BANG BANG BANG. Battle knocking at his door to get up and greet the day. I jumped out of bed with a surge of joy to see him, Margaret, toddling behind, both of them still in their sleep sacks.
Sleep sacks off, and Margaret put her little feet into Andy’s big flip flops, getting the leather thong between the wrong toes and reaching for my hand to try walking. Another physical tingling of pleasure in my shoulders and head at the sight of that little foot in that big shoe, the trusting hand in mine.
On top of all that pleasure, it was a warm morning and the kids were dancing in their swimsuits, ready to go outside and play in the hose as I left for work. Daffodils and Douglas irises blooming, lots of baby blue eyes on the hillside.
These moments of intense happiness used to come upon me once or twice a year. Since having children, once or twice a day. (Ditto for the fits of rage...)
It’s hard to write about these moments, though. Rage is the stuff of comedy, drama, tragedy. But joy?
Richard and Donna came for dinner and played jump on the mattress after. Learning to jump. Learning what the body can do. What it feels like to get a little boost from the mattress on the floor up to the bed, what it feels like to fly through the air just a little. Ecstatic squeals.
The next morning Richard and I talked for an hour about how that kind of exuberance needs a witness, but defies words. So hard to make it meaningful. Because it is its own reward; you don’t need to find compensation for pleasure.
Maybe that's why writers spin this gold into lead. NPR did it to me just this morning--read this to me on my way into work:
Lines Written in Early Spring
by William Wordsworth
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played:
Their thoughts I cannot measure,
But the least motion which they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
The pleasant thoughts don’t have to turn to sad ones. People do joyful things to and for each other all the time.
My goal is to find meaning in joy. We look too much to suffering for meaning.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thoughts on Hess
I’m told it's easy enough to understand why toddlers rage. Choice/control/will. Tonight Margaret didn't want to get into the bath. I tried to reason with her for a while and found it useless so just picked her up and plopped her in the tub. Screaming, flailing, water splashed into mouth, choking, parental and toddler distress ensued.
Was it choice/control/will? Or was it feeling misunderstood/ignored? She was telling me she wanted to go downstairs. I was trying to tell her I’d take her downstairs after the bath. I wonder, what would have happened if I’d just taken her downstairs to see what she wanted. Over time would that turn her into a willful spoiled brat, or just make her feel heard?
When I dropped Battle off at daycare today there was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I decided to harden my heart and leave quickly. I drove to work. Staff meeting for an hour. Then drove back to pick the twins up, drop them at home with the nanny, and started to leave again. More wailing and gnashing of teeth. This time, I told him I was going to leave in a few minutes and hugged him as he cried. After about three minutes he looked at me and said, Mama go to work. No more tears. Cheerful waving even.
I don’t know if the rage is about wanting control, or just wanting to be heard. But I tend to think it is about being heard. I think that parents tend to try to tell kids they want what they don’t want, feel what they don’t feel, etc, from a very young age. I think that’s a big part of the answer to Hess’s question:
I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
I want to give Battle and Margaret the freedom to live in accord with the promptings that come from their true selves. That is my goal as a parent. Not to shape them. Just to love them, to create a safe environment for them to express their true selves.
That doesn’t give me any guide to whether I should have spent the time to take Margaret downstairs; or just plop her in the bath and say “tough shit, it’s bath time honey.”
Children and adults need a witness to their joy and their rage. I’d rather witness joy, so I’ll try to create the environment for joy as much as possible. But if I get rage, I’ll deal with that too. Not be afraid of the rage.
But my real question yesterday was not about toddler rage. It was about my rage. How is it that Frankl could control his reaction to being put into a concentration camp but I cannot seem to control my tongue when my son throws blueberries on the floor?
The reason for my rage is that I have a deep fear that if I don’t watch it, if I don’t fight for my life, my whole life is going to get eaten up by tasks like cleaning up blueberries. The real reason for my rage was that I wasn’t going to be able to go and write during naptime. Instead I was going to clean up blueberries. The real reason for my rage then and almost always is that the minutia of life makes it really hard to stop and think. And it’s when I stop and think that I feel most fully myself.
My sister, when she read yesterday’s post, pointed me to David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech. He claims
It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
My tenth grade English teacher pointed me to this quote when I was wrestling with the same thing back then.
"within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it."
The main way into that sanctuary for me is through the written word. I don’t think I can find my way there when I am in a consumer hell type situation. I can find my way there when I clean up blue berries if and only if I have had some time to read, to write, to think.
