I changed things up today and went for a run this morning. The weather was just about perfect and had that early morning feel of a soon-to-be warm summer day. It’ll get up to 80 degrees this afternoon. There was a nice breeze, the sun was out, the air wasn’t yet heavy with humidity or the residue that accumulates over the course of a city day. Things felt fresh and new.
I had an interview scheduled for mid morning, which was part of the reason for changing things up. I had also been contemplating a morning walk or run just for the sake of experiencing the city before it wakes up. I’m so glad I did – it felt like it shook things loose. Before my run, I still managed to sit on the balcony and read an essay on sincerity and artifice in poetry – and then I got in to prep mode for the interview.
That was the mode I was in as I stepped on to the street outside of my apartment. I was anticipating the banter question… so what do you think of Tennessee? My gut response was that I wish the weather were more predictable. It’s true – trying to plan things like exercise has been difficult. I try to lift every other day and run at least every day that I don’t lift. So, I might look at the weather and say – ok, raining all day tomorrow, today I’ll run, tomorrow I’ll lift. It has seldom worked out that way. The weather seems to change more quickly than what I’m used to. Two days ago, the prediction was for rain yesterday and today. Yesterday the prediction was sunny and then for rain today and the next two to three days. Today, there is no longer rain in the forecast. This is the type of stuff that frustrates me – even though it really shouldn’t. I love to be outside, so it crimps my style a bit if I don’t know when I can be outside.
Yet, when hit in the face with how nice the morning was, my mind shifted gears. I wrote on my phone’s notepad “learning to appreciate the unpredictability of the weather.” It was an aspirational statement – a philosophical answer to the interview question, “how have you been spending your time during the quarantine?” I walked a block or two thinking about this – how to embrace unpredictability, how much of a feel good flake I’ve become. In terms of schedules, I’m not a complete stick in the mud, but sometimes I kinda am. I came to an intersection where two opposing cars were making left turns. The people in Memphis are notorious for not signaling. They were at a standoff, the one who was using her signal was stopped waiting to see what the other car did. I wrote in my phone “Unpredictability in traffic can be deadly.” And of course, I passed judgment about the lack of consideration by the non-signaling driver.
I’ve written a lot about being the person I want to find. More often than not, I’ve had my ex-fiancee in mind – she was the person I wanted to find. But what, specifically, did I find attractive? Of course I thought she was physically attractive – beautiful, but that was just the hook, the icing on the cake. There was a carefree nature about her that I found intoxicating, but… that doesn’t quite do it justice. There’s warmth and kindness, but those are things I’m pretty good at and generally try to surround myself with… The word I’ve come back to again and again has been grace. This was the word I was thinking of when I thought about learning to accept the shifts in the weather (literal or metaphorical).
Grace…. an ever-evolving and, hopefully, daily practice. I’m not always good at it. In some domains, I’m better than I am in others. When it comes to things like work, I can exhibit grace. When it comes to arguments and being a peacemaker, I can exhibit a type of grace. But when it comes to certain types of change, I could use some practice. I thought about this term the entire time of my run. What does it mean, what is it associated with, what does it look like?
I think the common understanding of Grace is a type of elegance. Audrey Hepburn was said to epitomize grace. But I think her grace is probably more closely tied to beauty and elegance and I think the word is bigger than that. There’s also grace as it relates to movement – we often talk of ballerinas or gazelles, or we might think of Vanna White floating across the stage and turning the letters with ease and flow. There is also grace under fire – that perpetual cool in the face of chaos – this is probably the type most often associate with masculinity. There is the grace of the heart / soul – those people who seem charitable beyond reproach and seem to always turn the other cheek.
As I ran, I thought about my former boss. She did not exhibit grace. I’m not talking about the way I was let go – that was just shitty. I was thinking primarily in her show of disrespect for others, but even more so in how she always talked about how many hours she worked. To me, it seems like the graceful employee puts in the hours without calling attention to it. I suppose a similar grace can be said to exist in relationships – one who simply does for the other without keeping score.
At the end of my run, I saw a homeless man shuffling in the distance. It made me think of the homeless population here, and the one time, I saw a woman peeing in the doorway of a building in broad daylight. How do we apply grace (typically seen as elegance) to this population. The closest I could come was decorum – peeing in an alley as opposed to out in the open is more a display decorum than grace. Is grace limited to those who can afford to show it?
I googled Grace. The first definition is related to the bible. “Unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification; a virtue coming from God.” Other words associated with grace are mercy, charm (I like that one), suppleness, that thing we say before a meal, adorn, enrich. It’s roots are in the Latin word gratia and closely tied to words like gracias or grazie (thanks).
Grace… gratefulness…. a way of being thankful. This ties it to humility and how we handle adversity, criticism, and praise.
But where does it come from? How do we learn it? How do we achieve it? I suspect we see more examples of non-grace than we do grace. We notice its absence. We all know those people who are perpetually angry – everything is a slight…. We can have compassion for them, but we wouldn’t turn to them as a model of grace.
My grandfather on my mom’s side was, to me, a sweet and gentle man. But I can almost hear the “goddammit” of when something wasn’t right. He was a kind man with flaws, a hard worker, but I don’t think I could call him a graceful man. One of the first poems I wrote when I was in college was called “Anna’s Grace.” Anna was my grandmother, and the poem was about how gentle she was with my grandfather. I have no idea if that’s true, but it’s the sense I had – that she took good care of him.
My father, while very generous, lets you know of his generosity and also his accomplishments. To be fair, he’ll also point out his failings… and yours – I suppose he is equal in his lack of grace and has little use for grace.
I used to think the models on the Price is Right (Barker’s Babes) had grace – now I suspect it was just a child’s sexual confusion between beauty and grace (and now as an adult, I’m not even sure I’d consider them beautiful).
I think in at least one domain, the trying to keep your shit together domain, my mother had grace. She tried hard to keep the household going, tried to hide from us, as best she could, the stress and emotional toll of being a single mom on a crappy salary. We knew things were hard – there was a grace in her vulnerability and struggle.
My childhood friend Jeff – the one I fought most frequently, and competed with both in sports and probably for the attention of a few different girls – was, for me, the embodiment of boastfulness, a complete lack of grace. He would try to gain attention by being hard and fast and strong and letting you know it. Either by default or choice, I’m not sure which, I went in the other direction, quiet sensitive, and maybe overlooked (but perhaps with grace?)
With so few models of grace to turn to, perhaps that is how we attempt to achieve it… by defining what it is not. While my ex-fiancee was graceful in more domains than most people I’ve known, she was not always graceful when it came to our arguments – nobody is perfect, and she taught me more about grace than I could have imagined. I wonder where her grace came from – what was it modeled after, what is it in opposition to?
If I exhibit any grace, I think it’s of the heart and in my desire to be humble, if not invisible. Where I lack grace is in dealing with minor changes that spoil my plans and prevent me from getting what I want. Surprisingly, big changes (losing a job) don’t bother me quite as much…. But that speaks to having the privilege and means to try to be graceful. When I thought about the weather this morning and the frustration I sometimes feel about unpredictability, I thought the more graceful approach would be to accept what is and see the opportunity. If it’s raining and I wanted to run, see it as a good opportunity to notice the smell of the coffee, hear the sound of the rain, and read or listen to good music. Maybe grace means to live without resentment.
The last note I wrote on my phone before coming in from my run was “we could teach each other a thing or two about grace.” That seems like a good way to try to see the people in our lives – to seek out their grace, to teach them ours, to try to avoid the daily trappings of dis-grace.