It’s too easy for me to be serious. Named after a saint whose portrait at nine featured a furrowed brow, I’m prone to pondering. It’s an affliction that holds me back from writing here, bogged down too quickly with a preoccupation about meaning. I’m like a beaver, constantly building dams that impeded the flow of water. But then, along comes someone like George Saunders with A Swim in a Pond in The Rain and I rediscover how refreshing the movement of water is. Right from the start, I am soothed with a line that reads: “the goal is to help them acquire the technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves.” Defiance and joy!
This morning, listening to Terrible Thanks for Asking, Anne Lamott described how our desire to help can keep someone from finding the solution for themselves. Describing something she’s learned for herself, she says “I try not to get my goodness all over people because it just keeps them shut down from the only thing that ever got anybody to wake up or get sober or get therapy or learn to eat in a healthy way which is; the willingness comes from the pain and if I’m medicating their pain for them out of my own disease of co-dependence I’m keeping them from the one thing that might help them find a much much better life.”
Years ago, our friends’ baby was born into the Neo-natal intensive care unit and, being myself young at the time, my life changed and adopted a frenzied mission to help. I drove too fast on an icy road and hit a car that cut me off, I rushed every second of my lunch hour to deliver fresh scones made the night before and all this to prove I could help (nay, improve!) the lives of my friends.
Now, in my thirties, I catch myself not rushing in to help so much as needing to provide for myself and others a satisfactory explanation, only to be stumped by the futility of the exercise. Turning to art, reminding myself what art is, is a huge comfort when faced with Life Events. Borrowing from Anne Lamott, I still need to learn how “not to get my explanations all over people” and cure myself of wanting to control the discomfort. The discomfort becomes so large in my mind that I lose the ability to find joy and consequently, the ability to write freely, for fun, for no reason. I guess that is where I need the defiance: I should not pretend to myself that I can improve anything by giving up the dutiful practice of writing imperfect blog posts.
I highly recommend A Swim in a Pond in The Rain.