to your child, and who could teach you how to make terrariums, and remembers to ask after your sick cat, see if she can meet you for coffee tomorrow.

I have to say I am quite taken with your idea of preserving unscheduled time.  Perhaps you can block that out in your calendar, and write "Reserved for Spontaneity" in the square.  Then, when you are asked to fill that time with volunteer work or a baby shower, just say, "I cannot.  I have an engagement with my mind."  Then everyone will think you are weird and won't invite you places anymore anyway and you'll have lots of free time!

I am being a little silly there, but honestly, you have the right to curate your own life.  Consider your calendar like an art exhibit, and choose the pieces that inspire you the most and that you want to look at all the time to hang on the walls of your days.

Feel free to create something beautiful with your community and your time, even if this means turning down some invitations.  Choose beauty, however sparse that may be for you, over busy-ness.

Love, Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Paper Hearts

I love my wonderfully magnificent husband.  He loves me right back.  Today, however, I will not be receiving anything heart-shaped from Kay Jewelers.  We will not be spending $250 on dinner at a restaurant where we typically eat for less than half that price.  Although it is entirely possible that I will gorge myself on chocolate treats (this is essentially known as “Thursday” in our house) and while it is fundamental to our marriage that we demonstrate love openly and frequently, it feels forced to do so specifically on Valentine’s Day. Aside from the fact that the Holiday originates in the veneration of a Saint (which is not really our thing), Valentine’s Day has never seemed terribly significant in our lives.  Perhaps it is this way for many married people, couples that have been together for a while or couples that came together a bit later in life.  I said, A BIT.  But before you decide that I am the exact opposite of fun or light-hearted, please know that I have certainly done the whole shebang for Valentine’s Day at various points in my illustrious romantic career.  I have coordinated and participated in elaborate spa getaways, decadent meals, surprise concerts - you name it – as well as the giving and receiving of delicately packaged items.  I do also recollect from my dating years the buzzy thrill of a person asking you out for Valentine’s Day - a sure sign (much like the first road trip together) that the relationship has bumped up to the next level.  And we haven’t even touched on my experience working in retail flower shops for days on end to prepare endless vases with floral expressions of love.  I have been there.  I have done that.

It should also be noted that I am in full support of the tradition of children crafting Valentines and learning to formally display affection for others.  I think it is ridiculously sweet to introduce any mode of creative correspondence, particularly for children growing up in the age of the iPad mini.  When parents and teachers of young children are sensitive about distributing classroom Valentines, it presents a genuine opportunity to learn about inclusivity.  I recall concrete lessons from my early elementary years about making each of my classmates feel exceptional.  For many little ones, the template for empathy comes from this kind of social experience. 

I think my primary issue with Valentine’s Day is that like with so many things in our culture, we have decided (somewhat arbitrarily) that this is the single day each year that we publicly acknowledge the love we have for the people around us.  I am much more concerned with keeping my relationship fresh and conveying appreciation during the daily slog.  It is not tremendously complicated to throw money at one of the many clichéd offerings on February 14^th.  The real labor of love, in my view, is to make eye contact and tender a bear hug during the morning greeting; to remember to ask your partner how the big meeting went today; to not finish all the ice cream yourself.  Enduring love means being the one who gets up before dawn with the baby because your cohort doesn’t “do mornings.”  It means not freaking the fuck out even though this has got to be the 794,375^th time you have picked a ball of socks up off the floor.  It means never, ever, ever checking out mentally or emotionally.

I haven’t picked out a card or made reservations anywhere.  I will be wearing regular, nondescript, cotton undergarments all day.  But I hope he will consider my abiding commitment to nurturing our life together a most treasured and heartfelt Valentine.

A love Letter to my Friends

This Valentine’s Day, I could tell you about my husband, but we’ve never been big into the holiday, and besides I already penned my sweet romantic column on our anniversary. Instead I’d like to discuss another love, the wonder that is a best friend. How awesome are best friends? Is there really anything better? I don’t believe there is.  A best friend often knows you just as well as a spouse or partner, they’re certainly just as vital to your sanity, and of course, deserving of much love and chocolate.

For me, best friends come in pairs.  In first grade I made first one then a second best friend. For eight years if I wasn’t talking to one of them, I was probably talking to the other. The countless sleepovers, passed notes, birthday parties, mall pretzels, and phone calls that followed us from My Little Pony to first crushes created a history so tight and filled that even after years of not being in constant contact, we’re still connected. This weekend I traveled back to my hometown to attend a baby shower of one of my childhood best friends.  It was amazing to me that even not having seen each other for several years, and even with our different lifestyles, I could sit and talk for hours with either girl. I think that really shows what a bond friendship is, especially best friends. It’s a bond capable of stretching through time and space without breaking.

