November 4, 2009
Acceleration
In the early hours of Sunday morning I found myself thinking about a story in one of my favourite books. I can only imagine what sort of frustration had driven me to recall and focus on a line like "Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself". I hoped dearly that it still had at least some applicability to me.Then I sat down and actually read the chapter where the little prince meets the lamplighter. I spent much of the time shaking my head in disbelief. Never before had I felt so akin to this keeper of the light: the peril of a planet rotating increasingly faster beneath and the trials which come with attempting to keep up; full knowledge of the unfortunate nature of a difficult situation; hatred for what has happened, yet pressing on despite those feelings to faithfully do what is required... The job is the job, orders are orders, and that's that.
I wondered about that sphere beneath the lamplighter. For how long had it been accelerating? For how long would it continue to do so? Wouldn't circumstances eventually reach a point where, no matter how much he felt compelled to try otherwise, he'd realize his level of effort just wasn't sustainable?
And that's where the questions began to turn on me.
I don't deny my own fatigue this year. I don't forget the emotions I have vented into open ears and spaces or through pillows and walls. I'm fairly certain nobody within hearing has any doubt of what a miserably difficult experience I believe this year has been. But I have pressed on best as I know how under less than desirable circumstances. I've refused to play the victim or give up even when I most wanted to.
When Monday hit I realized the folly of my path. I had less than 20 office days remaining in the year before almost a month to recharge, but if I wasn't careful I wouldn't make it there - not in any shape easily recovered from. I couldn't step off a planet still accelerating, but there was no doubt I needed to slow down.
Admitting weakness is never something I have been particularly fond of, but I did it just the same. "I need to take care of me," I finally said. I don't think I explained the way I was looking to stop rushing and work smarter in the interim very well, but thankfully I received the concurrence I needed. Where I felt defeat and saw laziness or insanity others apparently saw maturity. Perhaps I'd just discovered another plump, juicy lesson amongst the thorns of the year.
I think one of the things I fear the most is not being able to pull it all together; of finding myself winded and passed out as I attempt to pace the tiny planet somebody saw fit to place me on. Others apparently have that same fear for me. There's been mention of luck involved if I survive and come out stronger, but it's not luck I'm counting on.
Much like the other people the little prince encountered before coming to Earth, we never learn of the lamplighter's fate. We never find out whether orders changed and he finally received his much desired repose. We don't know if he continues serving his "terrible profession" to this day or if he (and his light) finally just burned out.
If I could write the end of his story, I'd have him learn that the sun doesn't have to rule him. I'd let him experience the joy of sleeping so long one afternoon that he didn't know what day it was when he woke up. He would discover that just as it's okay to sleep when it's light, it's also good sometimes to stay awake in full darkness. The black can be scary, but once your eyes adjust you get to smile with the stars. In that moment, through some magic means, everything stops in its tracks. Simplicity breeds the pause, and suddenly it makes no difference how fast the planet was spinning.
Captured At:2046
November 8, 2009
A Lonely War Rethought
Pieces of the week played back through my head as I carried out chores around my apartment. I thought about the frustrations and why they had so strong of an impact. I branched from there and thought about how where I was fit in with the short history of my life. The phrase that materialized from this mental slurry became the title line on the next blank document I opened.A Lonely War
For a solid week the sound of clashing metal reverberated through my head. The attackers were larger than I was, better armed, and far more experienced in the type of battle that surrounded me. I raised my flimsy shield to meet every flash of opposing silver and hid behind it as small and solid as I could, twitching slightly at each blow. I wanted to strike back, but my own sword seemed nowhere to be found. It was just as well; I didn't have enough strength to wield it anyway. Even my best battle cry was tinged with weakness and despair.
I was never looking to be a warrior; it just seems to have happened. The pleasant walk I endeavoured to take across an open field was ambushed, plunging me into a series of battles that have only become more aggressive as I've aged. One day I realized there could be no ceasing. Everything I was, everything I could become, everything I wanted to be was caught up in this gruesome dance I'd been forced to begin...
