So, in case you didn’t know, it’s a new year. Of course, calendars and such aside, it’s impossible not to know given that nearly everything around us the past few weeks has been subjecting us to some type of “review” of our year. There’s Facebook, which chose my photo of a stack of graded essays (which, ironically, felt somewhat accurate) as the feature photo of my year, not to mention a Google+ slideshow I got in an e-mail, which completely freaked me out until I realized that they were pulling photos from my travel blog on BlogSpot and had not actually invaded my computer. And then there are all those resolutions friends post on Facebook, articles about people making resolutions, and articles about all the things people tend to make resolutions about, like losing weight or having more meaningful conversations. Actually, scratch the latter one–they’re all just about losing weight.
We are a culture of self-improvement, and while people have been making resolutions and trying to improve themselves and society for ages, never has achieving those resolutions seemed more possible. After all, we now have an infinite number of resources available online, and all the latest research on growth mindset, behavioral patterns, and neuroplasticity gives scientific support to the notion that we are all capable of being better versions of ourselves vs. the old stick-in-the-mud notion that people can’t and don’t change.
On the one hand, this is very exciting and positive. Who wouldn’t welcome the hope that something unpleasant, unattractive, or downright destructive in their life could be changed for the better? We like the idea that we have the power to change and control who we are and how we live. The notion is like catnip to me. In fact, I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions for years because resolutions aren’t a once-a-year activity for me–they’re an ongoing part of a constant cycle I’m engaged in of reflecting on my life and thinking about what changes/improvements I want to make (which happens when I’m not getting sucked into marathon sessions with various television series on Netflix). There’s a down side to this improvement mentality, though, because if I have the power to change something and I don’t, that means I’ve failed. If it is possible to change, my inability to stop eating delicious snacks while watching too many hours of TV, for example, is completely my responsibility (or fault). Worse, my judgment of myself can lead to me judging others who seem to “fail” in some way or other.
Alain de Botton explores this tension quite nicely (and more eloquently) in this TED talk, which someone brought to my attention over the holidays:
While he focuses on job status and the notion of professional/economic success and failure, the principles apply in other areas of life as well. There are a number of interesting and thought-provoking insights in this talk (including the value of the literature of Tragedy) but what stood out to me was his acknowledgment that there are factors at work in our lives that are utterly beyond our control–that are random or haphazard “accidents.” This reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which I read recently and makes the case that people’s success is often the result not only of their ability and hard work, but also factors like when and where they were born, where they lived, who their grandparents were, etc. that were completely out of their control.
Do we have personal responsibility and volition in who we are and the kind of life we’re living? Yes. Are our personalities and lives also–sometimes significantly–affected, both positively and negatively, by things utterly beyond our control? Also yes. This becomes even more complex and nuanced if one is a Christian since there is the additional paradox/tension of believing that we are created by an omniscient and omnipotent God who is actively at work in our lives with intention and purpose, while also believing that God has given us free will.
While there is the part of me that loves the idea that I have complete control over who I am and over my life, the part of me that finds this very stressful and burdensome loves these reminders that I do not. And if that’s true of me, that’s also true of others, thus ameliorating my impulse to judge. Also recently (all these converging resources a fortuitous coincidence or result of my own actions?), I came across this quote, which is attributed to the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden.” As knowable as the world might seem in this information era, there is still a great deal that is a mystery to us. Certainly that is true when it comes to other people, and very often even true when it comes to ourselves.
Behind all the frenetic holiday activity that surrounds us this time of year is the powerful, beckoning reality that the creator of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, entered into the midst of his own broken creation as a flesh-and-blood baby—tiny, vulnerable, fully human, and living in a specific place and time. God manifesting himself in a concrete, physical way. God losing all of his power in order to save what he loved. God dying so that he could live in each of us. Really, we celebrate a holiday of unfathomable paradoxes. God present and God powerless.
This contrast makes me think of Paul recounting in 2 Corinthians how Jesus said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (another paradox). In a culture that glorifies individuality, it’s tempting for those of us calling ourselves Christians to interpret this as an invitation to a private and personal interaction—us admitting our weakness and failure to God and then opening ourselves to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit like some kind of super power that charges us up and makes us ready to save the world.
But if the church is the body of Christ—each of us different parts of a collective whole, each of us reflecting various aspects of Christ’s character in a unique way—there’s another way to view that promise. Especially in light of the constant reminders throughout Scripture that God likes to do his work through people—so much so that he became a person himself. This is not to say that God’s power, healing, presence, wisdom, and love can’t come to us directly, but more to say that he seems to prefer bringing it to us through others. Which is an incredible kindness and grace because it draws us out of the isolation and loneliness we are so prone to.
