The Being of Life
on what we can't control, and what we can
Last Saturday, I drove past bluebell skies and snow-glazed oak trees to meet two of my dearest friends for brunch. It was a lovely morning to get out. The food was magnificent. The company, even better. Everything was ours.
It seems that as we get older, we keep getting better at being honest. One of us shared something particularly vulnerable. I knew - we all knew - there was no solution, nothing to be fixed at that little round table. The invitation to simply be there, to bear witness to the pulpy truth was the gift. We reached out our hands. Here’s why it was profound: we collectively stayed in it. We formed a circle around one person’s pain. We gave it space. We felt it together. We carried on.
This is rare.
I have been in countless situations where lighthearted jokes are seen as the antidote to too much vulnerability. I am sure I’ve been the one, at times, waving it away with a dismissive there, there, or hahaha. But then you hit a certain age, you live through just enough, that you start to understand life from a slant. It’s the moments folded inside the moments that make us more human, nesting dolls of complexity and connection, if only we’re willing to stay curious.
Come for the eggs benedict and winter mimosas. Stay for the solace of knowing it’ll be my turn soon, and these women can handle it.
I drove home and climbed under the covers, just as the ladies instructed. I woke up ninety minutes later my right hip numb from not moving a millimeter. I had to pry my eyes open. I soldiered groggily to our evening plans and fell back into bed immediately afterward. By twelve hours later, it was clear that I had come down with something. My Saturday death nap wasn’t just a funny story. It was symptom zero.
No one wants to read a detailed account of Shannan Got the Flu on a perfectly cozy Friday night, so I’ll just leave it at this: For the past six days I have been pathologically at home. The days have been blurry, sweaty, boring, lonely. The nights, even worse. But would it annoy you to hear that somewhere in the taffy-pull stretching of time, I think I cracked the meaning of life?
It happened like this.
Someone (who can say?) shared a screenshot of a Tweet- written by someone I don’t know - on Instagram. This must be the way of wisdom, because it rang as true as the digital thermometer on my bedside table.
Let every situation be what it is.
Let it be!
And then make the best of it.
What that doesn’t mean: toxic positivity, pretending things are great when they are rotten, willing something to come along and carry us away from the pain, thinking God caused it, thinking God’s fingers will snap and fix it, thinking we know what “fixing it” could possibly mean, thinking this disastrously abundant life, plush with glory and everyday gore, needs to be “fixed,” etc…
My plan for the week did not include ear cartilage overtaxed from endless, murky hours of side-sleeping. I did not anticipate literal fever dreams, or how it would sound even to me when I said things like, “I feel like my stomach is full of poison.”
I did not plan to deep-dive Jack Antonoff (ask me anything!) I did not expect to learn that my calves feel like I hiked Everest because the white blood cells that usually work the night shift stitching up tiny nicks are off on a remote assignment, trying to fix my shredded throat. Yes, it was awkward for everyone the night I convinced myself there was an unsolved crime afoot and I was the only one who could solve it, but in my defense, I had just finished this “true” crime novel earlier in the day.
It was a truly awful week. I’m still not feeling well. It’s taking entirely too long. I worry that I’ve let a lot of people down. I’m lonely. A little depressed and puny and greasy. I’m bored. I’m tired, but at all the wrong times. I feel useless and needy. I feel like my stomach is full of poison.
But - I swear to you, I did not set out on some pie-eyed, count-my-blessings gratitude journey. For one thing, I was too physically exhausted to even watch TV most of the time, much less retrofit a silver lining from influenza.
Nevertheless, they showed up.
That first, steamy, wobbly, Twilight-Zone shower. (And the next, and the next.)
Library books and the time to read them (between migraines.)
A heating pad!
My child bending down in the morning to hug my stinky self goodbye.
Tea that tastes like metal but is the perfect temp.
Cory Martin.
Wishing for my mom.
Emails pinging my inbox, utterly unbothered by a virus.
Birds at the feeder, birds chaotically smacking into the window multiple times for no good reason. (They were fine!)
I missed the two warmest days of the year so far, but flung the windows open and dreamed about spring. The next day it snowed, and I thought it was beautiful.
Cory brought me Mexican chicken soup with hot sauce.
Tonight we might try a movie.
Seven days of contagion busted up my best ideas about what makes a day - a life - good, beautiful, and meaningful. As you may have noticed, I’ve been fixated on this idea for a while now. Why? Because, I don’t know, I’m past mid-life and I catch myself doing weird math and no matter what the sum total ends up being, I want to live like I mean it. I believe an abundant life isn’t just within our reach, it’s already in our hands. (Can you feel it?) I absolutely know how ridiculous it is to write (checks wordcount) 920 words about catching a stupid virus. I am surrounded by people fighting cancer, carrying complex trauma, desperate for help and hope. Just a sliver of peace would be nice, thanks.
But remember, this is the life we were given, this very one. So, we hold it tenderly, like the face of a child. We let it be what it is. We make the best of it.
The unflinching refusal to deny our particular realities, in all their richness, is the very being of life, illustrated at the brunch table before I knew what was about to take me down, and right now, on the couch, for the two thousandth day in a row.
We don’t look away. We don’t run away. We stay in it and ride it out.
The being is the meaning.
~
I’m off to test my resolve by drinking a tiny can of ginger ale while we watch American Fiction. (By the way, if you haven’t yet watched Past Lives, what are you waiting for?)
I’ll leave you with one last moment that landed with such simple kindness from a young friend. (People are so dear!)
Have a wonderful weekend, homies. (Take your vitamins!) Be gentle with yourselves.
The face of a child line got me. So much this. Last year when I was in a precarious situation (relationship) I asked god what to do and he said “stay in it” and it wasn’t the relationship he meant. It was the awkward tension itself. To not dip out early when things get weird. This is the math I’m doing too. It takes so much work and a courage worth fighting for. Hug.
Too funny…I was just talking about this with a woman in my neighborhood Thursday. We had all these ideas that, as our children grew up, married, had kids, they would all come home for the holidays and we would be one happy mess; people sleeping everywhere, playing games until the wee hours, just being together in so much love. But everyone wants to be home for the holidays. We are divorced so they have three to four schedules to try to fit into. No one’s work schedules (or life schedules) correspond. Our condos are small and not well laid out for big gatherings. And so, we cook the food and take it with us. We move between their homes (and schedules) to accommodate them. And we just make the very best of it because, after all, we are still in their lives and making the memories is the most important thing!
Hope you are feeling better! I so enjoy reading your work. I just bought my daughter in law all three of your books because she has enjoyed the snipets I sent to her. Where/when are you and Emily going to be in Indiana? I thought I read that somewhere but can’t find the info. We are in Michigan and may be able to come!