I subscribe to a daily poem email list. I don’t read them every day. Instead, every week or two, I’ll read a bunch of them in one sitting. I did that this morning. In the bio for one of the poets, he wrote about how he loves when he gets lost in his writing. He’ll sit down at 8am and the next thing he knows, it’s 3pm. I can’t imagine that type of flow or dedication. When I tried to think of times when I was that absorbed, the only things I could come up with were a few intense relationships (the word enthralled came to mind) and when I used to get lost in some video games or working in the garden.
I don’t think I have that type of attention span. When I read, I’m not sure I go more than ten or twenty minutes without looking up or checking my phone and I’m not sure I can sustain the activity for more than an hour. I might be able to spend half a day trying to write, but there are so many breaks that I seldom get completely lost in the activity to the point of not seeing the time. Naturally, this makes me feel deficient. Do I not love anything enough to be so consumed?
I tried to do a little writing and reading this morning and within a minute or two of starting, I was already making lists in my head of what I needed to get at the grocery store and what I’d like to get done today. I wrote a dumb little mid-line rhyming poem about it:
I read a poem and in the author’s bio,
he says he’s from Ohio, He writes about
getting lost, for hours, out in his craft. Sometimes
I wish I’d find that raft, and the getting lost
would happen to me. I begin to think I have ADD.
Even in the writing of this, I’ve stopped three times
And made two lists. One for groceries and one
To-do. I struggle mostly with thoughts of who
The wordplay was fun but not sustainable. I moved from the dining room table over to the sofa to read some more. I intentionally left my phone and laptop in the other room. The dog sat next to me and began his passive-aggressive silent whimper. It’s a little like breathing but with a whiny question at the end. It’s barely audible, but it’s there. Oh is it there. IT’S THERE!!! He’ll do this until I snap and pay attention to him – sometimes half-slamming the book down. Fine you want to play. Grrrrrr. It can be infuriating. Because of this, I can’t imagine being a parent again. I’m sure she did it, but I can’t remember the tugging on shirt sleeve questioning from my daughter, can we? can we? can we? please? can we? I’m sure she asked from the back of the car if we were there yet. I’m sure she toddled and nudged for our attention. When I lose my patience now, I don’t know how I managed then. When I lose my patience now, I begin to wonder if I’m becoming more selfish and protective of my time and how that might play out going forward. A lot of my self-identity is about being patient, zen, and contemplative… but when the dog whines, I am none of those things.
I’ve been working on two or three posts and poem that are all tied together and have been confusing me for days. They mostly have to do with our sense of time, and the notion of constant change. In one, I’m trying to answer the question of why I’m leaving and more broadly why everyone leaves. The other is a slightly different riff on that. A third is a summary of those two, and the poem is about this two-year epiphany I’ve had in which I’ve realized that in a past relationship, I was the dog. I was the one whining because I wanted more attention and she was me wanting a few moments of peace and quiet. I wrote about this discovery a while ago (Sometimes It’s the Dog). The realization still haunts me. This, too, ties in to why sometimes we need to leave.
The concepts of needs and change and self-reflection dovetail nicely with the two nonfiction books I’m reading all about love and Atlas of the Heart. As it so happens, I’m in the middle of chapters in each book that discuss honesty, resentment, expectations, and disappointment (I know, it sounds uplifting). I take these topics seriously because I believe most of the failures I’ve experienced in personal and professional relationships have been a result of these things – often misaligned or miscommunicated expectations coupled with a lack of honesty/self-awareness by one or both parties.
I’m learning, or realizing, that far too often, we struggle to ask for what we need or share ourselves authentically. We adopt other peoples’ interests in an effort to be liked or gain favor. We hide our pain and struggles because our society tells us to “suck it up,” or “it could be worse.” We keep ourselves hidden because exposure risks vulnerability. And then, we resent the other person for not “getting us” or not knowing what we need. In some cases, we’re afraid to ask for what we need, and in others, we punish people for asking for what they need. After all, nobody likes a malcontent. I suspect that most of this fear and denial is unintentional and is a result of years of conditioning. It’s not uncommon for parents to punish, mock, ignore, and shame children for expressing their needs. The parents get frustrated or tired or worn thin and sometimes feel their own shame for not being able to meet their child’s needs. Eventually, children learn to suppress their needs, to live with disappointment, to believe that there’s little value in honest expression. How we adapt to not having our needs met is the basis behind attachment theory and how we tend to move through our adult relationships (chase, withdraw, or compromise). We’ve all experienced this dysfunction and dissonance on some level and we’ve probably all been guilty of perpetuating the cycle in our relationships. From all about love:
The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better.
My note to myself after reading that was, “don’t punish truth telling.” My secondary note was “if one doesn’t share, one may resent being ‘controlled.'” Grace and patience under these conditions seems to be about allowing for the imperfect expression of others. If we can accept that articulating our needs is difficult, we would do well to view things like running or clinging, fighting or acting out as imperfect expressions of what we need – all of which requires vulnerability and honesty. In that same chapter, the author, hooks, says, “to know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others.” How many times have we only asked for part of what we need because we don’t want to put the other person out or upset them or seem needy?
With authenticity and honesty being core to our relationships, hooks recommends living “our lives out in the open,” and to “willingly share ourselves openly and fully in both private and public life.” Being written before the onslaught of social media and public shaming, I wonder how she would have felt about public authenticity now or if greater delineation between privacy and secrecy would be required in today’s world. There are reasons to be more guarded today as we seem to be handing out pitchforks and torches with every social media account. At a societal low point in our willingness to trust, we probably need to exhibit more of it. “Trusting that another person always intends your good, having a core foundation of loving practice, cannot exist within a context of deception. It is this truism that makes all acts of judicious withholding major moral dilemmas.” As someone who tries to live authentically, I struggle when I practice judicious withholding. Doing so undermines the core of what I would like to believe: that other people only intend good – or the even more challenging belief that when other people cause harm, it is often reactionary and careless as opposed to being malicious and intentional.
The lessons I continue to try to learn and practice are often lessons of authenticity, self-honesty, and listening. Which is much easier when the stakes aren’t forever and a lifetime high – though practice in solitude isn’t the same as game-time reps. The hard lesson my dog has taught me is that I too can be exhausting in my needs which I thought were displays of enthusiasm. And I have punished others for expressing their needs – mostly because I thought they were a threat to my own needs. These are the lines we must constantly negotiate. As I read and reflect, I hope to one day establish a shared language with those closest to me – one that is steeped in honesty, vulnerability, and a bit of humor. One in which we can share without fear of repercussions. One in which we can be a bit more gentle in our reminders of when we’ve been careless, or unkind, selfish, or simply afraid to reveal ourselves more fully.