In my moments of weakness and failure, often the last thing I feel capable of is connecting with God or feeling his presence. So in times I’ve been unable to pray, others have prayed for me. In times I’ve been cynical or discouraged, others have spoken words of hope. In my inability to forgive, others have modeled grace and love. In moments like these, the power of God is not some laser beam hitting me directly, effecting some type of radical transformation. Rather, it is reflected prism-like through another member of the body, calling me back into relationship, back into the fold, back into the love of Christ. Yes, the life of Christ resides directly in us, but the very nature of Christ—relational, personal, and incarnate—calls us to dependence on him through dependence on others.
This is not an easy thing. Many of us cling to our independence and self-sufficiency like Gollum to his ring, ready to dissolve in the fire before we’d ever let go. So Jesus did that for us. He let go by washing the feet of his disciples. He let go by allowing himself to be betrayed and captured. He let go by dying on the cross. And this letting go, this chosen powerlessness, is what allowed his life and power to be present in us. Thus, when we stray, the Shepherd calls us back through the voices of our friends, our family, our brothers and sisters in Christ. And he uses us to call them back in return.
Recently, I read an account of a woman working at a college as a psychiatrist who, after one of the students there committed suicide, said, “I cannot save them. I am not here to save anybody or to save the world. All I can do – what I am called to do – is to plant myself at the gates of Hope. Sometimes they come in; sometimes they walk by. But I stand there every day and I call out till my lungs are sore with calling, and beckon and urge them in toward beautiful life and love.” I was deeply moved by her words and struck by how well they describe the role of Christians. We do not have the power to save. If we are honest, we don’t even have the power to call out until our lungs are sore day after day. Not as individuals, at least. But as the body of Christ, we can take turns. On some days, I might be the person calling out to others. On other days it will be someone else calling out to me. All of us calling out Christ, all of us hearing his words in each other’s voices—God’s presence, the beautiful life and love we all long for made manifest in the midst of our weakness.
As of this past week, you can now purchase my novel here or download it from Barnes & Noble or iBooks. Obviously, this is something that I should be feeling very excited about. And I am. But I’m also feeling kind of squidgy about it too. Part if this might simply be the fact I caught the cold that’s been making the rounds at school and being sick always makes me feel not quite myself. Part of it is that I experienced enough frustrations and delays over small technical issues related to the publication that I got tired of the whole business and am simply relieved that it’s finally over. But part of it is going public with this and having it all out in the open.
I used to read interviews with actors who said they never watched their own films, and I always thought they must be lying. Ridiculous! How could they not watch their own movie? But when I started re-reading my own novel after it was finally official, I immediately started seeing things I wanted to fix or change. I had to stop because it was making me feel kind of awful. So, actors, my apologies. I now understand. Someone once asked me, “How did you know your novel was really finished?” and the honest answer is that it’s not. If I let myself, I could continue revising and rewriting for the next five years. I am pragmatic enough to recognize that this wouldn’t be a very good use of my time, but a forced letting go isn’t quite the same thing as a peaceful/satisfied feeling of “hey, this is really good! I’m finished!” I am from a family, after all, where my brother once had to advise my sister that “sometimes, it’s okay to be sub-optimal” and that’s now become a kind of mantra for us.
This post in itself is evidence of why I’m not very good at self-promotion. I read an article a couple years ago that said, “If you don’t believe in your work 100%, why would anyone else?” That’s haunted me ever since because I don’t think there’s been anything in my life that I’ve done/created that I’ve believed in 100%. Or even 90%. I think I’ve made it into the 80th percentile a few times, but that’s about it.
Which is why it’s been such a tremendous blessing and challenge to have friends and family who believe in my work more than I do. They’ve been announcing it on Facebook with all kinds of complimentary descriptions. They’ve been telling their coworkers. They’ve been calling me and e-mailing me about how excited they are for me. The challenging part is that it’s been really hard for me to resist the impulse to qualify their enthusiasm with all the thoughts running through my head (“well, it’s not THAT good,” “You do realize I won’t ever even come close to being famous, right?” or, for those who haven’t read it yet and are expressing excitement, “It’s okay if you don’t actually like it”). I’m the killjoy at my own party. The blessing part is that, as uncomfortable as some of this is, these dear friends and family members are helping me be who I am, which is someone who loves to write and who, ultimately, wants to share that writing with others.
When I was in the eighth grade, someone talked me into playing the piano in the school’s talent show. It was a piece with a lot of trills and runs that, because I was shaking so hard from nerves, I completely mangled. I walked off the stage too miserable to even cry, and as I blindly pushed my way to the exit, my P.E. teacher, Mrs. Mahlstedt (who used to lead us in aerobic routines to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Papa, Don’t Preach” that left me feeling very conflicted), stopped me. “Katherine!” she exclaimed. “That was so beautiful!” I thought she was just saying that because she was a teacher and that’s what teachers get paid to do–say nice things to miserable kids even if it means lying through their teeth. But when she kept raving about my playing over the next few days, both to me and to others, it occurred to me that what I heard myself play might not have been the same thing she heard me play. All I heard were my many many mistakes. Mrs. Mahlstedt just heard some nice piano music and it made her happy.