In college, I met two more best friends.  These girls I studied with, ate midnight pancakes with, went to parties with.  We saw each other through boyfriends and breakups and the pressure of deciding what we wanted to do with our lives. We visited each other’s homes, met the respective parents, and even shared an apartment.  When graduation rolled around, we were happy to be moving on to bigger and better things, but deeply sad that we wouldn’t see each other every day.  Today we’re still thick as thieves even though distance may separate us.  We talk on the phone, text silly stories, and send a flurry of emails.  When I lived out of the country, the daily emails always brought a smile to my face and made me feel connected with my home even though I was on the other side of the world.

The thing that amazes me most about best friends is the pure chance and luck involved.  I met my two best friends when we all happened to live on the same floor our freshman year of college. If anyone of us had chosen a different school or even a different dorm, would we have met? We had nothing else in common so I’m not sure that we would have.  And if we hadn’t met, would I still be the same person I am today?  I doubt it.

Who you click with and who you don’t is obviously subjective.  Just like romantic partners, some folks look good on paper, but in person there’s no spark.  But to my knowledge, there’s no such thing as an e-harmony for best friends; there’s not speed dating or blind dates.  It’s much chancier. Maybe you find someone who understands you to the depths of your soul, who will tell you in the kindest possible terms not to wear that dress, who will make you laugh until you can’t breathe.  Maybe you’ll find someone who protects your emotions and understands your fears without you having to speak them.  Maybe you’ll find someone to banter with to question the world with and to ponder the plural form with; someone to talk you off the ledge when things are bad and give you a high five when they’re good.  If you’re lucky enough to find that person, well then as the saying goes, you’re lucky enough.  If you’re lucky enough to have two best friends, I truly believe there is nothing you cannot fight through and nothing you cannot accomplish with that power at your side.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Best Friends out there, and a special shout-out to mine: You guys are crazy fantastic and I don't say it often enough.  Thank you for always being exactly what I needed, having my back without question, never being bothered by my nuttiness, riding through the crazy vortexes that life brings, and making me laugh for 10 years (yes, we are that old). I am so grateful the universe put us in each-others paths. Happy Valentines Day L & L, I love you bunches.

Lessons from a Valentine's Day...

Dearest Clara,

Happy Valentine’s Day! I know it seems a little corny to be wishing you a happy valentine’s day, but this is one of my favorite holidays. While some people see it as sappy and romantic, or commercial and forced, and granted, it can feel that way sometimes, I prefer to see it as a celebration of love among family and friends.  It’s an opportunity to recognize people who are important to us openly, and also an opportunity to recognize people sometimes a bit more secretly.  After all, who isn’t flattered by secret admirers?

My fondest Valentine’s memory though was a gift from my mother.  I was 12, and she woke me up early before her call shift at the hospital to give my gift: 3 pink Bic razors with a small can of shaving cream, all wrapped up in red tissue and in a small gift bag with hearts on it.  It couldn’t have cost more than a few dollars and I remember it like it was yesterday.  I had been begging to shave my legs, like all the other girls at school, for months, and I thought she would never say yes.  Turns out, my mom was more progressive (or perhaps more understanding of the need of junior high vanity) than I thought. . . It meant the world to me, and every year, I think of how excited I felt that she really took to heart what I had been wanting.

Here is the way I try to celebrate an extra touch of love on this day:

• Give valentines to everyone: When you’re young, hopefully in school they’ll get you in the habit of including everyone in Valentines.  Want to know why? Because it’s such a nice feeling when you’re included; and it’s such a sad feeling when you’re not.  Try to make room for as many people as you can in your Valentine’s day heart.
• Wear at least a little bit of red: Nothing over the top, but having a little touch of red, even if it’s somewhere not everyone can see, will put you in the holiday spirit and remind you to be extra loving towards those around you.
• Be weary of set Valentine’s menus at restaurants: In my experience, these never turn out for the best, neither in food, nor in your enjoyment of the evening.  If you go out, find a restaurant that treats this as a normal day, or prepare a celebration with a group in a non-traditional spot.
• Leave a surprise for someone you admire: Valentines are about relationships, but not everything has to be defined as a couple.  You can feel admiration for someone and not necessarily feel it in a romantic way—just don’t confuse the two for them.
• Be extra mindful of anyone you care about in “that way”: No matter how much people say they might not like or not care or not endorse Valentine’s day, I think everyone ends up holding out a little hope for it in the end.  So if you are with someone, make the effort to do something a bit more meaningful.  It doesn’t have to be serious, and it doesn’t have to be heart shaped boxes full of chocolates (unless they like it)—but do something that shows that you’re thinking about them and appreciate them in your life.