I put the file away for later and readied myself to leave the house. When I returned hours later I found myself following a series of links to an unfamiliar DMB song that flashed me back to my earliest days as a listener when Under the Table and Dreaming was constantly on my stereo or in my Discman. I thought about that girl lost in a gentle melody - hopeful, aching, dreaming - and became lost myself at the vague vision of her that appeared. With each note her innocence drifted across the decades and refilled me with a sense of self I couldn't have anticipated. It was beautiful.
One of the things it helped me realize was that while the specifics of the battles have changed, the nature of them has not. I look at what my 10 year old self struggled most with as the brand of "bad kid" singed her forehead and see it as being eerily close to my post-Germany depression at 16. College and onward made changes in the surface appearance, but the challenges in the depths remained the same. Perhaps the original thought needed amending. It was a long and lonely war.
Yet as I poked around the past a bit more I realized that fact didn't bother me. I've spent my life engaged in battle because I have been given so much worth holding onto and sharing. When I look honestly around me at the people I know and have known it becomes clear to me that I am something different and amazing. It doesn't make me better - I have failed many many times and will continue to do so - it makes me me. And part of the responsibility that comes with that knowledge is bearing the burden to fight for the amazing. Ironically, the fight is part of what breeds it to begin with.
This isn't some narcissistic pipe dream I've concocted. I think we all have some measure of it in us. Some people just seem more wired to fight the battle to retain it than others.
The battle truly does suck, by the way. There's no firm metric for progress and there's no simple explanation of it to give those who aren't engaged. Many people won't even realize what they're watching. It's tiring and frustrating, and it has only two possible ends: death or surrender. And while I hate it, I am privileged to be in the fight.
I just came out of another miserable week in a difficult year. My circumstances have not changed, nor are they likely to in any near future I can imagine. There's every reason on the planet to be in bad spirits. But you know what? There's every reason in the universe not to be. Awesome.
Captured At:1249
November 9, 2009
Doppelganger
If I knew what was good for me, I'd be heading to sleep right now. 845 at the clock is going to come earlier than I'd like and I know it. I breathe in, breathe out, accept that he has no idea what he asks of me sometimes, and move on. Life seems to follow that pattern more often than I could have expected.The problem is that I also know that what's good for me is to not attempt to sleep on a full mind. I'm unlikely to rest that way, and should I accomplish the feat it can only be rewarded with tumultuous dreams full of monsters and evil. Most of the ones I remember are.
What continues to replay through my head is a conversation with somebody I used to be close with. I was questioning how some of the things he was accusing me of made any sense if he put his perceptions aside and considered who I really am. The response was that he doesn't know who I really am; there's the me he used to know and cared very much for and the one who was standing in front of him. How was he to know which was real?
The question bothered me. I couldn't understand how somebody who knew as much of me as he did could honestly look me in the face and accuse me of having deceived him somehow. I knew the truth and there was only one thing I could think of to help him see it.
"Take that first person - that 'old Bec' you say you cared about and think about what she'd be like if you did to her what has happened to me this year. Is she really that different from who you're talking to?"
I think one of the things most people fail to grasp is that I am who I am. I don't pretend to be anything else and never have. That core - those values and principles and ideas and desires - remains the same. What changes is who I have to be to accomplish what's required of me. It's what allows this solitary, introspective, unassuming kid to run a meeting or work a room or stand in front of a crowd with gregarious confidence. It's what forces "business" mode to kick in when I know the role I have to fill. Within a certain rule set I will adapt. There's really nothing sinister or two-faced about it.
What I've found is that if you'll look beyond the surface to understand what's at the heart of a person, nothing they do will surprise you. When you take that essence and place it in any given scenario you'll find that the result - good or bad - makes perfect sense. The challenge is that most people aren't real. It can take a tremendous amount of effort to know what's actually inside. Perhaps my greatest weakness in this exercise is that I want to believe people are inherently good. I often draw them better than they are and it does bite me.
But me? What do I really have to hide? I spent so much of my life hoping somebody would come along who saw me for who I really was that it doesn't make any sense to let my actions betray her. I always believed she had something good to give if she got a chance, invisible though it appeared to be to everybody around. Thankfully more of that light has shone through over the years; each time somebody has called attention to it I've felt both surprised and humbled.