Now I’ve got a whole community of Mrs. Mahlstedts, and while it’s hard–even a little painful–for me to prise a few fingers off my own view of myself and my work (I do so like to be in control, even if it’s a negative control), I am profoundly grateful for the love that forces me to. True geniuses persist no matter what with their art, but I am no genius. I am an ordinary person who needs others to believe in me, encourage me, support me, and remind me that even flawed things can bring others pleasure. Thank God.
Years ago, a dear friend of mine’s husband died of brain cancer. He, along with their two sons when they were growing up, had been actively involved with Boy Scouts, and recently some old scouting friends and their current troops decided to do a walk in his honor and raise funds to fight the cancer he’d had. I called my friend after the event to hear how it’d gone and see how she was doing. She wasn’t doing very well.
“When I got there and saw all of them wearing their shirts with his face on them, I don’t know,” she said, “it just hit me. I wanted to run back out to my car and cry.” And then she said, “What is wrong with me? It’s been nine years.” And we talked about that, particularly her question, what is wrong with me? and the expectations and beliefs driving it–that grief has an expiration date, that the death of someone you love is something you are supposed to “get over” at a certain point (and that point is a final and definitive moment), and that the process of getting over it is a steady, linear progression, like a healing cut or a broken bone reforming itself.
Before I go any further with this, I need to acknowledge that every person’s grief is different, which makes sense given that every person is different, as is every relationship. Some people seem to genuinely embrace the idea of “moving on” in the straightforward sense we think of when we hear that term, and by all appearances this seems to be working for them. I might have some doubts about what’s really going on beneath the surface, but I also recognize that I am never in a position to judge someone else’s emotions or experience just because it’s different from my own.
At the same time, the fact that my friend felt bad about being sad about her husband’s death “nine years” later reminded me of how often we put pressure on ourselves and on others to be “better” according to an arbitrary time frame or define it as a once-and-for-all event. Part of this, I think, stems from an erroneous (and largely subconscious) view of human emotions as some kind of binary system. In other words, if you’re sad, you aren’t happy. If you still miss someone, you’re not living a full life. If some memories still cause you pain, you’re not healthy. For Christians, you can add that if you’re devastated by loss, you don’t trust God enough or have hope in the resurrection. You should be glad your loved one is in heaven.
In my experience, this is bullshit. It’s not an either/or. It’s an all-of-the-above. I have a good life full of joy and enjoyment and the mundane. I get excited about new possibilities. I enjoy my friends. I think about what I need to buy the next time I’m at Target. I delight in eating chocolate and look forward to seeing a movie I’ve read good things about. Stupid cat videos on Facebook make me laugh. But even though my mother died over twelve years ago, I still have dreams about her now and then that make me cry. Or I’ll see a mother and daughter shopping together and, out of the blue, find myself wanting to follow them and ask if I can just hang out with them for a little while because I miss that mother-daughter kind of relating. I also know that I’m going to get a little sadder than usual every September and October, because that’s when things started to get really bad for my mom. That’s when the tumors spread to her bones and the pain that neither oxycontin nor morphine could relieve began to torment her day and night. That’s when my own helplessness began to rise like bile in the back of my throat.
That sadness is part of who I am now, but it’s not the whole me nor is it my whole life, and I don’t think there’s anything strange or unhealthy or un-Christian about it. I have moved on with my life, and part of my moving on is missing my mom. Part of my moving on is remembering–years later–things that were too overwhelming and painful to process at the time. And having a healthy Christian perspective about her death means recognizing that death is the enemy Christ came to defeat. Anger and devastation are an appropriate response to disease and death because that is not what we were created for. Relationships with the ones we love were never meant to be severed in such a way.
Time helps, the love of friends and family helps, the grace and comfort of God helps. But the only thing that will truly and fully heal the pain of that suffering and death is to see her fully alive again in her resurrected body and embrace her. Which hasn’t happened yet. So no, I’m not “over it” yet. I’m happy/sad. I’m content/longing. My life is full/missing something. And that’s okay, just as it’s okay for my friend to want to sit in her car and cry nine years after her husband’s death, even though she’s also learned to be happy again and enjoy the many good things in her life.
When I was a sophomore in college, the professor teaching my short story class invited me to be part of her advanced creative writing seminar, in which students would write a novella. After an initial round of fits and starts that never got anywhere due to my paralyzing fear and perfectionism, my professor ordered me to stop thinking and just write. In fact, she made me call her voicemail every night to report how many pages I’d written, something I now recognize as an act of above-and-beyond kindness on her part that I took for granted at the time. By the end of the semester, I had a 120-page, single-spaced novella and a feeling of exhilaration and accomplishment like I’d never experienced before. I remember watching the pages come out of the printer in the library’s computer lab and feeling the pile grow in my hands. Among a number of critical comments from my professor, like “stop using exclamation points like a condiment” (apparently, my 19-year-old self thought they were needed to show strong emotion), was the concluding assessment that I really had something good and should “do something with it.” Caught up in the glow of validation, I vowed that I would indeed do something. But the glow faded, and the huge pile of pages in front of me that I had been so proud of became something unwieldy and overwhelming. So I put it away somewhere and moved on to other things. For about fifteen years.
