Guts > Brains?

“That is a gutsy young woman.”

This observation was repeated to me this morning, and for a moment I wanted to ask who it was referring to.  The context of the conversation indicated that I was the young woman being described, but that didn’t quite make sense.  Me?  Gutsy?  Not the word I would have used.

I was talking to my friend Mary, who has adopted me into her family over the past year.  She brought me into her church family, too, where I have recently begun to play the piano for worship.  I accepted the job with much trepidation, for I don’t consider myself much of a pianist—it’s been five years at least since I had a piano lesson, and my practicing since then has been sporadic at best.  There was no one else, though, and so I took on the work.  And every week I have sat at the front of the church, stumbling over a bad keyboard and trying to make music.  This, apparently, earns me the title of “gutsy”. 

Maybe it’s my English major soul that makes me balk at this word.  There must be a better adjective to describe this situation, I tell myself.  What springs immediately to mind is the southern expression of amusement, pity, and faint scorn, “Bless her heart.”  But gutsy, no.  It’s been a long time since I considered myself to have the brash, confident courage that makes up “guts”.

That doesn’t mean that I’ve never had it.  My mother used to tell me when I was a child that I had more guts than brains.  Not necessarily a good thing, as you may guess.  It usually meant that I was willing to throw myself into situations without really considering the consequences.  I was proud of the description, though.  I wanted to be seen as brave, and of course, as a child consequences are so rarely a factor in decision-making.  Sometimes I wish it were still that way.

It does seem, however, that there is more of that brave child still in me than I thought.  After all, I am still stepping up to that keyboard every Sunday, and spending my days in practicing so that every week there will be less stumbling and more music.  And an unknown someone—the kind of person whose perception of you is occasionally more accurate than your perception of yourself—called me “gutsy”, and meant it kindly.  Maybe in time I can come to believe it.  As my mother used to tell me, if I can balance guts and brains, I will be much better off.

Return Your Angers

I got angry today.  I don’t get angry often; usually I call it “upset” or “irritated.”  My temper, I flatter myself, is relatively cool.  But today, I was absolutely furious, and what’s even rarer, the direct object of my fury was not a concept or a situation, but a person.  He’s a coworker of mine, and most of our fellow coworkers find him difficult to deal with.  He is brash, self-centered, and conceited.  I say this with full honesty, though also out of pique.  Anyway, normally I have no problem dealing with this guy.  Sometimes I even feel sorry for him, because he seems to have no idea why other people don’t like him.  Today, however, I wanted nothing more than to get him out of my sight. 

I brought a book with me to work this morning, which will surprise no one who really knows me—whenever I can get away with it, I bring a book with me wherever I go.  Today’s selection was an old classic, a Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer.  Called “The Foundling”, it is a story set in early 19^th century England, with style and plot much owing to Jane Austen--all in all, a classy book.  My errant coworker, however, took one look and exclaimed, “The Fondling?  That sounds like a dirty book.”  He later found the word “ejaculated” in the book, and try as I might to explain that this was an old usage referring to speech and not semen, he loudly teased me for reading a dirty book at work.  The embarrassment and the idiocy I could have forgiven; what threw me into a rage was that he picked up the book while I was away and highlighted the “dirty” word in bright yellow.

I’m sure I surprised him with my reaction.  I carried the book up to him and thrust it in his face, demanding to know what he’d done.  He tried to deny it at first, which only made me angrier, and I told him not to talk to me for the rest of the day.  I spent a good ten minutes stomping around the restaurant and complaining to my coworkers, most of whom were gratifyingly sympathetic.  And though the culprit apologized and ordered me a new copy of the book, I didn’t even look at him for the rest of the day.

The interesting—and slightly alarming—thing is, everything that happened only made me more angry.  The apology and attempts to make amends infuriated me even more—“as if that makes it better!” I snapped to a friend.  Now that I’m finally cooling off, I can admit that it wasn’t so very terrible, that yes, I am a bit irrational when it comes to my books, and that it should be possible for me to forgive him.  Even so, I doubt that I will be able to forget so easily or quickly.

Anger is a force, like magnetism or gravity, that keeps dragging you back.  It takes time and distance to fight free of it, and while certain people have more difficulty with this than others—no comment as to which side I’m on—we all have trouble with it.  In my case, rationality often comes too quickly for me.  While my intellect tells me it’s not good to still be muttering under my breath, my fists and teeth still want to clench and my face still wants to scowl.  In a strange way, anger feels good sometimes.