Wishing all my love to my darling Valentine,

Mom

Snow

I was going to post the animated trailer for Stranger Here today, but the big social media release date is 2/25, so I'm going to have to wait. . . So instead I’ll tell you a story.

I met a guy the other night who asked me, “Have you ever made a business plan? Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and said, ‘I can achieve my goals?’” “I haven’t,” I said, “but I guess I should.”

He asked me, “What percentage of you is committed to achieving your goals? On a scale of one to a hundred, what percent committed are you?” I thought about it, I looked down, I looked up at him. “I’d say 95 to 100 percent,” I said. He laughed. “It’s not a test, you’re not on a game show.”

We had just watched my boss compete for a job, on a reality television show. He didn’t really want the job, but it was a chance to be on television, which is what he really wants to do. His actual job is owning a restaurant, which is where we were, drinking boxed wine. It was really snowing for the first time this year.

We went outside into the snow. We threw snowballs. Mine went in gentle arcs, smashing to powder on people’s coats. The business plan guy would hide behind a car until we were all ahead of him and then hit us from behind, hard.

The staff of the gelato place was outside and we had a snowball fight with them. After a while, a girl on their team asked a guy on our team whose team he was on, and he said, “I don’t even know anymore!” I yelled at him and threw a snowball at him. “You hit me in the dick! You hit me in the dick!” he yelled. But he wasn’t mad and I didn’t feel bad. I said, “That’s what you get for being a traitor!” He said, “Yeah, I deserved it.”

There were tequila shots inside. Aida and I told the boy I hit in the dick that he should shave his beard. He said, “Sometimes I shave off this part, so it’s just a goatee.” “Noooooo!” we said, “that’s worse!”

We went down the street to a bar and there was dancing in the basement. We danced with two 22 year old fetuses. One of them said to me, pointing to my hair, “Why the bob? I love it! You’re so retro!” I wanted to say, I’m not retro, I’m just ten years older than you, but I didn’t want to kill the moment.

Aida said to me, “Attack them with the hair!” and we shook our hair in their faces, her long black hair and my retro bob.

Sometimes everything comes together---how things look, what you’re doing, who you’re with, and who you are right then---and you can feel it all existing as one thing, separated out in time. Like a knot in a string.

The next day I thought about  my business plan. I don’t have one. But I have looked myself in the mirror and said, “Go for it.” I have had a flash, while carrying a stack of glasses across the restaurant where I work, and thought to myself, “This is my life! This is my life this is my life this is my life.” And thought, I want to get that tattooed somewhere so I see it every day, but in French or something, so I don’t get sick of it, so it can become just letters most of the time.

Trippin' Out Before the Trip Begins

There is an axiom, said by Confucius or Carnival Cruise Lines:  the couple that travels together, stays together.  In the five years I’ve been dating Zack, we’ve been to Europe and South America, the California coast and Los Angeles, Boston and the British countryside.   We have not, thus far, killed each other.  We’ve made it through the Spanish siesta time where every restaurant closes at exactly the time your stomach begins grumbling. We’ve survived a white knuckled bus ride that careened around Ecuadorian cliffs, dropping us several thousand feet in elevation in approximately 10 minutes.  When we’re fighting on a damp British day, we can look back at our pictures from a beach in Columbia, me in a bikini, him with a sun burnt nose and beer in hand and say, oh yeah.  I remember when everything felt wonderful. This, though, is not a column about traveling with a significant other.  It’s not chock full of tips about how to make it a rewarding experience for both of you (be flexible about scheduling your days!  Take time to explore by yourself!  Take probiotics; a wildly pooping partner tends to dampen the romance!).  Today, I’d like to talk about what happens before the trip even begins.

I am a planner.  After booking a flight, I’ll spend hours perusing TripAdvisor, Google images, Lonely Planet and Rick Steves (whom I may or may not have a small crush on).  I’ll Wikipedia the history of my destination; I won’t book a hostel until I’ve cross-referenced it on at least three sites.  This is in stark contrast to my regular life, where I spend much of my time searching for lost keys or money, or solving the case of the missing shoe.

There is a school of thought that suggests most of the happiness gained from a trip comes from the act of planning it, rather than being on the trip itself.  A study of 1,530 Dutch adults showed that planning a vacation boosted happiness for 8 weeks prior, while after the vacation, happiness levels quickly returned to normal.  The pleasure, it suggests, come from the anticipation of the vacation more than the vacation itself.  This is me, to a T:  when I’m on-line, scouring for deals and reviews and background, the picture of the place that I’m going is coming into tighter, brighter focus.  Instead of any beach, it’s a white sand one with turquoise water and an unusually good donut stand; instead of any Old Town, it’s the one where I can still see the bullet holes in the stones from World War II.  The more I know, the more I can picture myself there, and the more excited I get.