About five years ago, I was reading a book of theoretical physics for laypeople called The Elegant Universe. During that same period, I read a magazine article about some of the most haunted cities in Europe just before taking a nap. During the nap, my subconscious made one of those “aha!” connections between the two things, and when I woke up, I had an idea for another novel. My workplace at that time was a very unhappy place for me and many of my colleagues, and writing the first draft of this story I’d come up with during a nap was, at first, a kind of therapeutic escape. Ten months later, I had a 98,000 word behemoth. My friends were all very excited and, sweet as they were, talked about how it was going to be the next big thing, everyone would love it, etc. Which was really nice, but also a complete fantasy.
I was starry-eyed and vain enough in the beginning stages to tackle the revision process with the belief that I had something that, while not the next bestseller, could get the attention of an agent and end up published by one of the big publishers. I did a couple rounds of catching typos, rewriting some dialogue, and cleaning up some awkward paragraphs and thought I was done. I foolishly started querying agents at this point and was brought back to earth by a string of rejections. Granted, rejections are par for the course when querying agents and trying to get out of the slush pile, but the actual experience of it made me take a harder, closer look at my manuscript and see it for what it really was–an early draft that needed considerable work. One of the agents I had queried had been kind enough to write a personal note (a very rare thing from NY agents flooded with hundreds of queries a week) and make an editing suggestion about where my novel should really begin. It meant cutting out the first two chapters entirely, which was a far more radical edit than I’d been prepared to consider before. But at that point, I was ready, and the real work of revision began.
Over the next couple years, I labored over that manuscript, getting feedback from wherever I could–mostly friends, but also from a well-known YA author whose critique of my first 50 pages I won in an auction to raise money for an MFA program in Vermont. I also entered it (midway through revisions) into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, made it to the quarterfinals, and got a review from Publishers Weekly that, while complimentary overall, had a couple critiques that also gave me direction for further revision. I then started the query process again, and this time my results were a little better. I was still getting rejections, but I was also getting more requests for full manuscripts. But even though a few agents responded with personal notes (as opposed to the form rejection) telling me specific things they really liked about my novel, they all concluded that, in the end, it just wasn’t something they were passionate about and could represent. After another hard look at the manuscript, I had a sense that while it was a much-improved version of the first manuscript I’d tried to shop around, it still wasn’t quite to the level it needed to be. But I didn’t know how to fix it, so I put it away, not sure I’d ever return to it.
Last year, I decided to try again. I recognized that I was learning valuable things through this laborious process, and there was some stubborn part of me that wanted to see this project through, to do what my 19-year-old self had failed to do. To my relief and surprise, when I looked at the manuscript again after not reading it or thinking about it for an entire year, the flaws were obvious. That year off had given me emotional distance, and I was able to ruthlessly chop passages and rework sections in a way that would have made my heart bleed a year prior. Something else had changed as well–namely, my desire to continue querying agents and get published in the traditional way. The thought of researching agents, crafting query letters, perfecting my pitch, etc. made me want to weep. It wasn’t just the thought of more rejections–it was also the thought of how much time and energy it takes to do all of that. As a full-time high school English teacher, I just don’t have a lot of free time and energy, and I didn’t want it to all get used up by the business of querying. I wanted to use that time and energy to read and write. And maybe hang out with some friends once in awhile.
The clear alternative, then, was to self-publish, something a couple of my friends had been encouraging me to do for a while. Initially, though, I was deeply resistant to the idea. It reeked of failure to me. When you self-publish, you pay for everything yourself, which means no one has to choose you–there is no quality barrier, no ensured professional process, and thus there are a lot of really crappy self-published novels out there. But, as my friends pointed out, there are also some good ones, along with some up-and-coming talents who are actively choosing to self-publish in order to preserve more control over their own work and profits.
When I really thought about it with an open mind, I realized that self-publishing was the best fit for me, especially since going the traditional route and getting an agent was no guarantee that any of the publishers would actually buy my manuscript and publish it. And that even if they did, the process could take years. I’m not trying to become a career novelist. I don’t care about being a commercial success, which is a rare outcome even for most novelists published in the traditional way anyway. I really don’t want to have to do publicity and promotion (most self-published authors do, but the appeal to me is that I don’t have to and no one can make me). I don’t want a Twitter account. I don’t want to interact with people on forums. I just want to be done with this and have my novel available for the family members, friends, and handful of former students who’d want to buy it. And if other people want to read it too, that will be great–the cherry on the sundae.
