Jen Knox's Blog, page 17
January 23, 2024
On attention
Too many creative people I know have had difficulty concentrating in the last few years, especially when it comes to reading and capturing their own stories on the page. These are people who love literature, and who recognize the power of storytelling to drive human connection and compassion. They know the value, yet they feel helpless to busyness.
Everyone contends with distractions, of course, but I wonder whether highly creative people are even more susceptible due to their curiosity about the world.
When I coach writers, many say they are simply unable to focus because there’s too much going on, so I offer exercises and often invite a writer to work with me in real-time. We write and sometimes read together. We make lists. We look at their topic through a narrower or broader lens.
If you can relate to this creative struggle, and you have a minute (quite literally) and access to a clockface in your home or here, let’s experiment. See if you can watch the second hand for a full rotation without breaking your gaze or clicking something else. If such an exercise is too hard, try again later or start with 30 seconds, or even 15, and see if you fare better.
Despite a distracting world, we can rebuild our stamina, and it’s remarkable how a single minute (or less) can ground us. I share this because creatives need to be ready to rebuild our ability to do the thing we love in a way tech cannot.
It’s common to joke about our lowered attention spans. So many have trouble focusing enough to read or connect with friends over lunch without looking at their phones a dozen or more times. Still, the truth is that we’re missing out on more than our distracted minds allow us to imagine.
Long before the collective love affair with mobile devices, AI, and auto-correct/suggest, I was ahead of the game. I had a wildly distracted mind. I had trouble reading and focusing, and my mind would wander with the same velocity as the most annoying pop-up ad.
Those who have felt anxiety can relate. Anxious states of mind call us toward distraction even during the most mundane or unthreatening of circumstances. Over the years, I’ve come to correlate anxiety with creative energy because my anxiety always felt like creativity that ran amok.
Perhaps that’s why my writing was always described as “dark” when I started publishing (case in point).
When we have no channel, creative energy builds and can combine with negative stimuli to create pretty vivid pictures. This is why writing has been so pivotal in my human journey so far, at least from a developmental perspective. It helped me to reign in a distracted mind.
Alongside this personal realization came tech and more tech and layered tech, and I realized that while I no longer suffer from anxiety (long story — I’ll tell it sometime), save for a few acute examples, I do have the same sense of distraction and misuse of energy when I am on social media for too long or clicking news story after news story to try to figure out all the angles on an issue.
This simple clock-face practice is one that I like because it doesn’t feel as ritualized or time-consuming as sitting to meditate the way I might at the end of the day. Simply watching the clock for a minute at work or amidst whatever distracting things are happening in the world can truly slow the mind enough that we can pivot to a more creative and generative mind state.
And this is what leads to writing. If there’s time, if we make time, writing is the panacea. Yep, I said it. It’s alchemy and science and has been empirically evaluated by many. Not just me. Stories alter our world, and we must share them.
Sure, we might have to work through a bit of distraction (see clockface exercise above) to find the solidity to write or read, but when we do, I think it might be more valuable than it’s ever been.
You write in order to change the world … if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it. —James Baldwin
Next week’s post will be on winter and memory. xo Jen
January 15, 2024
On peace: a meditation
I read this every year on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. His message and presence were gifts to the world, as are all who share his dedication to equality, peace, and love. Thank you to everyone courageous enough to offer compassion in a world full of peril.
January 11, 2024
On knowing how this will end
What makes the story worth telling today is different than what made it worth telling yesterday.
Photo by Joanna KosinskaAs I get older, I find myself annoyed when I guess how a book or movie will end. It’s happening more often. “It’s the brother who started that rumor—it has to be him,” I’ll say about some series, and my husband will roll his eyes.
“The brother for sure. We’ll find out in episode 6. Or 7.”
As we accumulate experience, we see patterns with more clarity (hopefully), and this is a gift. The beauty of aging, after all, is that it comes with discernment. But the polarity is that novelty can be increasingly difficult to find.
I recently attended a short class on writing, for instance (which was a glorious feeling because I’m usually on the teaching end of such things), and it all felt a little too familiar. From the intros to the request for trigger warnings to the prompt and reflection. This particular course was about how to pace nonfiction, which has been my genre of choice for the last year, and I wanted to get some ideas for a few new essays.