Zack, on the other hand, likes to wing it.  We’re planning a trip to Portugal and southern Spain right now, and when we were trying to figure out what cities we wanted to include, his eyes glazed over somewhere between Lisbon and Lagos.  “If we spend more time in Lagos,” I said, “we’ll have more warm beachiness, but then we’ll have to cut out some time in Cordoba.”

He sighed.  “What’s good about Cordoba again?”

“Here.”  I turned the computer to face him, and began clicking through images I’d opened.  “I’ll show you.”

“Liz,” he said.  “I don’t want to see all of this.”

“Why not?” I asked.  “I’m not planning this trip on my own.”

Here is what the study does not address:  when your partner is unhappy, you will likely be unhappy.

“I don’t like doing this,” Zack said.  “Going through pictures, getting an idea in my head of what it’s going to be like.  The real thing will never be the same, better or worse.   Flooding yourself with the place before you go removes the newness you get to experience when you first arrive.”

I paused; I’d never thought of this.  Still, for me it was simple math:  given the choice of happiness for a few months prior to a trip and slightly less happiness in the week or so I was on it, I would always choose the former.  For Zack, the authenticity of the experience mattered more than the fantasy leading up to it.  No amount of happiness derived from planning could make up for marring the moment itself.

Most things travel related merely serve to magnify that which exists in normal day-to-day life; this is why traveling is a test of a relationship.  I tend to be a person who thrives in fantasy. I write books and hang out with characters that are only real to me all day; I’ve always been someone who will spend much of the time in the present dreaming wistfully of another time.  Zack is more grounded in reality: he’s constantly assessing the world as it is so that he can invent products that fit in with it.  The constraints when he’s making said products are grounded in the real world; is there an existing part for this element, or does he need to create one?  When the pieces are in place and he flicks the power switch, he can’t write a successful outcome; it needs to actually happen.

We haven’t entirely solved our problem. I take the lead on planning now, just as I clean the bathroom or he handles the laundry, both tasks the other despises.  Still, there’s a part of me that misses sharing those dreamy moments with him, and I have no doubt there’s a part of him that craves the surprise reveal of the picture falling into place in an instant.

Do you and your partner sync up in your approach to planning, or fantasy in life in general?  If not, how do you deal with it?

Uncertainty: Leaning In

There are always questions. There are no definite answers. Simple and peaceful, yet anxiety-provoking thoughts that Cheri Lucas shares in her blog post on collective memory and joy.

As I look forward at the next few months and the end of my formal education, I imagine joy-filled moments with friends, explorations of a city I have yet to truly give my heart to, and dedication to newly emerging passions and people. And, then, graduation, followed by the extending void of the rest of my life. Various years ago, as college ended, I knew I would live abroad at some point; when I lived abroad I knew I would go to graduate school. And, that is where the plan ended. My ten year old routine of setting goals for the new year, slipped between my fingers in January, as I couldn’t envision the next step. The feeling: true uncertainty.

Uncertainty is one of those mixed emotion words. It inspires youth, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, chance, and jumping in head-first. Its less satisfying other side, provokes anxiety and worry, stalling forward momentum. However, there is no escaping either side, as my thoughtful friends gently remind me, almost everything in life is uncertain. Someone, clearly more comfortable with uncertainty than myself, stated “uncertainty touches the best of what is human in us.” I feel it grabbing at what is most human about me, but perhaps not always the best part.

So, I posed the question to my community, asking how they handle uncertainty?

The response echoes both love and frustration with uncertainty. People both thrive on it and run and hide from it. One friend distilled the moment of power found in uncertainty, drawing from it a sense of self situated in the present. The past is past and the future is not-yet-known. C’s words powerfully bring comfort into the daily experience;

“Life is always like this---every single moment is filled with some sense of uncertainty because we don't know what will happen one second from now. . . but the more you can practice being in the present moment and letting go of both of these things, the more well equipped you are to handle times of "uncertainty" because you are actually accustomed to living your life riding the constant wave of uncertainty. Perhaps more important is to just accept this uncertainty because that is the nature of things. . . Really, the only thing we ever have is this exact moment. Our own minds get in the way of attaching absolute truth to either the past or future . . . to live in the present moment is to acknowledge that the only thing we have in uncertainty. . . the only choice we have is to experience each moment---both joyous and sad---as it unfolds.”

J shared a quote inspiring a sense of inner peace;

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” – Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And, A, always practical;

“I tend to simply acknowledge that [the uncertainty], more often than not, I don't have answers and don't know what will happen, and attempt to just do what feels right at the moment.”

And, E, who strives for comfort with uncertainty:

“Uncertainty is the world of infinite possibility. Once you are certain, you are much more limited.”

