On Thanksgiving letters, the ostrich approach, and the time to start something
November 27, 2020
Dear Eva,
I am hopeful that this week has been a simpler one for you than the last. One of the longest weeks of my life is quite a feat, and not in a good way. I am amazed and impressed that you managed to write a long beautiful letter amidst it all. We haven’t talked all week, and I’m so anxious to read your words tonight to see how your holiday week has been.
My week has been quite lovely. After a series of dreary, rainy days, the clouds parted on Thanksgiving, and we had a sunny, crisp day that was really quite perfect for the driveway dinner we put together with my family. Bill tried his hand at pies for the first time, and I guess I am not surprised that he pulled off two delicious pies from scratch as if he had been making them his whole life. He also made homemade french vanilla custard and homemade sourdough bread with rosemary and thyme. I contributed some roasted parsnips and carrots, but I was otherwise just a freeloader. My mom made her traditional Thanksgiving meal, and my brother in law and aunt contributed sides and pie, too. It was quite a feast! And we were all so happy to be together. We ended up staying for close to 7 hours, and the kids have their equivalents of hangovers today. (They also have chapped cheeks from the cold.) It was a joyful, cozy holiday.
Today we continued our annual tradition of driving out to a farm to pick out a Christmas tree. We then spent the afternoon rearranging furniture and trimming the tree to holiday music. The kids were in heaven. The dog was stressed. (Change! Unfamiliar items in the house!) I love the one month of the year that our living room takes on its holiday layout with a big tree shimmering with white lights in the picture window. (I am fairly certain you have visited during this time in years past; I have an image in my mind of you, me, and Bill sharing drinks around the tree. Is this a real memory? I am not certain.) This reminds me that recently Jonah came across the word “ritual” somewhere and was asking me for a definition. I had a little trouble explaining it in ways that he could understand. I will have to remember to point out to him that this practice of ours with the tree is one of our rituals—something we do to mark a special time together, something that gives familiar texture to the passage of time. It is probably important for me to acknowledge here that this ritual of ours is admittedly a little absurd. Cutting down a live tree to cover it with lights and gaudy trinkets?! We should probably at least switch to an artificial tree, but I haven’t yet been willing to give up the glorious smell of pine in this ritual. If this wasteful practice is a particular irritant of yours, please feel free to send over the homework, er I mean articles, explaining why people should stop buying fresh trees at Christmas. It feels a little to me like eating meat did before I read the book that persuaded me to become a vegetarian—I know it’s probably wrong but I have chosen not to dig up the evidence that would get me to change my ways. I guess I am taking the ostrich approach on this one, until someone/something pushes me to raise my head. There are so many battles, sometimes we just have to abstain from a few.
Sidenote: I just googled to see if ostriches really bury their heads in the sand, and it turns out they DO NOT! It’s a myth, according to the National Geographic Kids website. So there you go. Also, double sidenote: the boys and I read a delightful kids book about the wonders of ostriches a couple of months ago, and I must tell you these are incredibly fascinating and fierce creatures! Did you know they can kill lions with a kick of one of their “toe claws of death?” Apparently Johnny Cash almost died from an ostrich kick, but he was saved by his big belt buckle, which prevented him from being gored.
Anyway, I have widely digressed! I did have things I wanted to write in response to your letter last week. I very much related to your thoughts about how thinking about something you will have to endure can seem much worse than the endurance itself. I guess this is a way in which being thoughtful—which I tend to think of as involving some reflection before action—can sometimes be problematic. Sometimes, perhaps it is better to be like the person I mentioned who told me they were not a reflective person and just do. Different ways of being come in handy in different contexts, I suppose. But perhaps the more important thing you were getting at with that idea is how we do not really know what we are capable of. We are more adaptable and resilient than we even want to be, I think. This week, Jonah gave Bill and me Thanksgiving letters, and he wrote in them that he didn’t think he could live without us. I hope beyond hope that he doesn’t have to for many many decades, but I am certain he could live without us. We are capable of far more than we think we are.
Happy Thanksgiving, my dear friend! I am thankful as always for these letters, and for your friendship.
Yours,
Sarah
Monday November 23 – Friday November 27 2020
Dear Sarah,
On Monday, Edith (I’m on a first-name basis with her and her emails) shared an edition of Drawing Links with the subject Start before you’re ready. I find this to be good advice and I am going to try to take it! (I wonder if there is a Finish before you’re ready corollary for those of us inclined never to finish?) I tried to take it to heart in some specific life-areas this week.