Even after recognizing that self-publishing probably was the best and most logical choice for me in the circumstances, it still felt kind of cheesy and embarrassing. Determined to try and create a product as professional and polished as any traditionally published work, I hired a professional editor to help me iron out any remaining kinks in the manuscript. I did considerable research on the best companies for formatting and publication, and I hired a professional graphic artist to design the cover. I also submitted the finished manuscript to Kirkus Reviews despite the overwhelming tide of online opinion that it’s a terrible idea to do so given how mean Kirkus can be to indie novels (“indie” being the cooler/slicker term for self-published authors in recent years). I was terrified of getting a disparaging review, but I was willing to take the risk because I was also deeply craving some type of industry validation of my work. And I got it. Kirkus awarded me one of their coveted starred reviews (WARNING: there are some major spoilers, so you might want to skip it if you intend to actually read the novel).
And yet, in some annoying way, that’s still not enough. At church a couple weeks ago, an acquaintance who knew I’d been working on a novel asked when it was coming out (I love the unwitting optimism of people’s assumption that just because you’ve written a novel, it will automatically get published). When I told her it would probably come out sometime in October, she got all excited and asked, “Who’s publishing it?” I felt about ten inches tall when I said, “well, I am.” She was very sweet about it, but I could see her expression change. That was exciting, but less so.
In the end, I think my squeamishness is something that would probably be there even if I had managed to publish traditionally, because either way, I’m still exposed. My work (which, in some ways, is hard to separate from me) will soon be out there at the mercy of anyone’s judgment, whether it’s a private thought or an Amazon review. And that’s terrifying. I might think that the validation of being vetted by an agent and publisher would offer more protection, but then I think of all the authors who get published traditionally and are savaged by critics anyway, or whose sales are so disappointing their publisher and agent drop them. Whatever route it takes, the work is the work, and people’s responses to it aren’t going to be affected by who published it, for better or for worse. I’m hoping for the better, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
After spending the first half of my summer gallivanting through Denmark and Scotland, I returned to Southern California and got down to the business of home maintenance. Not a fun transition (I may have wept a tiny bit my first morning waking up here instead of some lovely B&B in Scotland), but a necessary one. Among lots of smaller necessaries that kept my checking account working hard–replacing the water filtration system, fixing my air-conditioner, getting the piano tuned, etc.–the big task of the summer was painting the exterior of my peeling house and rebuilding the rotten fence in the front yard. Or, rather, hiring someone else to do these tasks for me (more checks!).
Choosing paint colors from the hundreds of options spread before me at Home Depot and Lowes made me think of this article I read a while back in The New York Times, which basically says that while the idea of having many options available is appealing to most people, actually having them can lead to paralysis and/or dissatisfaction: we either make no choice because we’re so overwhelmed, or we make a choice and are haunted by the ghost of what-could-have-been-better. My approach for the paint colors was the following:
1. Grab and bring home about 30 color cards to satisfy my American need to feel like I had lots of options (although I will never, ever understand why there are so many shades of white. Why? WHY?)
2. Go through all the cards SUPER FAST and immediately gut-discard about two-thirds of the colors (throwing them away in the nasty outside trash can so I wouldn’t be tempted to dig any back out later), thus narrowing my options into a reasonable amount.
3. Spend the next several days staring at my three color-combo finalists and ask my friends for their input.
Even with all of this, a process more intuitive than systematically planned, the color I (and my friends) thought was the best one turned out to be disappointingly drab and blah in reality. As in, looking at it made me feel like I might need to go back on Prozac. So out came the checkbook again, and the entire house was repainted in Option #2. The one upside is that having seen how bad Option #1 looked, Option #2 seemed pretty great, thus dispelling the ghost of what-could-have-been-better. Option #2 is the “better,” and I have the cash deficit to prove it.
Paint colors aside, I’ve found myself overwhelmed by all the options I’ve been seeing everywhere. As I sat at a red light yesterday, I counted six different restaurant/drive-thru food options in one corner shopping center with another three just across the street. At the next light, there was another slew of options. It made me think longingly of the little towns I drove through in the Scottish Highlands, which typically had about 2-3 food options. There were a few days when I’d drive for long stretches and just find one. Some of the time, the food I’d be served in these places would be really good. Some of the time, it wasn’t. But all of the time I was satisfied, because it came down to the bare bones of me being hungry and this place offering food. I didn’t have the luxury of choosing from multiple options and considering what I was “in the mood for” but I also didn’t have the burden.
Right now, part of my brain is screaming “First world problem!” and there is an awareness of all the people in the world who have no such options and live in the very oppressive reality of being unable to exercise choice over even the most basic things in life. But as someone who does live in the first world and recognizes the glut of options we have in the U.S. as a potentially unhealthy extreme, I’m wrestling with how to live with a little more balance. How to block out and simplify some of those options, not out of ingratitude, but more in a way that makes me fully present to and grateful for whatever it is I do choose.