Uncertainty inspires a certain leap-of-faith, of leaning into the unknown and taking a chance. Our faith in being happy, healing, and loved in the future depends on our comfort with taking this step. And, yet, as Cheri concludes in her post, “this shared uncertainty is comforting.” Perhaps, it is what ties us together as humans. Perhaps this why it comforts me to understand how my community loves and equally dislikes uncertainty.

In other places, lives, and selves abroad, constantly in transition, uncertainty colored every moment, experience, and relationship. Nights seemed endless, conversations deeply meaningful, and bonds stronger---in essence a sense of power in youthful flashes of self-discovery. Yet, the moments were at times root-less, and I felt the uncertainty needing a rest. I dreamed of graduate school as a place where I could hang uncertainty up in the closet for a few years and settle into community and a more predictable life. Yet, the fun-inspiring side of uncertainty slowly shifted as the future-focused anxiety seeped out of the closet.

Other friends wrote of the challenging side of uncertainty, the side that we are all aware of;

“. . . this is something I have been working on my whole life. There were and still are times when it makes me physically ill and totally unable to cope. . .I try to control the things I can. . .I always find it very comforting to organize my drawers.”

. . .

“I wrap myself into the fetal position until I find a new way of framing the situation so I can handle it.”

. . .

“I simply try to avoid it.” [end of email]

The emails from friends confirmed my suspicions that there is no right way to handle uncertainty, just the way that works for each individual. It can be scary, dark, and lonely.

Once you begin paying attention to uncertainty, it permeates everything, from over-heard conversations in coffee shops, to secrets friends share, and even to the conclusions of academic articles for class on how people handle uncertainty;

“People’s willingness to act depends on how knowledgeable they are/feel; however in most contexts individuals must act based on predictions.”

It seems obvious, of course that as humans we act based on predictions. What are the other options? The article seeks to explain types of actions people will take based on their knowledge of the outcome. In a world, where knowledge of the outcome is more of a desire than a reality, our decision-making is rooted in our prediction.

We are left with the leap-of-faith and creating positive predictions that allow us to take the risk---apply for the job, ask the girl out, plan that trip, make the move, and whatever uncertain plans you have. Leaning into uncertainty is a sense of freedom that makes us human and calls us to trust ourselves.

XXIII. Normandie

Madeleine is Clémence’s older sister, an outspoken 26-year-old who takes it upon herself to teach me all the dirty words I never learned in my American French classes. C’est très important, ton éducation! she tells me soon after my arrival. I agree wholeheartedly. It becomes a tradition for she, Clémence, Pauline and I to giggle around the table each night as they teach me things like how to tell people to fuck off in three different ways and a variety of tenses. I copy everything down into the little notebook I carry with me everywhere---Roger calls me l’écrivaine, the writer, as I am constantly scribbling away in it, trying to record every detail of Normandie. Apart from a journal, I use it for making lists of the new words I hear. By the end of the visit it is full of my looping sentences, spelling out phrases that, were I to leave my notebook sitting open on the kitchen table, would probably not be what Roger was expecting to find.

After a month under Madeleine’s tutelage, I am speaking grammatically incorrect, slang-ridden French. It makes for easier conversation with Clémence’s friends, but the transition back to Advanced Placement French in Ohio is something of a culture shock. When I incorporate my new vocabulary into an essay on what I did over the summer, the teacher takes away a point for each use of slangy verlan or argot, even though that’s the kind of French that most people in France actually speak.

It’s the worst grade I’ve gotten on a French assignment since I started studying the language years before, but I don’t mind. Each red X reminds me of the stamps in my passport from Charles de Gaulle airport, hard proof that I went somewhere and changed because of it.

Making Mistakes

I spent the last week in Florida, holed up in conference rooms by day and attending boozy events by night. It was my company's annual sales conference, a huge event that brings sales professionals together from across the country. I don't write much---or anything really---about my day job here. I work for a large legal research and technology company, selling both to law firms. When I made the transition from practicing law to sales, my mom was convinced that I would be successful, because in her words, I'm “smart and cute."  What a gift to have had a full-time cheerleader; a gift that I will never take for granted again. I have a boss, one who is at least three pegs up the ladder from me, who speaks to each and every person she meets with familiarity and respect. She's the kind of boss who asks you to do more with less, and is the kind of boss who receives a resounding YES from her troops with no questions asked. We all want to make her proud. She spoke throughout the last few days, providing us with inspirational thoughts for the year ahead and reflecting on the past one. One thing she said stuck with me. She urged us to make mistakes this year---big ones, in fact---because you're bound to make mistakes when you embrace change. I paused at this, immediately thinking about the big ones I made over the last year.

