On "Should"

I was five years old the first time I remember hearing it. “You should be able to this!” I couldn’t fold paper straight, and thus I had to stay in at recess folding, folding. And a few months later, I heard it again. This time, I couldn’t bounce a ball, and I had to stay inside trying to bounce, watching the other kids run around outside kissed by the California sunshine. Guess what? I still can’t fold straight--I would be a very bad employee in a clothing store, and I’ve never been particularly good at basketball, although I eventually learned to dribble. (The you-have-to-stay-in-everyday-until-you-can-do-this rule was eventually broken when it became apparent it wasn’t going to happen.) “Should” is a straight line and all people (or at least those I like!) are curvy. Who drew this line, created this standard?

“Shouldn’t” can be just as binding. I was seven when I first started playing music, and I picked up a plastic recorder and just knew how to play. “You “shouldn’t” be able to do that?” But I could, and I did, and it was joyous. Had I listened, had I been less stubborn, would have set the instrument down? And teachers had previously said I had no hand-eye coordination because I could not fold or dribble—how then could I play music with such ease? No, I was not a straight line, nor am I one now.

“Should” and “shouldn’t” are words that cause the body to shut down, and they make the mind start to doubt—to doubt ability, to doubt reality and even to doubt one’s own personal truth. It seems that too often we identify and define a person by their lacks rather than their myriad of different parts; in doing so, we put them in a prison—this is what it is to be person, and you should be this. Further, to see people only by their actions and abilities (and all to often lack thereof) rather than feeling a whole person robs us of the most incredible part of being human.

On Strength

I see then all the time when I’m swimming in the pool, those little yellow bracelets--“Live Strong.” I hear it from so many people around me, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

But the strongest walls crumble, skyscrapers fall, the Titanic sank; it is the softest thing that does not break. I don’t want to be strong nor, Lance, do I want to live strong. I strive not to be a pillar but rather a droplet of water. I do not crumble, but when circumstances require it, I transform. Vapor or liquid or ice. Why this obsession with strength? The good ol’ Merriam Webster gives many definitions for strength, and many of them use the word “resist,” such as “the power to resist force.” But I don’t want to live life with power, I just want to live, laughing, crying, learning changing, responding to forces rather than resisting them.

Do I approach life like the bodybuilder, lifting more and more, resisting, fighting, conquering the physical form, or do I approach life like the yogi, stretching and adapting, listening to the truth within? Strength is sucking it up, grinning and bearing it. But I want to cry, cry when things hurt and sit in that hurt, truly feel it. And perhaps in doing so, in embracing this, I can do the opposite—I can exude joy from every cell of my being. I can allow my body to vibrate with my truth, with my experience. Feeling strong can be exhilarating, but being strong is limiting, just as being happy or being sad or being frustrated is. When we are being without an adjective, we can feel the spectrum of emotions within. We can receive our life experiences with an open heart and truly commit to learning what they offer.

I now have a blog

Once upon a time, I used to love writing and wrote a lot. And then someone very close to me told me I was actually a terrible writer, and I stopped writing. But I'm so done with this good/bad business--the truth is that I love to write. So this summer, I embark on a return to what I once loved to do. Yes, I will still be writing a dissertation (goal: PhD by the time I'm 28--woo-hoo!), but I will also be writing more and playing more music and . . . we'll see. Life is truly an adventure, and often the greatest adventure of all is going within.

The title of my new blog is taken from a favorite poem by Sir Edward Dyer (1543-1607), which was used in a lovely song by John Dowland (1563-1626). It's yogic in an early modern English sort of way. Enjoy!

The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,
The fly her spleen, the little spark his heat,
And slender hairs cast shadows though but small,
And bees have stings although they be not great.
Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs,
And love is love in beggars and in kings.

Where waters smoothest run, deep are the fords,
The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move:
The firmest faith is in the fewest words,
The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love,
True hearts have eyes and ears no tongues to speak:
They hear, and see, and sigh, and then they break.