Was it choice/control/will? Or was it feeling misunderstood/ignored? She was telling me she wanted to go downstairs. I was trying to tell her I’d take her downstairs after the bath. I wonder, what would have happened if I’d just taken her downstairs to see what she wanted. Over time would that turn her into a willful spoiled brat, or just make her feel heard?
When I dropped Battle off at daycare today there was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. I decided to harden my heart and leave quickly. I drove to work. Staff meeting for an hour. Then drove back to pick the twins up, drop them at home with the nanny, and started to leave again. More wailing and gnashing of teeth. This time, I told him I was going to leave in a few minutes and hugged him as he cried. After about three minutes he looked at me and said, Mama go to work. No more tears. Cheerful waving even.
I don’t know if the rage is about wanting control, or just wanting to be heard. But I tend to think it is about being heard. I think that parents tend to try to tell kids they want what they don’t want, feel what they don’t feel, etc, from a very young age. I think that’s a big part of the answer to Hess’s question:
I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
I want to give Battle and Margaret the freedom to live in accord with the promptings that come from their true selves. That is my goal as a parent. Not to shape them. Just to love them, to create a safe environment for them to express their true selves.
That doesn’t give me any guide to whether I should have spent the time to take Margaret downstairs; or just plop her in the bath and say “tough shit, it’s bath time honey.”
Children and adults need a witness to their joy and their rage. I’d rather witness joy, so I’ll try to create the environment for joy as much as possible. But if I get rage, I’ll deal with that too. Not be afraid of the rage.
But my real question yesterday was not about toddler rage. It was about my rage. How is it that Frankl could control his reaction to being put into a concentration camp but I cannot seem to control my tongue when my son throws blueberries on the floor?
The reason for my rage is that I have a deep fear that if I don’t watch it, if I don’t fight for my life, my whole life is going to get eaten up by tasks like cleaning up blueberries. The real reason for my rage was that I wasn’t going to be able to go and write during naptime. Instead I was going to clean up blueberries. The real reason for my rage then and almost always is that the minutia of life makes it really hard to stop and think. And it’s when I stop and think that I feel most fully myself.
My sister, when she read yesterday’s post, pointed me to David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech. He claims
It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
My tenth grade English teacher pointed me to this quote when I was wrestling with the same thing back then.
"within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it."
The main way into that sanctuary for me is through the written word. I don’t think I can find my way there when I am in a consumer hell type situation. I can find my way there when I clean up blue berries if and only if I have had some time to read, to write, to think.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Meaning of Life, Etc.
When I was at business school I learned from one of the many personality tests they had me take that the only activity I really enjoyed was something they called "talking about the meaning of life, etc." My 15th reunion is coming up in just a couple of months and I realize now that I learned something very valuable and never acted on it. I have not spent nearly enough time over the past 15 years talking about the meaning of life. I got thrown by the "etc." Sort of a dismissive, gratuitous etc.
Fuck the etcetera!
I am going to talk about the meaning of life.
Victor Frankl said that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Given that my favorite activity is talking about the meaning of life, given that I called this blog Logotherapy, the school of psychotherapy that Frankl founded, and given that Frankl is my hero, it pains me to say this. But I am not sure he is right about that.
If he's right, why did I yell at my two year old son, "Stop throwing the fucking blueberries on the floor!" I don't know if my kids are the meaning to my life--but certainly they are chief among the delights of my life. And I have all kinds of freedom. I could keep working. I could stop working. I could have had a nanny there, but I chose to have some alone time with my twins that particular morning. I would never choose to lose my temper over the fact that my two year olds behave like two year olds.
What is the meaning of the toddler rage? The rage that the babies clearly feel 100x a day and that once every two or three weeks infects me and even once every two or three months gets to their father, who is really the soul of patience?
Fuck the etcetera!
I am going to talk about the meaning of life.
Victor Frankl said that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Given that my favorite activity is talking about the meaning of life, given that I called this blog Logotherapy, the school of psychotherapy that Frankl founded, and given that Frankl is my hero, it pains me to say this. But I am not sure he is right about that.
If he's right, why did I yell at my two year old son, "Stop throwing the fucking blueberries on the floor!" I don't know if my kids are the meaning to my life--but certainly they are chief among the delights of my life. And I have all kinds of freedom. I could keep working. I could stop working. I could have had a nanny there, but I chose to have some alone time with my twins that particular morning. I would never choose to lose my temper over the fact that my two year olds behave like two year olds.
What is the meaning of the toddler rage? The rage that the babies clearly feel 100x a day and that once every two or three weeks infects me and even once every two or three months gets to their father, who is really the soul of patience?
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