When our enthusiastic and whipsmart instructor offered our first assignment, I felt my stomach sink. It’s one I’ve taught in many workshops, and when I heard her instructions, that been there, done that feeling revved up. I started thinking about all the housework I could catch up on in this hour and a half.
The assignment is one you may have taught or learned as well. It’s a good one. It begins with creating a timeline, from birth to now, and identifying moments in that timeline that felt like transitions or shifts in the way you saw the world. The most poignant memories.
I love giving this assignment because it’s solid and reliable. It produces material for most writers, and you can position these moments in times through various sensory entry points (remember what you felt, remember what you saw, etc…). But because it was so familiar, I just kept thinking, “I know how this will end.”
I’d explored the timeline of my life ad nauseam, so with my cursor circling the Leave Meeting button, I had a little discourse with myself and decided No. I’d paid $60 for this class, so I was going to stick with it. Why not practice what I’ve purported here and elsewhere many times? Why not adopt the yogic concept of a “beginner’s mind.”
I dropped my narrative about the been there, done that. And, folks, it was WELL worth it.
When I stopped trying to predict the end of the workshop and what it might bring, and instead asked myself—as though it was the first time—what felt urgent to me today, something novel arrived. What I realized (or remembered) is important for creative people to return to often.
Our view of the world is always changing. What is resonant on Monday is different than what it was fourteen Mondays ago, maybe even a few days ago.
And this is the beauty of writing. It will always be there for us with something new. Any creative act will. Creative output is never exhausted or done. Each day, we have something new to offer because we have gathered more input, have found new ways to see, and find ourselves in a different emotional/spiritual/philosophical state.
Michel de Montaigne recognized this in the 16th century. Sometimes referred to as the grandfather of the personal essay and a great influence on my early nonfiction writing, Montaigne famously returned to his essays (usually titled something similar to what I’m doing here “On [Something]”), and he’d add new thoughts as he gained insight and life experience, numbering his additions to watch how his outlook or beliefs had changed.
We can do this, too. Every day is an opportunity to create something from a slightly different angle. And to do so while still sharing authenticity and still offering all the wisdom we have today. If we adopt Montaigne’s commitment to self-study, it can be all the more interesting to revisit what we thought we knew.
Writing Prompt: Go back to something you’ve explored before (in any genre/medium). What’s changed in the way you see this scene/subject?
Special note: I’d like to invite you to an online reading on Saturday (1/13). I’ll be sharing a very short story inspired by my studies on charisma that appeared in The Shape of a Curve . RSVP here.
January 4, 2024
On perfection(ism)
"It’s a relief that I'm not physically perfect. I don’t want to be sacrificed to the gods." —Irene Meder (my grandmother)
Should we strive for perfection, always challenging ourselves to grow and master our domains, or should we practice radical self-acceptance and understand that there is no improving what is present?
Many of my high-performing students and friends are perfectionists, and they are wonderful humans. Their desire to be better, to grow and thrive, motivates them and helps them to cultivate self-awareness.
They listen to folks like Andrew Huberman to try to optimize their brains and bodies to show up as their happiest, best selves. They study leadership because they want to be the ones at the helm, benevolent and kind leaders who will model a better way. They study mindfulness in a desire to better understand their minds.
They want to write stories that will create bridges of human experience that welcome more empathy and are also beautifully rendered and without flaw.
But what does a student do when they have quirks that do not align with the science of optimization? Perhaps many even have physical characteristics that make impossible the nose-only breathing and green juice diets prescribed by the jiujitsu-practicing, mega-meditating neuroscientists from the Ivys.
What if their personality does not align with the competencies science says are optimal for a leader, or their writing style is not en vogue? What if they are facing traumas from destructive people or experiences in their lives?
It’s heartening to think that all the difficult things and traumas are teachers and said teachers make us stronger. But I can say from experience that some difficulties just slow us down. To think trauma is all part of the training justifies pain and constructs a story around injustice that attempts to minimize its effects.