This past year, I spent too many hours thinking about the people who disappointed me, rather than the ones who showed up again and again. I appreciated the latter without question, but still thought about the cards I didn't receive and the times my phone didn't ring. I couldn't help but notice the people who were around at first, but who faded from sight as time passed. This group is small though, so much smaller than the mob that has circled around me tirelessly and endlessly. My mom would tell me to get over it, in that way only she could.

This past year, I focused too much on my own needs in honoring my mom's memory, instead of my family's needs. In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, my sister Meg asked me to continue the Black Friday tradition we started with our mom in recent years: in other words, to go shopping with her at an ungodly hour once again. I turned her down, thinking only of how sad it would be without my mom, instead of Meg's wish to keep these traditions alive. Most recently, I balked in response to my sisters' suggestion to serve chicken parm at an upcoming family dinner, to celebrate my mom's birthday. They wanted to honor my mom with her favorite dish; all I could think about was the bother of frying chicken cutlets for 15 people. Thankfully, my sisters took a page out of my mom's book and ignored my nonsense, and thankfully, I came to my senses before too long.

This past year, I lost my temper with my dad on more occasions than I'd like to admit. It's difficult, helping him navigate life without my mom and watching him struggle with everyday tasks that she handled with such ease. The house is messier than it used to be, and all I see under the piles of mail and empty soda cans is my childhood home slipping away. I haven't acknowledged my dad's struggles quite clearly enough, or the strides he has made in becoming independent. My phone doesn't ring every night like it used to, with questions about my day. But then, the first birthday card I opened this year was from my dad. It was signed simply, but he picked out the card and mailed it, with time to spare. A small milestone, but he's learning---and quicker than I give him credit for at times.

We all know that change is the only constant in life. And so this year, I commit to embracing the change that is bound to come my way. I commit to making even more mistakes. And I commit to learning from my past mistakes. A tall order, so I'll start small. . .

I was wrong about the chicken parm. It will be the best I've ever tasted---of this I'm sure.

On learning new things

Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, beginning language courses were my favorites. They were often scheduled first thing in the morning, and with a terrifying list of intimidating lectures and seminars stretching before me throughout the week, I loved starting each day with a heaping dose of humility. When you are struggling through your alphabet at 9am, all bets are off. The first days and weeks of a beginning language course are disorienting, frustrating, overwhelming. It is impossible not to make a mistake. In fact, you have to make mistakes in order to learn to converse. And it is impossible not to embarrass yourself. For the longest time, you sound completely ridiculous as you try to pronounce unfamiliar sounds and string them together, inching toward coherency. You write at a kindergarten level.

But the learning curve is steep, and there are moments of sheer delight as you discover new ways of seeing and describing your world. The results are measurable. You started out knowing three words, and eventually you know ten, then a hundred. Soon enough, you’re making up your own sentences with those words. And one day, perhaps months or years into your study, you realize that you’re finally saying what really you want to say, rather than only what you know how to say.

Last week, my friend Diana gave a Berkman Center talk on Coding as a Liberal Art. She’s been chronicling her experience learning how to code, and in her talk, she offers up reflections on being a beginner and ideas for how coding could be taught in a liberal arts setting.

In a world overflowing with experts and specialists and wannabe experts and specialists, what I love most about Diana’s effort is her open and honest embrace of beginner status. There are so many emotional barriers to learning new things—vulnerability, embarrassment, fear of failing, fear of making mistakes, fear of the unknown—it’s a wonder any of us ever takes on the challenge, especially in adulthood, of being a novice.

Some believe it’s futile to try to learn a new language in adulthood, since it’s nearly impossible to achieve fluency. And I’ll be the first to admit that after years of language study, my conversational ability is generally pathetic. I’ll also be the first to advocate for learning new things, including impossible things, like languages.

Achieving perfection, or expertise, or fluency may be next to impossible, but perfection need not be the goal of a beginner. In fact, if perfection is the goal of a beginner, it’ll probably just get in her way.

One of the most important things I learned from being a beginner is how much I don’t know. A few words offered up in someone else’s native language or professional language doesn’t mean you totally understand a culture or field or perspective that’s different from your own. But it does mean you’re trying. It’s a step in the right direction. It means that perhaps you know enough to realize how much you don’t know.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Elissa Bassist edits the Funny Women column on TheRumpus.net. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review Daily, NYMag.com, The Daily Beast, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Creative Nonfiction, Salon, The Rumpus, and most recently in the anthology Get Out of My Crotch! Twenty-One Writers Respond to America’s War on Women’s Rights and Reproductive Health.  Follow her on Twitter @elissabassist, and visit elissabassist.com for more literary, feminist, and personal criticism. Have you ever read “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan”? You should read it. It’s an essay about the problems of telling other people what to read. It begins with Epstein’s student who, about to graduate from college, began “asking people whom he thought well-read to make lists of books that he ought to read” because he felt there were “so many enormous gaps in his education.” Epstein writes: “When someone asks you to make a list of books for him to read he is, whether he knows it or not, really asking, ‘How do I become an educated person?’ Now this is a tricky question.”