A few months ago, I wrote this post about the role of fear in my life and made a comment that if it were possible, I’d like to conduct a study about whether fear and that internal sense of not being “good enough” was unique to accomplished and driven women or whether men experienced the same fueling anxiety. So when my issue of The Atlantic Monthly arrived in the mail last week, I was very excited to see this cover story examining that very issue and citing numerous studies. Turns out, it is pretty gender-specific, and women consistently rate their abilities lower than what they actually are while men consistently overrate themselves. Women also tend to be more perfectionistic than men, tend to take fewer risks, and therefore tend to have less confidence. This explains (“this” being a woefully abbreviated summary on my part–you really should read the original) at least in part why, even though a company might have just as many qualified if not more qualified female employees as male employees, so many of the top positions are still dominated by men. As the article states, if a man feels he has 60% of the qualifications for a higher position, he’ll go for it, whereas a woman would feel she needs to be 100% qualified and therefore precludes herself from even applying.
This has been an issue at the forefront of my own life in the past year as I continue my slow and sometimes painful but often rewarding self-education in risk-taking and building confidence. Recognizing that I was full of fear, anxiety, and a complete aversion to risking *anything*, I decided in my mid 30s to try a little behavior modification. In other words, I would force myself to do at least two or three things every year that scared me shitless and gradually build up (hopefully) some tolerance for that fear and an ability to overcome or at least get through it. And it really has helped. The more things I try and force myself to do, the more confidence I gain to try something else and the more opportunities and experiences open up to me. But it still requires a considerable amount of mental/emotional processing and sheer force of will each and every time.
For example, this past fall I found out that my alma mater offers a fellowship for alumnae to travel. When I first read the description of the type of person and the type of purpose the fellowship is meant for, I thought, “That kind of sounds like me” and got excited for about five minutes. Then I looked at the application and required proposal/forms and started getting overwhelmed and having “I’m not worthy” thoughts. Still, I made myself e-mail the contact person and ask for a list of past winners and their projects/proposals. Reading through that list just made the “I’m not worthy” voices even louder. Several years ago, I would have given up right then and this would be the end of the story. Instead, I thought about the other things I’ve tried in the last several years that have all turned out well, and I decided that it couldn’t hurt to at least come up with a proposal. I did, and then another stage of paralysis and doubt set in. This time to combat it, I had to physically write out all the things I was afraid of–that I’d look like a complete loser-idiot, that I’d impress them and not be able to actually live up to any of what impressed them, that my proposal wasn’t thought-out enough and wouldn’t make the most of this opportunity and I’d be wasting it, that the timing wouldn’t be right, and so on and so forth (it was a hefty list). I then made myself write out a rational response to each of the fears and called my sister and a friend to discuss it and get a little bolstering from their encouragement and support. Then I finally submitted the application, still full of fear, trembling, and nausea.
Apparently, if I were a guy, I would have looked at the fellowship description, thought to myself “Cool, I’m perfect for this!” and fired off a proposal and my application in the day or two after.
I can’t help but find some of my angst and hand-wringing anxiety and insecurity funny, because there is something ridiculous about having to go through such a process and requiring hand-holding and being on the verge of needing medication just to turn in an application. But I also find it very frustrating and draining. As the book of James says, “he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.” According to the Atlantic article, though, I am not alone and a lot of this has both physiological and sociological roots. There’s something comforting about that, because it means that I’m not entirely to blame for these issues (side note–another thing women tend to do is over-blame themselves) and I can stop giving myself such a hard time over this.
Meanwhile, I’m making progress. After going through such a thorough preliminary fear-abating process, I was able to go to my interview with a surprising amount of peace and confidence. Not confidence that I was perfect for the fellowship and would get it, but confidence that, like Popeye, I am who I am and there was no shame in interviewing for something and not getting it, because that’s just part of life and trying new things. As a result, far from being some gut-wrenching ordeal, the interview was truly enjoyable. I was awarded the fellowship, and now I am planning a month-long trip to Denmark and Scotland.
And writing out another fear list. But at least I’m going somewhere.
Recently, Apple came out with this commercial for their iPad Air product, which features an audio clip from the movie Dead Poet’s Society along with clips of people using their ipads in various creative endeavors:
I realized as I watched this commercial that Apple understands something very important that the policy-makers in public education are missing–that most people tend to find beauty, purpose, and meaning far more compelling than information and facts. Apple is using this understanding to sell a product, and so far this commercial has had over 1.2 million views on YouTube. While I don’t know whether or not it’s actually improved sales, it certainly has captured the public’s attention.