I’m not saying we should dwell in pain, but we can’t muscle up and say it’s a gift either. Pain is just pain. Injustice sucks. Anything about us that makes us less able to find perfection can feel like a true barrier.
But we are crafty humans who are never stagnant. And pain is also part of a journey. Besides, as my grandmother’s quote suggests, perfection might come with its own unique and dire consequences, so we should love and embrace our flaws and tragic stories. Relish our imperfections, because they are what make us human. Right?
As a child, all I wanted was to fix my teeth. I wrote an essay about this, which won the San Miquel de Allende Prize. I’ll be honored to read it at the conference in a few months (link here). I truly believed that my teeth held me back from a better, more perfect life because they made me look poor or defective. Also, from what my child self saw, a woman’s value was her appearance. Simple but honest thinking, if I do say so myself. One could argue that my teeth didn’t truly matter, my self-love did, but this feels dishonest to me.
I did fix my teeth, and it changed the way I felt about my smile. It also changed the way some (perhaps many) people responded to me when I spoke. To have straight teeth was a relief. It was one less worry.
The definition of perfect is not impossible. It means, after all, “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be” (Oxford Languages). We can desire ourselves exactly as we are and still want to fix what doesn’t sit right.
Perfection is within our grasp if we want to be loyal to this definition. But do we want to be as good as it is possible to be? Perhaps the trick is figuring out what matters to us versus what we’re told matters.
When I work with leadership and writing students alike and I encounter perfection(ism), I try to discourage it. I tell them to mess up gloriously, to make mistakes, and to relish in them.
I advocate for self-acceptance, replete with self-deprecating humor because it is what reminds us that we are not here to rebuild ourselves once we’re built. Instead, we’re here to journey around, to climb mountains and look around, just to see.
Sure, we can fix our teeth and comb our hair. We can appreciate what we see as perfection in others, and we can taste what it is to be our best selves, but we always have to begin again and recognize that ultimately we are on a planet of people who have endured pains and will continue to endure pains. Often unjustified. And individuals cannot all abide by the same rules, no matter how precise science gets.
One thing I am clear about is pain is not what makes a person who they are. Who they are endures despite. Trauma and barriers to wellness or lack of resources are distractions. Merely there. Not unique, to be glorified, to be ignored, or to be placated while on a quest for perfection. Pain simply is. The idea of perfection simply is. The two are at opposite ends of the balance beam, and the fulcrum point is the human.
Photo by JC Dela Cuesta We are always balancing and trying out new viewpoints, and we are forever ascending or descending something. Physically, mentally, or otherwise.
Perhaps perfectionism is just another version of pain, a distraction from the idea that we are on a journey here, and compassion must be a part of it — more so than justification (or a quest for justice).
Okay, maybe this is my thesis: Compassion is the teacher I want to walk with because it is the only thing I can find that puts both pain and perfection in perspective. It reminds us to look around and appreciate the view, even if we don’t climb to the same heights we thought we might.
And when we can do that no matter our vantage point, we can fix what we want to fix and also see more than the orderliness of a smile.
How do you practice compassion?
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December 27, 2023
On awe
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” — Dacher Keltner
When have you been in or witnessed awe?
Photo by Miguel Salgado I’ve felt it in response to a line of prose or poetry that turned my worldview inside out, and I’ve felt something like it after losing all sense of self in art or dance. I once saw a puppy look up in awe at a heron swooping low above him. A friend and mentor once led me through a meditation that filled me with awe.
But when I turn this word over in my mind what sticks out to me most are the unsung acts of kindness.
A teacher makes sure that everyone gets a chance to speak. An unexpected acknowledgment arrives after years of silent service. A child with fresh stitches from a neighbor’s dog bite sits up in the hospital room to ask if the dog and owner are okay.
Awe arrives when forgiveness is granted genuinely. When envy is devoured by love. When a hungry person offers half their sandwich or a terrified worker finds the courage to stand up against the status quo. Awe is watching the stillness of nature as it rides the currents of change. Awe is feeling a glimpse of relief from the twisting of severe pain. It’s what you receive when you give from a place of seeming lack.