So it's no wonder it bothered me when a person who seemed to have the vision suddenly challenged what they thought they'd seen. I could think of nothing I had done that should have altered perceptions so drastically. And, as it turned out, the evidence just wasn't there. I asked my question knowing the answer before I did so. It was no. He didn't like it, but the truth always wins sooner or later. "Real", though difficult, has its rewards. Just be who you are.
Captured At:2346
November 23, 2009
Passing
"I can't help but feel like this is my final exam," I confided. The notion had appeared as I drove up US-1 wondering what on Earth to do with the email that had destroyed Wednesday afternoon. After everything the year had put me through in this job, after everything I'd had to learn and grow into, how would I handle this thing that threatened all I'd been working toward? Could I save us?There's only minor curiosity about what could be sitting in my inbox as I ignore it on this quiet Monday morning. I've resolved that my days off these next two months will be just that - me, incommunicado from all things work. The simple act of throwing my cell phone in a drawer seems to have also stashed the worries I'd been carrying with it. I can feel my shoulders relaxing already, and with that relief my mind is free to wander to other things.
Before the week was done he would tell me that I'd called this year correctly when I said it was going to be a difficult one. I continually fail to explain that it wasn't me calling anything. There was no decision on my part to determine the year to be one thing or another. The knowledge just appeared. I told him I was still waiting on the second part to come true - that I'd find myself better for it. He says I am.
When I look at November (my last real month of the year) I see in it a series of checks that suggest the final exam theory has wider applicability than I realized.
There were the hours spent shut in a room on a campus I'd sworn I wasn't going back to because the past needed to stay there. Dressed in khakis and a purple dress shirt with my hair pulled back in a knot I felt nothing like the girl who for years had wandered those grounds in shorts, a red polo, and sunglasses perched on her head. I doubted the place recognized me.
I found the costume didn't matter. I loved the interactions taking place in our little corner of Crawford. I loved the way my brain came alive as we talked and scribbled across flip charts. It was a refreshing change from the monotony of telecons and damage control my life had become. If I'd had more direction and a clearer passion, I have no doubt I would have ended up in academia instead.
We wandered a little after we finished. We talked honestly, which is something I always treasure. And as we got in our cars to go home I shared the lesson I suspected a visit I didn't want to make was supposed to teach me. You have to learn to let the bad go without throwing away all of the good that was near it. We will likely go back, and this time I look forward to it.
There was another job shift I didn't want or ask for, but I jumped into it as best as I could. This time when there were bumps I didn't panic. We worked through the challenges and pulled together a decent product on time. I accepted I couldn't do six things in the same time block and learned which to walk away from temporarily and which to focus on. I knew I wasn't invincible and, perhaps for the first time ever, I was okay with it.
There was a day at a coworker's house I was both excited for and afraid of. I would go over early to help prepare before my team and their families came over. The joy was in the celebration of their accomplishments. The fear was that after 4 years of working with him almost all day every day, traveling across the country and overseas, I was finally going to have more than a few seconds with the host's family. It's something I've wanted for a while as I've come to know and love these people through his eyes. But what if they didn't feel the same way?
If I was honest, though, there were probably more things to like about me than dislike. He wasn't inviting a monster into his home. That assessment was a huge step forward, and it made it that much easier for the last of the apprehension to disappear when his wife walked into the kitchen for the first time and gave me a genuine smile. We settled quickly into working together to finish pulling the event off; no bumps, no awkwardness. It was amazing. I left that night with warmth in my smiling spirit. I actually was capable of getting it right.
There was also the forced reassertion that my faith is important enough for me to filter my relationships through. It was something I didn't see coming, but it was a pretty big step in two areas of my life that have always posed significant challenges for me. Slowly I am walking down a better road and finally I have evidence of it.
When I soak all of those things in, when I combine any number of other scenes and conversations, I can see and accept the truth. This year has been miserable, yes, but there is no denying that I have grown. These little bumps as 2009 finishes battering me around don't much matter. I'm passing, so how bad could it really be? Better things are already lining up ahead. And if this little bump on Wednesday that had me so upset means I have one less job when I get back in January, I just might find myself mailing a Thank You card to JPL. How's that for turning things around?
Captured At:1047