There’s a bird outside chirping her little head off “chew-eee chew-eee chew-eee chew-eee.” Three, four, five times in a row. My dad sits at the dining room table with his glasses off squinting at his phone. His spoon clanks against the sides and bottom of the cereal bowl – Cheerios and fruit. I’m on the sofa, the dog is curled up next to me. I was catching up on the daily poems that have stacked up in my inbox over these past few weeks when my dad started to tell me about the Iowa and Maryland game. I was dismissive of the interruption. Not rude or outright dismissive, just a nod with an “is that so?” lack of interest. I don’t really care about the game or the interceptions or how the students left at half-time. Hunched over his phone and cereal bowl, I doubt he’s thinking about the interaction, while I’m thinking about the many small bids for attention we all make… the many ways we take each other’s company for granted, the ways in which we share and try to connect and receive, dismiss, or reciprocate. I remind myself I could be more graceful, more generous with my time and attention.
This morning, trying to explore these thoughts, I wonder if other people think about the strange dynamics of human interaction… how we can be (and almost all are) self-centered, or selfish, or needy, or absent – each in its time. How we can both enjoy the company of others and be put out by it. I’m reminded of a conversation I facilitated once. The participants were complaining that there aren’t enough opportunities to connect with other community members. When I challenged that assumption, they said they weren’t aware of the opportunities that already existed and that organizers need to do a better job of getting the word out. When I challenged that assumption, they said that the information didn’t reach them through the channels and at the times of their choosing.
None of this is getting at quite what I’m trying to describe which is this feeling of wanting what we want when we want it. I want to be around people, but on my terms. I want quiet when I feel I need quiet. I want connections and conversations to be authentic. I think we all want to be present – but to different things at different times – sometimes for others and sometimes for ourselves. I haven’t cared about baseball since I was in high school and still my dad tells me the score of the Red Sox game – which at times is fine and at other times pretty disruptive. And that’s just how life is, right? A series of welcome and unwelcome interruptions? Perhaps our closeness to others is really just a measure of how in sync we are on the deeper things and how willing we are to tolerate the inconsequential?
As my step-mom wakes up and goes about her morning, she seems to need to be everywhere that I also need to be… at the kitchen counter or passing in the too narrow hallway at the same time. She in her world, me in mine. I’m reminded of the David Foster Wallace talk in which he asserts that our default setting is to believe that the world is all about us and everyone else is just in our way…. His bigger point is to show what else is possible: the beauty of real connections, of all the times when people choose to be among each other – to talk, to laugh, to share. I think of the couple holding hands or leaning in to each other – trying, with an effortless intention as though it were their essence, to occupy the same space, to revel in what it means to be together.
The bird left some time ago. Somewhere in the neighborhood someone is mowing their lawn. The dog is sitting in the sun on the back deck where my dad is telling my step-mom about Iowa game. I think I’ll join them.