When I was a child, I was often awestruck. Mostly by nature but also by the myriad stories I saw unfolding around me always. Nothing was boring then. Everyone was fascinating. Everything pulsed with possibility.
Then something changed. I began to feel a pressure to know, recite, and define everything by certain standards. I decided I had to understand what I saw and why it mattered.
All of this classical way of knowing can be good, but it can also make us forget or mistrust feelings of awe. It took me decades to remember to allow the feeling again. But today, I sit in awe.
I am on the couch, warmed by my dogs, and I feel stunned by the beauty of the moment. Their gentle snores are rhythmic, and my legs are heavy. The silence and unlikely warmth of a quiet day after Christmas offer a settled feeling, despite knowing that much work awaits.
I’m a huge fan of intention-setting for any period, and a new calendar year is the perfect opportunity. While many are resolution-allergic, I believe the intention, the resolve, and the focus of forward momentum are not about denying the present but acknowledging it and preparing for the mystery ahead.
To intend can simply mean taking stock and being hopeful for the future.
All of my writing this past year has been an aim to show the beauty in what seems dire. I haven’t always succeeded, and that’s fine. I believe any lack in this area is not due to time, skill, or energy but rather forgetfulness. Sometimes I forget, and perhaps we all do, to recognize all the moments of awe.
My one resolution in 2024 is to remember to live in a state of awe as often as possible. This requires a bit of humility. And I have to indulge it even if there are no words.
To remember to see this world as what it truly is, despite its pains and perils—to see a complex pattern of wonder that we need not understand but merely take in and explore gently is the aim.
In the spirit of the forthcoming year change, I wish you well. I hope what I share here nudges something in you, and whether it does or not, I’d love to know . . .
What brings you awe?
December 14, 2023
On the ocean
Today I stood at the mouth of the ocean somewhere in Mexico. It was a windy day. As I stared out toward the waves, trying to find a meditative mind while also staying upright, I was reminded how revelatory nature’s momentum can be.
As the waves crashed against my legs and torso, I steadied, but as they receded, the sand beneath the balls of my feet was swept away. My heels were dug in, which meant I was swept backward.
Again and again. Crash. A thrust back.
We all hold our weight either in the front or the back of the body. We brace ourselves for what we expect to change. So as I stood there, I sought balance, and I began to lean in. I think I’ll keep trying to do the same.
For those not able to make it to the ocean today, a breath practice that I love when I need to come back to center and find calm is below.
I am signing off for now, and I’m going to experiment with trying this thing called vacation. We’ll see how it goes . . .
xo Jen
December 6, 2023
On friendship & worldviews
Conflicting worldviews always make me think of a friend, a best friend, who ghosted me.
When we were in our twenties, we called each other daily, and she was my sole confidant. So when she stopped answering the phone, I was worried something had happened. Had she been in an accident? Was she injured? I called her mother and a mutual friend. And, ultimately, I found out that she was just fine.
After a few days, I stopped calling, thinking she was busy. When I didn’t hear from her for weeks, I started calling again. I couldn’t think of any reason she’d avoid me. We hadn’t fought. What was happening?
When she finally called me, she told me she was “born again,” and I was no longer in alignment with her values. I found this, for lack of a better word, idiotic. (I was young and a bit reactive, so it was my genuine thought.) Now, I have different thoughts, but it took me a lot of time to get there.
We’d been through everything together, after all. We cried and laughed. We got each other both in and out of trouble. We were best friends, “besties” before that was even a term. We were each other’s unconditional support. Always. What would I do without her? And what had I done?
After a while, What’s wrong with me? was the recurring thought. A thought I wouldn’t wish on an enemy.
I didn’t try to convince her to keep me as a friend, nor did I vocalize my knee-jerk diagnosis that she was an idiot. I didn’t even ask her what was wrong with me, I only asked myself. Instead, I simply said, “OK, I understand,” and I hung up.
I did not understand. My heart was broken in a way I didn’t think possible, and we wouldn’t speak again for over a decade.
Why is friendship so fragile? Why are so many unable to allow human connection with those with whom they don’t share “values” or specific criteria that they believe they must live their lives by? Why can’t we just love each other anyway?
