Christy Writes: On birthdays, squirrels, and sinking in

The days and weeks following my birthday always make me contemplative but I find it’s not negative or nostalgic or in any way panicky about being a year older. For whatever reason that doesn’t bother me. My contemplation always has a more positive focus, or at least points me in a positive direction, even if the road between here and there is a bit pot holey.

Lately my mind is hovering around the idea of simplicity, getting back to basics, giving my life a trim, honing my focus. It’s become a more common mantra these days, simplifying our lives, but I’m pretty sure none of us (me included) are ready to take it to the extremes that Thoreau did. For some it means reducing consumption or commitments or spending. Those are all good. For me it means all of that, plus a little extra. It’s that little extra I’m still tossing about in my mind, playing mental catch with myself while I work it out.

For the past couple of years I’ve been recommitting myself to my craft, to writing as the great masters did it, taking my time, making sure it reflects the best that I’ve got, instead of worrying about getting it done quickly so I can slap a cover and a price on it and get on to the next one. I’ve done that, and it leaves me a little chilly. It’s a bit like cramming a fast food burger from a bag while crawling through traffic on the way to my next thing. It’s unsatisfying, cheap, and makes me a little gassy.

So while I’ve fully re-devoted myself to practicing my art in the old way, I’ve also been looking at the rest of my life through the same lens. When did we become so instant, so plastic, so hollow? It feels like everything is a race, a competition, a shouting match, a virtual cage fight, and I don’t remember signing up for that. I used to enjoy every moment when I was a kid. One of my mother’s favorite stories about me is the day she was driving home and saw me, on my way home from school. I was standing absolutely still, my eyes fixed on something. She wondered, as you would, what on earth I was doing. When she got closer, she could see that I was watching a squirrel with a nut. She says she watched me watching that squirrel with all my attention and was touched by my simple fascination.

I miss watching squirrels.

I miss hanging out in the bathtub, lying back so my ears were underwater and listening to all the sounds around me, muffled in aquatic gauze, making even the mundane sound mysterious.

I miss getting lost in a book for hours at a time, so that when I put it down it takes me awhile to get my bearings and remember that I’m not in Narnia or Middle Earth or wandering the windswept moors.

I miss real conversations with friends. I miss the days when I could share something that moved me or made me happy and people really listened, instead of ignoring or glossing over it in their hurry to rant, repetitively, about politics. (Yes, Facebook, those are my eyes you feel burning into the back of your head.)

I miss not having a phone to tempt me to glance at its screen all the time, even when there’s nothing on it, and to send out that phantom vibration that makes me fish it out of my bag only to see that it didn’t vibrate all. I miss not being Pavlovian.

I miss buying an album by my favorite band and peeling off the cellophane wrap with giddy eagerness and putting it on my turntable and playing it, over and over, so many times that it would get scratched and I’d have to balance pennies on the arm to keep it from skipping but it didn’t really matter because by then I knew every lyric, every chord, every beat to every song. I miss being human liner notes.

I miss parties with friends, real friends, whose hands I could hold and laughs I could hear. I miss hanging out in the backyard under the smell of hamburgers on the grill, playing Frisbee and swatting mosquitoes and not stopping to Google “how to repel mosquitoes.” I miss Google not being a word.

Is this retro thinking? Is this me being ungrateful for the modern conveniences of my life today? It probably is. But I am looking past all of these sticky bits of nostalgia and finding the message the universe is using them to send me. It’s time for me to focus on what matters. It’s time for me to dig deep and find me again, the me who lingers over things, the me who gets lost in meandering and abstract thoughts, the me who savors every bite and does a little dance when I’m happy and believes in fairies. The me who watches squirrels. Sheryl Sandberg can keep leaning in – I’m sinking in instead.

I met a group of women last week who were icons of the civil rights movement in America. I was taken by their stories on so many levels, but the biggest thing I came away with was how committed they were – then and now – to their cause. They fought for civil rights for all, and some of them nearly died in that fight. Some of them were imprisoned. Some of them lost loved ones. But they fought and continue to fight because it matters to them. It matters to them. I don’t personally know many people who would be willing to go through what these women went through for any cause, including me.

This realization drew me up short, I’ll admit. If I continue to follow the societal trend of skating on the surface of everything, in a hurry to move on and compete and succeed and win, but never stopping to sink into anything, how will I ever find what I’m passionate enough to fight for? How will I leave my mark if I’m moving too fast to ever touch down?

That’s my resolution for my Personal New Year: to unplug, to slow down, to dig deep and find what really matters to me. And when I find that passion, I’m going to sink in. I’m going to sink in and linger and enjoy every moment. I might even stop and watch a squirrel while I’m at it.

 

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