Who am I to say how you should educate yourself and spend your time? I am someone who saw Magic Mike three times in theaters.

Epstein says many wonderful things, including, “When it comes to reading, though, nearly everyone feels, or ought to feel, inadequate in one way or another. . . How much better just to relax in one’s inadequacy?” (I’d like to swap “When it comes to reading” with “When it comes to being alive. . .”) His advice: skip the old, boring books, if you want; what you used to find boring may not be boring ten years from now; get over the preoccupation to read “what’s hot now”; reread your favorites, or don’t; don’t give book advice; don’t take book advice.

Below is an inadequate list of books eschewing everything above.

Read I Love Dick by Chris Kraus. It’s not what you think. I half-wish it were what you thought. It’s a contemporary epistolary novel/memoir/feminist manifesto/art project where the following happens: a husband and wife meet a man named Dick; the wife connects with Dick and refers to their connection as a “conceptual fuck”; the wife writes Dick a letter and the husband proofs it and suggests changes and also writes his own; together, both rewrite their first letters until Chris has a book of unsent letters. Eileen Myles writes in the intro: “In Chris’s case, abjection…is the road out from failure. Into something bright and exalted, like presence…Her living is the subject, not the dick of the title…”

Read Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. If anyone ever has a problem, I tell her or him to read this book because it answers all of them. Steve Almond writes in the introduction: “I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives—those foundations of inconvenient feelings…within the chaos of our shame and disappointment and rage there is meaning, and within that meaning is the possibility of rescue.”

Almond says we need books like TBT because “in the private kingdom of our hearts, we are desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. Someone who isn’t embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, who recognizes that life is short and that all we have to offer, in the end, is love.”

Read Bossypants by Tina Fey because: Tina Fey.

If you’re like me, you often wonder about The Purpose of Literature. Some people knock memoirs as being a Lesser Art, but (and now I paraphrase David Foster Wallace) literature is not about showing off and performing verbal and storytelling acrobatics—literature ought to be a service to a reader’s interior life. A writer’s personal story and emotional generosity reach me more than any plot labyrinth, and so I say read Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, a book that taught me how to pray. I’m a non-practicing Jew who attends religious gatherings never, and now I say two prayers every night: Thank you for [fill in the blank] and Help me with [fill in the blank]. Mary Karr’s Lit also influenced me in this department.

Please, as a personal favor, will you read everything Lorrie Moore has written? This includes her first collection of short stories, Self-Help, her first novel, Anagrams, and her second, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, and her other short story collections Like Life and Birds of America.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is the most fucked-up book I’ve ever read, and I recommend it for this reason.

Read Leaving the Atocaha Station, poet Ben Lerner’s first novel, because every sentence is a perfect sentence.

Every short story George Saunders writes, especially in Pastoralia and Tenth of December, makes me laugh out loud.

You have to read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip D. Dick.

I’ve written before about my feelings for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. When I read D.T. Max’s DFW biography, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, I felt privy to the inner innerness of a writer who restructured my world and made me feel stuff. Here are two favorite DFW quotations from the book:

1. “I always had great contempt for people who bitched and moaned about how ‘hard’ writing was, and how ‘blockage’ was a constant and looming threat. When I discovered writing in 1983 I discovered a thing that gave me a combination of fulfillment (moral/aesthetic/existential/etc.) and near-genital pleasure I’d not dared hope for from anything.”

2. “We’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness.”

It goes without saying (well, I’ve already said it a lot already) that I recommend all of Wallace’s books. They are for those who have ever felt misunderstood or ignored or lonely or bored or broken. They’ll make you feel human in our increasingly digital world.

One last piece of book advice: Never read Fifty Shades of Grey. Every time someone reads Fifty Shades of Grey, a real book dies.

Hungry Hungry Humans

Dear Sibyl, Is it me, or does everyone and their uncle have a food allergy/aversion/snobbish avoidance these days? I've found it increasingly difficult to share meals and prepare food for others without objections from gluten-free, only-eat-local-everything, on-a-cleanse, vegan, paleo-diet friends and family members.  I used to crave the communal intimacy of a shared meal, but now it seems "what I'm not eating" dominates the conversation (and makes my allergy-free, trying-to-stay-sane self question if I really should be eating that dairy/gluten/egg-rich muffin). Am I being insensitive?

Signed,

Eating the Damn Muffin Already

Dear Eating The Damn Muffin Already,

I wish you were my dinner guest.