To this day, no rejection has hurt more. No breakup, no rejection of work or projects, no lack of an offer after interviewing for a job . . . nothing. It was, by far, the most another human being ever hurt me emotionally with a single act. Physical violence couldn’t come close. Not because it was the worst thing to happen to me (far, far from it), but it was the most unexpected of worst things. It was the most personal.
I still love this friend, but I doubt we’ll ever be connected in the same way again. As hard as I’d like to imagine I could rise above the hurt, I doubt I could trust her emotionally in the same way. But I do miss and love her. I wish her well.
An Australian map of the worldToday, I think about the past and believe said friend was merely going through a transition, and the best way I could support her was absence. She needed to find a new way to live, and I was part of her old pattern. Looking back honestly, I was almost ready for my new trajectory, too. Her decision helped us both.
A Chinese map of the worldIt seems as though everyone imagines they exist on the upper-middle lefthand side of the world. I find this curious and as though we’re all trying to be the heartbeat—the propelling force. But sometimes, we’re jolted from that view because others make our decisions. And in the moment, the pain can be fierce.
A U.S. map of the worldAll this leads me to a prompt I’d like to invite you to try.
When has something that felt abysmal, even unjust, propelled you toward something more aligned with who you are? When has heartbreak led to growth?
Wishing you all a creative week. xo
November 30, 2023
On flow and slow
“One life was never quite enough for what I had in mind.” —Seymour Krim
My husband and I had spent a lovely Thanksgiving morning with my mother, then drove to the woods to camp for a few days. Okay, not really camp. We stayed in a tiny cabin with large windows surrounded by a forest. In fact, the cabin had a flatscreen, and we ended up having to buy fire starters from a Logan, Ohio Walmart on Black Friday.
So we “camped” as I’m guessing most American middle-class people do.
As we walked around the store in the middle of a holiday sale kickoff, I got a little nostalgic. I used to work in a store akin to Walmart, and I remember the holidays—the repetition of the same pop Christmas songs and the irascible customers who were all looking for something that existed beyond the sale. On this Friday, I wondered if that was me.
When we returned to the cabin, my husband made a fire, and I sat out on the porch with the pups cheering him on. The wood was wet, and it wasn’t easy, but he had fun trying, and I had fun watching. We weren’t working, and while it took some time to adjust to this (and I cheated a few times), we had at least 48 hours ahead of us in which silence and nature would reign. After which, we’d go to another family function.
For two workaholics (see a post on my love of work here), a 72-hour vacation sandwiched by holiday get-togethers is pretty ambitious. It took us about 24 hours to stop thinking about all the work that was piling up and another 24 hours to finally settle like boiling water removed from the range.
I wrote a little (nothing of note) and did some yoga, then sat and watched the trees. We hiked. We didn’t talk about much more than what we saw. Potato, our more extroverted dog, made friends with everyone, while we simply smiled and said hello.
It was quiet. So, so quiet.
Silence offers an opportunity that many of us sorely miss right now. It offers time to reflect and appreciate (or soberly take stock of) our lives. Chris and I did just that, and something shifted.
I couldn’t stop thinking about working at a megastore during the holidays and being able to find the same silence in my breaks and in the times I’d escape to the bathroom just to sit and stare at the Sharpie-drawn messages people left to amuse themselves in the stall. Back then, in my early twenties, I daydreamed a lot. I was bored a lot.
Now, I’m never bored. I’m on the other side of bored (era-wise and class-wise). A person who is never bored is always producing or consuming (for money and not for money). And in many cases, doing so in a desire to find something more. Something better. We’re all aimless Walmart shoppers in our way.
As we hiked, with dogs on either side of us, we indulged the silence as we stared at the trees and path ahead. I wondered what odd memories were surfacing for Chris, but I didn’t ask.
Eventually, we arrived here, at Rose Lake.