I think that everyone has a right to anger once in a while.  It’s inevitable, after all, and it’s better to release it at once than to suppress it where it festers.  But we have to be careful to put it away again when it’s time.  In the end, however good it might feel to be angry, it does very little good in our lives or relationships and is better off as a short spark than a blaze that burns us out.

Photo credit: http://chugginmonkeys.com/here_is_your_pick_me_up/6904

Simply Amazing

I am watching Dreamworks’ “The Prince of Egypt” for perhaps the twenty-seventh time.  It is a marvelous movie, full of beautiful artwork and some of the best music anywhere.  Currently I’m at the scene with the burning bush, and it makes me think.  God introduces Himself to Moses as “I Am.”  That’s always been a confusing statement from God, at least for me.  Every time I heard this story, my impulse after hearing that statement was to ask, “You are what?”  I didn’t expect the God of the universe to introduce Himself in such a simple way.

But now that I think about it, there is no better way to do it.  That simple statement is the summary of self-awareness.  To say “I am” is to say that you know of your own existence.  This is something that we take for granted, but if you think of it, there are millions of living things in this world, which is one of millions of worlds in one of millions of galaxies in a universe too big for comprehension.  And only one species we know of has truly realized where we are.  That, in the words of John Green, is “the miracle of human consciousness,” and it really is rather miraculous, whether or not you believe in a God who gave it to us.

I’m not really trying to figure out this miracle, or answer any big life questions.  I just think it needs to be said more often.  I am.  And it’s amazing.

Deep and Wide

Tonight I attended a recital by a good friend of mine.  She was part of my student recital last year, and so I felt I should be there, but more I wanted to go and support her.  And she was playing Debussy, and I’m always up for some Debussy.  She did very well, a beautiful performance.  Afterwards, I spoke to one of our teachers for a while, and she mentioned just how much work goes into such things.  I remember it well—the practicing, the scheduling and the decorating and reception-ing.  With this in mind, I looked around and I saw just how many people there were helping with the recital.  Someone had brought lights, and someone was turning pages, and someone was reading the French poetry, and someone had made the food.  So many people were there to help and support my friend on her night.

Thinking back to my recital, I remember that I did most of the work myself.  I bought and prepared the food for the reception, wrote the notes for the program, purchased flowers and arranged the stage.  I had a pair of friends to help me with what I absolutely could not do alone, but for the most part it was me.  Now, part of the reason it happened this way was that I am a bit of a perfectionist (gasp!) and I wanted to make sure everything was just the way I wanted it, but the other part was that when it was suggested that I get a few helpers that evening, I couldn’t think of many options.  On a night that was special to me, in a tide of emotion that was all mine, there were very few I wanted to share in what I was feeling.

This makes me think about the friendships I have with others, and the nature of those friendships.  I think of them in two ways: their width, or in how many a person is able to welcome into her heart, and their depth, or how far these people can penetrate.  Some people, like my friend from this evening, have the gift of friendships that are both, and they allow many, many people deep into their hearts.  My friendships tend to be one or the other.  I care for a lot of people—friends from work, friends from high school and college, friends from church—and I want them to be happy and am concerned when they are not.  But when it comes to my unhappiness, my needs and desires and loves, I keep these people out, hiding what I think behind a smile or a few half-true words.  There are precious few friends who truly share that with me, who have worked their way into my guarded heart.  I can probably count them on one hand.  Well, maybe two. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to love the wide world.  But I do hope that when I do love, I love deeply, and that those I love know just how precious they are.

When Conscience Bites

Sometimes I really don’t like being a good person.

At work, the servers tend to hang out by the bar in slow moments.  There are three high-top tables where we can sit and take a short break, get a drink of water, etc.  I was sitting there this afternoon, only a little while before going off the clock, caught between running one table’s food and waiting for another to finish eating.  There’s a reason we’re called “waiters”—there’s a lot of sitting around involved in my profession, especially when the restaurant isn’t busy.

Just down the way, one of the bartender’s tables had been seated, and three women were perusing their menus.  I thought nothing of it—my attention was elsewhere, thinking about my tables or maybe my break, I can’t remember.  So I didn’t notice when the women set their menus down, when they started to glance around impatiently, when they probably looked pointedly at me, sitting close by and obviously a server.  The hostess had just buzzed by, asking if the bartender knew she had a table, when the women got up and left the restaurant.  One of them snapped at me as she went out, “Thanks for the great service.”

