Temps in the 50s
There’s a sort of panic that sets in as soon as you realize you’re doing something new without thinking about it. I remember saying to my mom as she jogged behind me, holding the sissy bar on my banana-seated bike, “Okay, Mami, you can let go now!” And she didn’t respond, so I risked looking back, over my shoulder, and saw that I’d been riding the bike on my own past three whole houses now. Panic! And then: Oh, but I know how to do this now. The pure, joyous calm that came over me was a revelation.
It was the same when I finally got comfortable driving a car with a manual transmission. I was nerve-wracked until the physical memory kicked in and I saw that I was fine. I’d leveled up!
Of course, in leveling up I’d also leveled my own playing field. Again.
Because that’s the crux of this human existence, isn’t it—the lack, the climb, and then, if you’re lucky, the fulfillment. It’s important to note that if you are indeed lucky enough to reach the point of fulfillment, it’s fleeting. By design, I suspect. How much can we celebrate a skill or accomplishment before it’s simply a part of us, just another fact like our eye color or shoe size? Not long, I think, unless we aren’t concerned about being completely insufferable.
I turned fifty last year, and it is strange to type that.
After decades spent thinking I wanted sparkle and flash and my name in lights, I’ve realized in recent months that what I actually want is a quiet life. One where I can mainly focus on who and what matters most to me. My loved ones. Writing. My garden. Reading. My dogs. Music. Knitting. Sewing. Birdsong. Ocean breezes.
It’s a kind of letting go that, underneath everything, I’d always feared I’d be forced to do.* Instead, I want to laugh out loud from sheer relief anytime I think of it. There’s so much striving involved with living the life I used to want, and it was exhausting. Now I strive to be a better companion, a better writer, a clearer thinker, a kinder human. Those things seem cleaner and simpler and much more relevant.
Last week I said to a friend that there seem to be two main camps among the people I know: those who have been changed by the past nearly-ten years, and those who decided to pretend that nothing at all has changed. It’s caused a weirdly polite, yet totally organic, rift between the latter group and myself. We seem to still genuinely care about each other, but we don’t really exist in the same world anymore. It’s like they’re my pen pals in another country and we look forward to being able to see each other one day but the likelihood of that day is questionable, at best. I miss them. I know they miss me. But the work of bridging the chasm is too much for them to take on, I suspect. And for me, I know it’s too much. I want simplicity; I love from afar.
Some of the people on the other side of that chasm are among those I love best. The notion that I have arrived at this mindset about them caused, at first, the same loop of panic-realization-panic-calm that learning to ride a bike or to drive stick caused for me years ago. But in fits and starts I’ve come to realize that the quiet life I want requires me to abstain from grasping. Slowly, I’m learning to let go, and wish my fellow travelers well. And mean it.
*It rhymes with a fear I had as a kid: that of suddenly realizing I was meant for the convent and would have to give up all the things I was looking forward to doing when I grew up. Where do these pale, mushrooming ideas come from?