We sat and appreciated this spot as other hikers wandered by. Then the silence broke. It started with me mentioning “happy little trees.” We talked about how Bob Ross might’ve painted this with soft words and a rather aggressive beating of the brush. And how he would’ve done quite well given that this was a pine forest and trees seemed to be where he thrived. Still waters and pine trees, to be more specific. We judged Ross’s mountainscapes and odd rock formations. The man was just better with soft shapes.
Then we talked about how much we wished we had easels and could paint what we saw.
But why?
Why do we need to constantly make our own happy little trees? Why not just sit and appreciate them now and then? It seems the end goal is always to get to a place where there’s no worry and only presence, fulfillment, and appreciation. Yet, we destroy these moments with tasks and a feeling like we need to do . . . something.
I stared at the lake and remembered this for an instant, the way I used to remember it while stealing a few moments in a bathroom stall, staring at discount store graffiti. But I forgot again as we started talking about what we’d do next. And after that. And how long the drive would be to my sister’s the next day and all we’d accomplish next year.
I remember doing the same at the superstore, thinking about all I’d do after my shift, then the day, the week, the job, the decade.
In many ways, I’m living what my former self dreamed of. I’m a lady who can afford to go camping at a place with a flatscreen. But now the dreams have changed. One day, I thought (and think), I might be the version of myself who can be okay being still because she’d have done it all or, better, didn’t need to do it all. I would be the embodiment of the lake.
But in the meantime, a river has to flow. Right? I’m honestly not sure.
Next week, I’ll talk about friendship. Wishing you all good things. xo
On flow and stillness
“One life was never quite enough for what I had in mind.” —Seymour Krim
My husband and I had spent a lovely Thanksgiving morning with my mother, then drove to the woods to camp for a few days. Okay, not really camp. We stayed in a tiny cabin with large windows surrounded by a forest. In fact, the cabin had a flatscreen, and we ended up having to buy fire starters from a Logan, Ohio Walmart on Black Friday.
So we “camped” as I’m guessing most American middle-class people do.
As we walked around the store in the middle of a holiday sale kickoff, I got a little nostalgic. I used to work in a store akin to Walmart, and I remember the holidays—the repetition of the same pop Christmas songs and the irascible customers who were all looking for something that existed beyond the sale. On this Friday, I wondered if that was me.
When we returned to the cabin, my husband made a fire, and I sat out on the porch with the pups cheering him on. The wood was wet, and it wasn’t easy, but he had fun trying, and I had fun watching. We weren’t working, and while it took some time to adjust to this (and I cheated a few times), we had at least 48 hours ahead of us in which silence and nature would reign. After which, we’d go to another family function.
For two workaholics (see a post on my love of work here), a 72-hour vacation sandwiched by holiday get-togethers is pretty ambitious. It took us about 24 hours to stop thinking about all the work that was piling up and another 24 hours to finally settle like boiling water removed from the range.
I wrote a little (nothing of note) and did some yoga, then sat and watched the trees. We hiked. We didn’t talk about much more than what we saw. Potato, our more extroverted dog, made friends with everyone, while we simply smiled and said hello.
It was quiet. So, so quiet.
Silence offers an opportunity that many of us sorely miss right now. It offers time to reflect and appreciate (or soberly take stock of) our lives. Chris and I did just that, and something shifted.
I couldn’t stop thinking about working at a megastore during the holidays and being able to find the same silence in my breaks and in the times I’d escape to the bathroom just to sit and stare at the Sharpie-drawn messages people left to amuse themselves in the stall. Back then, in my early twenties, I daydreamed a lot. I was bored a lot.
Now, I’m never bored. I’m on the other side of bored (era-wise and class-wise). A person who is never bored is always producing or consuming (for money and not for money). And in many cases, doing so in a desire to find something more. Something better. We’re all aimless Walmart shoppers in our way.
As we hiked, with dogs on either side of us, we indulged the silence as we stared at the trees and path ahead. I wondered what odd memories were surfacing for Chris, but I didn’t ask.
Eventually, we arrived here, at Rose Lake.
We sat and appreciated this spot as other hikers wandered by. Then the silence broke. It started with me mentioning “happy little trees.” We talked about how Bob Ross might’ve painted this with soft words and a rather aggressive beating of the brush. And how he would’ve done quite well given that this was a pine forest and trees seemed to be where he thrived. Still waters and pine trees, to be more specific. We judged Ross’s mountainscapes and odd rock formations. The man was just better with soft shapes.
