On personal words, public words, and monologues between friends
(Full text of the handwritten letter below)
October 7, 2018
Dear Eva,
My mind is abuzz with new ideas and questions after our first week of letters. I was struck by how much more personal yours felt than mine. It got me thinking about what it means to have a public conversation, whether it’s possible to lose all awareness that others may read the words, that the words are captured in a way that most things we say and think are not. I’m trying handwriting this time to see how it feels and how it changes the final product. I can see how it adds a bit of pressure. Don’t wander off into a ramble, Sarah! Don’t make a typo!
Letter-writing is such an interesting way of communicating. A sustained, asynchronous conversation where each reply necessarily has a “talking at you” vibe since you’re not here to respond to my last thought. Instead, you’re stuck listening to my next 20 thoughts first before you get your chance to weigh in. I guess a letter is essentially a monologue with an audience of one.
Rereading my own letter (aka monologue) from Week 1, I’m struck by how detached it seemed from my real life. I launched straight into world events, almost with urgency. Even writing it, the words just poured out without planning or editing. It’s probably an accurate reflection of my mindset at the time. While I was here in Des Moines living my regular old life, my brain was in Washington. I’m guessing it wasn’t my finest week of parenting and partnering.
* * *
Jonah’s swimming lesson went by too quickly for me to finish writing. So it’s now 3 days later. Will the pause in writing affect my tone? How different am I on October 10th vs. October 7th?
There is definitely something terrifying about the prospect of crystallizing my stream of consciousness in this way. I think back to my experience of rereading the “notes” we would write each other in middle school. (We = my friends at age 13.) I shudder at the memory. But I also like the rawness of what it shows about how we think at a given moment in time. Perhaps even better than a diary entry, a handwritten letter to a friend reveals the way a person moves about in this world at a given point in time.
Right now, I feel full of anticipation and a little nervousness about leaving for Lisbon in one week. I love the promise and possibility of an upcoming vacation. Like any good adventure, it also brings an element of anxiety. Will the boys do okay while we’re away? What if they get sick and want a hug from their mom? What if something happens to us while we’re away?
At the risk of giving the impression that On Being / Krista is the only source of my learning, I am thinking back to a quote I saved from Becoming Wise: “We only learn to walk when we risk falling down, and this equation holds - with commensurately more complex dynamics - our whole lives long.” As a natural worrier, I need this reminder often.
With this in mind, I will soon get on a plane to Europe, where I will get to see your beautiful face!
Yours,
Sarah
October 11, 2018
Dear Sarah,
When I received your letter last week I was three days into my new life in Minneapolis, becoming Minnesotan on paper at the DMV, thinking about what you’d written and taking notes. Now I'm also thinking about the differences between handwriting my letter last week and the process of taking notes and editing and assembling this letter over this week. The handwritten form doesn’t preclude any of those things, but it feels different this week — I think I’ll go back and forth and see what things look like over time!
Last week you said — "I feel like there is nothing worse than resignation — a feeling that anything I say, feel, or do doesn’t matter. A feeling that I am inconsequential. I think having a feeling of agency about life is essential to human existence. So, what do I do when that feeling is zapped?"
Your letter made me mull on the scale of one’s own agency, my own agency. In some ways I like to start at the bare bones and acknowledge that I am inconsequential. Even if I matter now, and even if by some mix of luck and effort I matter hundreds of years from now, there is little likelihood I'll matter thousands of years from now, that anyone will know about me at all. Right now there are people who've vastly affected my life whom I know nothing about. At the same time, I know there are people whose lives I've touched in some way, and I let myself enjoy some sense of agency, satisfaction, impact in those cases. I might not be able to name them each and all, but I know they are there. It has something to do with the level to which you can know and aim at what you intend to do and be, and the extent to which you have to assume that you won't know exactly which moments matter along the way, and you have to be your best in every moment, whatever that means to you. I think of Carl Sagan and the photograph of Earth in the universe, the pale blue dot. I find that it can be a relief to be inconsequential.
If this sounds like I’m trying to circumvent the events of last week, the last months and years, that’s not quite my intention. I’m exhausted when I think about the long arc in time of people who are taken advantage of, the disregard and disrespect that takes place in millions of individual moments that accumulate and fossilize over time.
I might ask, Where can one person matter? But then, where can one person matter, and how do you (I) push yourself (myself) to matter outside of your (my) comfort zone, and how can we be thoughtful about where the places to matter might be? No one person can make the whole difference, but each one person can chip away at some change. To shift my metaphors, the wave of change over time is long and slow, and last week (and the months prior) felt like they were all about seeing and feeling, finally, the splashes from ripples of activities that took place decades ago, and more. In that kind of time span, it sometimes feels like nothing matters, but really I think every moment matters because this is going to be cumulative. You also talked about not losing sight of the goodness you are surrounded by every day — I’d add that I've started to see every moment of interaction as a possible moment of meaning — smiling and chatting in a store if I can, being friendly with the people whose paths I cross. I don't mean this to be of bigger consequence than it is. But to be neutral or to be harsh or cruel is appearing as a void or worse, a negative impact, a chip into someone else's life, carving away at them rather than helping to build them up just a little bit, show them that we're in it together.
I think there is a way in which resignation is the first and only thing, it is the foundation of everything else. It seems negative but perhaps it is just a little bit of realism. In the way of complementarity, you can be resigned and also be angry and active and happy, perhaps not all at once, but perhaps all in the span of a day or an hour. Sometimes I think, I’m lucky enough to exist right now, and I am lucky enough to have many happinesses in my life, and I am just going to purely enjoy them for a bit, like holding a treasure in my hand and just having it, seeing it, knowing it. And sharing it in some way. I certainly don’t think we all have the same amount of luck, but perhaps we can work on better ways to share the luck around? I don’t have all the answers and I could edit on and on, but for now I’ll say goodnight and farewell.
Talk soon,
Your friend,
Eva