There is a lot about the Common Core Standards (CCSS) on the internet, and my purpose in this post isn’t to give a definitive explanation of them or to make an argument for or against them. There are some elements of the CCSS that I think could bring about some positive changes (“could” being the operative word since the implementation of these standards is one giant, national experiment) in terms of increasing the rigor of public education and encouraging teachers to regularly reflect on their teaching practices and to measure/monitor whether or not their students are actually learning and mastering skills. But there is a great deal about these standards, their adoption, and the way they’re being implemented that concerns me deeply, the main aspect being that the CCSS seem to view students primarily as future workers and consumers who need, above all else, to be able to make arguments, support their ideas with logic and evidence, and be highly skilled and conversant in reading and writing informational text. Some might point out that there are still a number of literature-based standards. The Common Core website even states that literature should amount to 30% of the content a high school student reads in the course of his/her day. The other 70% is expected to be informational text, which makes sense since English is typically only one class in five or six, and informational texts are a natural fit in subjects like history, science, and art.
However, many districts are misinterpreting this and emphasizing informational texts and writing over literature in English classes as well. Roughly half of the English CC standards are, in fact, based on informational text (which seems to contradict that whole 30% thing), but part of this overall imbalance may also be due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of sample Common Core ELA assessments available to the public primarily use informational texts. My own school districts’ two CC benchmarks for 10th grade English involve writing an argument based on 14 pages of informational text and an informational writing task. None of the literature standards are addressed, and no literature appears on any of the district assessments. Implicit though it may be, this sends a very clear message: literature should take a back seat. Creativity is at best a luxury, at worst irrelevant.
I realize we are living in an information age, and I am not naïve enough to think that teaching students how to analyze and write informational text isn’t important. I also have no problem with teaching students how to make evidence-based, logical arguments (many of us could benefit from a little more logic). But if we truly want students to be lifelong learners, if we truly want students to be people who can contribute something significant to the world, we need to recognize that they are not just future workers and information processors; they are human beings. They are complex beings living in a complex world that involves far more than simply information and facts and argument. Imagine if Shakespeare had been fed a steady diet of informational text and made to focus on informational writing instead of studying and imitating the tragedies, comedies, and poetry of the ancient Greeks. Shakespeare was able to write what he wrote because he was incredibly gifted, but he also wrote what he wrote because he was inspired. And while you might be able to measure a certain amount of skills and knowledge with standardized assessments and by analyzing data, there is no systematized way to measure the most important element to motivating deep and lifelong learning: delight.
Ask anyone who their favorite teacher is, or what their favorite subject is, and I’d be willing to bet some serious cash that there is a high level of enjoyment and delight involved. The same thing is true for any adult who still loves learning, who still is curious about the world–they do so and they are so because learning delights them. Because it is deeply satisfying, enriching, and inspiring. Informational text can certainly be interesting. There have been a number of articles I’ve read with my students that have sparked their thinking and that they’ve enjoyed reading and writing about. But none of them are impacted by the articles anywhere as deeply as they are by the literature we read. When they come back to visit me in later years, they don’t talk about the articles–they talk about the literature. They talk about their favorite characters, their favorite authors, their favorite works. There is no test that can measure the deep pride and satisfaction of students who announce to me that To Kill a Mockingbird is the first novel they’ve read all the way through, or the ignited desire evidenced when they ask me if I know any other “books like that” they can read.
Data doesn’t reveal the epiphanies they have or the empathy they develop when they experience life through someone else’s eyes, when they are outraged by the injustices those characters suffer or are moved by the courage or love they see modeled. It doesn’t measure the growth that occurs when they persevere through a text that slowly builds to revelation. I believe our students need revelation. I believe they need beauty. I believe we educators have a responsibility to cultivate their humanity and their souls as well as their skills. We have a responsibility to equip them to live good lives, which means preparing them not only for the workplace, but also cultivating their curiosity, their empathy, their self-awareness, their creativity, and their passion for life. Idealistic? Perhaps. Grandiose? Probably. But I think we should be aiming for ideals and grandiosity when it comes to educating young people, not just “proficient” test scores.
In true Common Core fashion, I ought to provide some evidence for this argument. As a believer in stories, however, I subscribe to the notion that anecdotal evidence is good evidence. So is poetry. I start every week in my sophomore English classes by reading them a poem. Most of the time, I just read it and they listen and then we move on to the next activity without discussing or analyzing the poem. I do this because I want them to learn that sometimes you can just receive something and appreciate it even if you don’t fully understand it. I am cultivating their open-mindedness and attentiveness. I also do it because I want them to encounter something beautiful at school at least once a week. I’m sure there are students who grit their teeth and simply endure it, but many of them love listening to the poems. Even my hyper sophomore boys, who think it’s hilarious to hide each other’s backpacks or try to twist each other’s nipples, will quiet and listen intently while I read. They spontaneously clap or snap their fingers when I finish. And on the rare occasions I forget, they raise their hands and ask, “Aren’t you going to read us a poem?”