Recently, we had a couple we were getting to know over for dinner.  I had baked a delicious dessert, since they were bringing the food.  The meal was saucy take out, rich in butter and spices.  When I brought out the salted caramel cake I had made from scratch, I was shocked that neither one of my guests were willing to try it.  They demurred, saying that "Sugar is poison, you know", and that they are cutting it out of their diet completely.

Stunned, I set my cake back on the stove, and, due to the calls of my toddler, who had been promised a special treat in honor of our guests and had even helped to bake it, I cut the members of my family slices and passed them out, leaving our guests to watch us consume a whole bunch of homemade poison.

Their choice to eat greasy take out and then refuse cake baffled me, but everyone deserves to do whatever they want with their body.  Really what bugged me were their terrible manners.

We live in a time of shifting ethics about food.  There used to be a cuisine that was considered "American", that everyone was expected to eat.  In an age of growing education about where our food comes from, who benefits from our consumption of it, and how to best feed our bodies, people are making more informed decisions about food than ever.

This is a really positive thing.  I would like nothing better than to use only local ingredients, from companies that respect the land and pay their workers a living wage.  I want to serve my family healthy food that will help our bodies grow strong.  However, I am not willing to give up the common decencies of community to do so.  My motto is "People are more important than things."  And that includes my current food philosophy.

So, what to do, if you have been invited over for dinner, and you know your hosts do not eat the same way as you?  First of all, ask what's on the menu, and what you can bring.  If you are a strict vegetarian, tell them so ahead of time.  If you have no food allergies, but would like to eat a certain way, offer to bring a salad or special gluten-free bread, and make that the focal point of your meal, eating sparingly what your hosts have provided for you.

Sharing food is such an important part of community building.  Another vital aspect of community is truth telling.  So, if you're on a diet, say you're on a damn diet.  Don't couch it in New Age terms, and definitely don't judge other people's food choices, especially not in their home.

So, to answer your question, are you being insensitive by not loving all the new diets people are trying?  Well, unless you are placing a pig on a spit in front of your vegan friend or inviting your gluten-free buddy over for Bread Fest 2013, nope.

If you find yourself irked by Macrobiotic Mary on your friend list, why not do something with her that is not centered around food?  I'm sure you can agree on an indulgent movie to watch together, to make up for the decadence missing in her diet.  Just make sure you order exactly what you want at the concession stand, and stand by your choice.  But get the small popcorn---she’s not going to share.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Lessons from Utah...

Dearest Clara,

Mountains always look better when covered in snow, don’t you think? There is something about those white capped natural structures that takes my breath regardless of whether I’m seeing them from the ground up, or from the sky down.  When I was in Utah just a few weeks ago, I was elated to finally see mountains all around. Last year I made a trip at about the same time and didn’t see a single one—in fact, I could barely see two feet in front of me because of all the fog and snowstorms.  This year, during my week in Utah, I also learned to:

• Drink water, water and more water: The climate in the mountains, especially in the wintertime, is dry as can be.  If you notice you’re thirsty, it’s too late.  Start drinking water in advance of your trip and keep drinking more than you think.  Your body and skin will need it more than you realize.
• Bring a bucket of lotion: Well…not a bucket but you’ll need a lot.  Again, because of the dry climate and the changes in weather, you’re skin will need a little more love and care than it usually might.  Add some strength and add some quantity to what you normally use —and don’t forget those hands! Lots of lotion if they’re out in the cold—remember, your hands will show everything first.
• Consume food as you consume alcohol : Seems like it would be natural right? Because of regulations in the state of Utah, you need to order food at the same time that you order alcohol.  All in all, that’s not a bad general principle to live by—a little something in the stomach when you grow old enough to have a drink is a generally a good idea.  When I think of all the times I enjoyed a glass or two (or perhaps even just a little bit more) and the morning wasn’t as bright, it was always because I had forgotten to eat or didn’t eat very much.  Ordering both at the same time could be a good rule of thumb as you navigate your way through your young adult years.
• “Look out for the praiseworthy, virtuous..or lovely”: I confess I’m not very familiar with the Mormon religion, which is quite present in Utah.  But one of the principles that I’ve learned about through my travels and conversations, is that there is a specific element of faith that addresses praise for the good or the deserving.  Perhaps it is simply a longer way of saying that credit should be given where credit is due, but I can’t help but think that it is a wonderfully generous and selfless principle to be on the lookout for things that deserve praise and then to actually give it.  So many of us go through this world feeling like our actions or efforts of gifts are unnoticed—and so many of us mean to give credit but don’t.  Be the person that looks for genuine opportunities to offer a bit of notice for that which merits it.

All my love,

Mom