Then we talked about how much we wished we had easels and could paint what we saw.
But why?
Why do we need to constantly make our own happy little trees? Why not just sit and appreciate them now and then? It seems the end goal is always to get to a place where there’s no worry and only presence, fulfillment, and appreciation. Yet, we destroy these moments with tasks and a feeling like we need to do . . . something.
I stared at the lake and remembered this for an instant, the way I used to remember it while stealing a few moments in a bathroom stall, staring at discount store graffiti. But I forgot again as we started talking about what we’d do next. And after that. And how long the drive would be to my sister’s the next day and all we’d accomplish next year.
I remember doing the same at the superstore, thinking about all I’d do after my shift, then the day, the week, the job, the decade.
In many ways, I’m living what my former self dreamed of. I’m a lady who can afford to go camping at a place with a flatscreen. But now the dreams have changed. One day, I thought (and think), I might be the version of myself who can be okay being still because she’d have done it all or, better, didn’t need to do it all. I would be the embodiment of the lake.
But in the meantime, a river has to flow. Right? I’m honestly not sure.
Next week, I’ll talk about friendship. Wishing you all good things. xo
November 23, 2023
On giving
This time of year magnifies life’s game of give and take.
Some people give too much and become very tired. Some give only to stroke their egos or maintain some status. Some give because they want to make a difference based on their values. Some give just to help. Some tell others to give and take credit.
Some just take, and they wonder why they never feel full.
I try to give the right way in a world full of need. I try to donate time and resources as I think it will make a difference. I hope that I make a difference in my smaller circles—to students, friends, family, and maybe even a reader or two—by sharing what has helped me or by reminding them how capable they are.
But at the same time, I understand that intention does not always equal outcome. And I am also conscious of how much I get when I give. Teaching feeds my soul, for instance. It is an honor to be there for someone or get a kind note about a story I wrote. It feels good to share knowledge, resources, or time—whatever I have to give at the time. But to give wisely means to listen to those we give to and what they want or need. Not what we think they need.
True giving must come from a place of steadiness.
So many want to give conditionally. Most of us have heard the argument, for instance, that goes something along the lines of “That man will just drink up any money I give him, so why bother?” Well, to my mind, that’s none of the giver’s business or concern.
We can give without expectation or condition. And if the best way we know how to give is a few dollars to a man we see on the street, we’d be better off giving it without judgment and wishing the recipient well. We can give and hope that our efforts make a positive difference. But that’s all we can truly do.
That said, we should only give when we have. To give until you are exhausted (circling back) is to incapacitate yourself from giving genuinely and fully.**
One of my brilliant alum came back to lecture my current class and reminded the students (and me) that while we need to “fill our cup,” we also need to be careful when it overflows. That overflow is an imbalance the same way a lack of something is.
We can also have too much work, too many opportunities, too many responsibilities, and, on the other hand, too much time. We can even have too many people to keep up with in our lives or too much success. We can even—dare I say it, Bezos? Musk?—have too much money.
All of it can be uncomfortable and heavy. Lack and overflow are perilous in different ways. One hurts the body, the other hurts the soul.
I write all this because I am grateful this time of year, and the quiet space the holidays allow often reminds me to assess how I give. But to give, truly give, is without condition, and without draining myself.*** But doing so without context or the right kind of listening (giving what people need or want, not what you think they should need or want) can be a bit of a dance.
But when we dance . . . when we engage in that heart-centered balancing act of giving and receiving, we can find something pretty damn close to a remarkable sense of fulfillment.
This holiday, I am giving time I’d otherwise dedicate to work. I’m giving attention and those things I hope others will benefit from. I’m giving all I can give without losing myself.
That’s the goal anyway. To you, I give thanks. For reading, for being here, for your attention and grace.
Happy Thanksgiving, Friends!
**Here’s a site full of ideas for giving in small ways when you already feel overwhelmed.
***A holiday gift for paid subscribers (fill your cup).