We also, from time to time, do dictation with the poems, where they’ll write down stanzas or chunks I read aloud, and then we analyze them together. Why do you think the poet uses that word? Why do you think she put a comma there? What’s the effect of that repetition? What I’ve noticed in the years since I started doing this is that students who don’t participate in any other activities will raise their hand and participate in our poetry discussions. Their heads come up. They engage. Recently, as a way to teach figurative language and other poetic devices, I had my students write an imitation of Seamus Heaney’s poem “Postscript.” Typically, about 50-60% of students will complete and turn in homework assignments (this is actually typical for most of the school). But about 90% of my students completed this poem. A number of my students are inclusion students–those with a “special education” designation, who often perform quite poorly on tests. Here is what three of those students, all of whom are labeled as either “below basic” or “far below basic” on standardized tests, wrote. These are my argument that literature and beauty and poetry matter:
#
And some time make the time to skate
In the park
In your free time.
Feel the cool breeze while you are zooming through the air
And your feet vibrating from the wheels.
Looking at the green grass
Hear the sound of the wheels rolling on the ground.
Useless to think you’ll be perfect at it.
You are neither here nor there,
A cloud full of worries that stops you from doing what you love.
#
And some time make the time
To go out for a run
Cruising through the countryside
When the light is mostly bright
Feeling the cool breeze rub against your skin
Hearing your heart beat through
The sound of silence
Seeing nothing but true green trees
Smelling the hint of spring.
Useless to think you’ll stop
And breathe it all in.
You are neither here nor there,
A flash within the blink of an eye.
#
And some time make the time to walk
At the beach on the sand during summertime.
Feel the breeze on your face
Breathe in the ocean’s fresh air
Hear the roar of the ocean and feel the warmth
Of the beautiful sunset on your face.
Useless to think you won’t fall in love with this sight.
Here in southern California, the weather has been stuck in Santa Ana wind conditions for weeks–hot, sunny, and dry. It’s the middle of January, and we are all walking around in T-shirts, sweating through mid-80s temperatures, and accidentally shocking ourselves on every metal surface (and person) we come into contact with. I realize complaining about warm temperatures in the middle of winter is a bit sketchy. After all, there are probably more than a few people buried in snow right now who would be more than happy to come hit me with their shovels. This is assuming they could actually drive to the airport on their icy roads and fly out here through all those storms, although I suspect once they got off the plane, they’d be so dazzled by the sunlight and warmth, they’d drop their shovels and go order a frappucino at Starbucks instead.
So I’m not complaining, but I must confess to a tiny bit of longing whenever I hear about a big storm and people being snowed in. I know this is strange, so as I was putting on my summer clothes this morning, I tried to pinpoint what it is that could possibly be bad (aside from drought and fires) about constantly warm and sunny weather, and I remembered something from my sophomore year of college in Massachusetts. One weekend in December, a huge storm rolled in and dropped so much snow that all modes of transportation and roads into and out of Boston shut down. It was a Saturday evening, and no one could go anywhere. Having grown up a few blocks away from Disneyland, I had never experienced a situation where I couldn’t go somewhere because of weather. [While there are plenty of people who act like they can’t drive in rain, no one is ever actually unable to go somewhere here because of it]. Being restricted by weather was such a foreign concept to me, that my friends had to repeat several times to me that yes, we had to cancel our plans. And no, there was no way we could leave the dorm. “This is New England, dummy,” is probably what they were all thinking.
After that initial shock and disappointment, I was faced (along with everyone else) with a huge block of time and literally no place to go, and what resulted was the equivalent of the biggest slumber party ever. Everyone put on their sweats and pajamas and crowded into the common rooms, throwing whatever snacks they had into a giant collective pile, watched TV, made up relay races in the hallways, etc. Like children, who (let’s face it) have very limited options and freedom, I discovered that restriction can be fun. That it can force you to live in the moment and just enjoy yourself. With the snow falling steadily outside, our dorm and our forced time inside it felt cozy and special, and I felt a rare sense of solidarity with a group of people whom I would normally rush past in the stairwell on my way to class. We were all experiencing the exact same circumstances of weather and a complete lack of control over it. And it was really nice.
Here in sunny California, we have no such weather limits. We can go anywhere anytime and do anything. On the one hand, this is wonderful. On the other, this can be overwhelming and exhausting. There is no natural rhythm, no ebb and flow, directed by nature or the seasons. We have no weather restrictions and thus no reason to ever stop or even slow down. It feels ridiculous to stay inside all day reading a book and sipping hot chocolate when it’s sunny outside. So we all stay busy running around.
Perhaps my longing for inclement weather is just a sign that I am a shut-in deep down in my heart, but I think it’s more than that. I think constant sunshine and monotonously mild weather feels somehow artificial and disconnected. That it offers a false sense of constant control and propels us into constant action. Call me crazy (though please don’t hit me with your shovel) but I think it would be good for us all to be snowed in once in a while and have nowhere to go and nothing to do but stay put and discover how much we enjoy it. To discover that the world won’t end if we sit it out a day or two.
flawed but functioning 