Edith also linked to a NYT article whose headline I’d seen but not yet read: Your Brain Is Not for Thinking. I wonder if you read this article this week? I wouldn’t be surprised if you read it, and if you did, I hope you took some relief from it as I did. (Will your letter touch on it too?) Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote, Your brain runs your body using something like a budget. A financial budget tracks money as it’s earned and spent. The budget for your body tracks resources like water, salt, and glucose as you gain and lose them. Each action that spends resources, such as standing up, running, and learning, is like a withdrawal from your account. Actions that replenish your resources, such as eating and sleeping, are like deposits. The scientific name for body budgeting is allostasis. It means automatically predicting and preparing to meet the body’s needs before they arise.
I like this way of acknowledging my body, its actions, and its attention as something to be budgeted. One doesn’t have to be stingy to acknowledge a budget. If I am going to spend time and energy doing X, that is time and energy I won’t be able to spend on something else; there is often, if not always, a choice about how to spend one’s time and energy. If you’re going to read all the articles that you are sent, that’s going to take some fairly substantial time and energy! You might do it in service to a related goal — pleasing a family member, keeping the peace, having something specific around which to engage with someone — but any such activity is going to take time and energy that then flows in one direction instead of another. I want generally to be aware of what choices and trade-offs I’m making with my time and energy. Resources are finite, on earth and in our bodies, and we must consider and make our choices wisely. (I’m reminded of my bookmarking — essentially a way of saying not now, maybe later — and I’m feeling a renewed comfort with this practice! Not now, maybe later, can be a useful way of thinking if it’s not solely procrastinatory.)
Later in the week, Edith’s newsletter referenced an ASMR video and a prior newsletter in which she’d discussed a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I haven’t read this book but the high-level key messages were resonating with me. From the Wikipedia page for The Power of Now: Its core message is that people's emotional problems are rooted in their identification with their minds. The author writes that an individual should be aware of their "present moment" instead of losing themselves in worry and anxiety about the past or future. This way of thinking has been on my mind lately — maybe instead of things being hard, they could be easy — and feels particularly resonant when I think about all the ways in which I could be actively worried about what is to come, on any front. We only ever live in the current moment: we can use the current moment to plan for the future, and we can use the current moment to remember the past, but living only happens now. To spend now always somewhere else, in the future or in the past, is to hollow out now, to leave it a shell of what it could be. I feel like I get it and yet it is still a tricky concept to grasp, like a bar of soap slipping away just as my hand tightens. (Maybe I should read the book? Not now, maybe later.) I think it is possible that now and living in the now can sometimes seem boring, or quiet, and we’re often inclined to fill our quiet spaces with something — dredging up the past and rifling through it, or making lists and running plays for the future as we think about what’s to come.
Starting before you’re ready feels like a version of living in the now — doing things instead of thinking about doing them. (I suppose I am feeling Edith’s vibe these days. Is Edith my Krista?) The pandemic has upended our prior patterns of doing and thinking; the distraction machine — running here and there and planning endlessly for future activities — has slowed to a crawl as there’s somewhat less to do in the moment (for those of us not also tending to children in addition to full-time jobs), and for a time, less to plan, because who knows precisely what we’re planning for? It feels both like the wrong time to start something, and a natural time to start something, a time of reflection and change.
I’m in agreement with your thoughts in last week’s letter about situations where ideas are perverted into their opposite form, like the “intolerance” of hate that conservatives have successfully turned into conventional wisdom about the liberal way of being. These call-outs of “intolerance” strike me as manipulative ways of plucking the heart-strings, or the head-strings, in more liberal-leaning folks. It is a hard knot to untie, the logical idea that every voice should be heard, every belief should be acknowledged and understood. It seems true, and yet I don’t believe it is. I do believe it is important to think about where bigotry comes from, to observe it so we can try to ward it off, to teach and protect against it in people before it takes root, but it would appear that bigots and bigotry can unfortunately be compelling to some. I picture this like electrical cords in one’s mind waiting for something to plug into, waving freely and out of sight until some particular idea connects up in one’s head and one takes steps down a questionable path. I suppose I wish we were all a little better at recognizing when we are being manipulated.
That might be an odd place to tie this letter off but an evening of tacos and egg nog (store-bought for the moment, while our 30-day nog cures in the fridge!) is calling my name! I’m looking forward to opening your letter that awaits me, and to catching up again next week! Until soon!
Yours,
Eva