Now, this was not my fault.  These women were not my responsibility.  I had just come from taking care of my own tables, had hardly been sitting for five minutes.  And yet, when that woman said that to me, the nasty words sank right down into the pit of my stomach and stayed there.  I felt guilty, and I started thinking of all the things that I could’ve done—maybe I should have gotten the women’s drink order, or at least found the errant bartender and told her to cut her cigarette break short.  The thought that these women blame me for their poor experience, that they think I’m lazy or bad at my job, bothers me, and it bothers me that it bothers me.  Why should I care?

Without a strong conscience, I wouldn’t have worried about that woman’s comment at all.  I wouldn’t have had to spend ten minutes rationalizing why she was wrong in her sentiment, and I wouldn’t have spent a further twenty minutes wishing I could explain to her why I hadn’t helped her and her friends.  Thirty good minutes of emotional energy, wasted.  What was the point?

When they teach you in school how good it is to think about others, how impressive it is to have compassion and empathy and conscience, they never tell you how hard it can be.  It would be so much easier for me if I didn’t care what others thought of me, if they were angry or disappointed with me.  But I do care, sometimes too much, and I’m still learning to deal with the disappointment or anger of people who may never learn otherwise of me. 

I don’t want to spend my life regretting silly little things like this.  I want to be a good person, and I want to understand and appreciate the feelings of others, but I hope I always know my own self-worth enough to know when I truly deserve their censure, and in all other cases, to let it slide off me and away.

Three Minutes and Thirty-Two Seconds

I spent much of today working on music, which is something I usually enjoy very much.  Today, however, I had a bit of trouble with an aspect of my work that I haven't come across before.  In the past, I've composed music purely for myself--it was always an artistic expression, nothing more.  But recently I took on a project writing music for a short film a friend of mine is shooting, and suddenly I have to deal with time.

Of course there is time in all music--without it, music just doesn't exist.  But I've never before had to fit music to a specific span of time, and it is more difficult than you would think.  Music is so elastic, so changeable, that each repetition can be and usually is different, and either longer or shorter than the time before.  Repetitions, ritardandos and accelerandos, mistakes, and pure, simple artistic expression all can make a difference in the minute and second count of a piece of music.

It makes me wonder--if I can't get a song to fit into a certain length of time, how on earth can I expect time to measure out my life?  I write out schedules for myself, spending an hour writing, an hour break, an hour with music, etc, but I find myself straying from the schedule after a matter of days, if not a matter of hours.  So often, we want things to fit neatly into the set parameters of organization, but the human mind, the human life is not neat.  It is chaotic and harmonious and free and beautiful, and it takes as long as it takes.

Who I Was

This year is starting out with a great deal of bustle for my family.  Both my mother’s parents and my father’s mother have moved out of the homes they’ve been living in for years.  I’ll spare you the emotional turmoil that goes along with this, not that it’s been advertised.  On the surface, at least, what this means is that Mom and Dad have been running back and forth between both houses, beginning the enormous chore of cleaning out the houses and divvying up the spoils between children and grandchildren.  I’ve done moderately well.  I didn’t ask for much—my mom is still keeping an eye out for a few of my cherished childhood books and games, and she’s already delivered a box full of kitchenware.  From my Grammy, my dad’s mom, I received a beautiful music box I always loved, a toaster (for practicality, not sentiment—her toaster was only ever a toaster to me), and a stack of photos. 

It’s this last that holds the most meaning to me, though I never actually thought to ask for them.  I’m sure most people have their own family photos almost memorized, but not all of these were familiar to me.  Flipping through them, I thought, who is this girl?  I don’t remember her as well.  This was back when I wore purple patterned leggings under a red shirt with bows and overlarge sneakers.  This was before I started caring about looking pretty for pictures (and most of the time I didn’t anyway, but I like it better than what happens now.  Get away from me with that camera).  It was like discovering parts of my childhood that I had lost, a time when I did backflips and climbed trees and had no idea what to do with my hair.

Growing up is a funny business.  How did that girl become me, who is sarcastic and hermit-like and solitary, whose idea of fun is a day at the computer, who is secretly afraid of the world?  How did I turn out this way?  What was the turning point?  And did anyone notice the change, or does it make perfect sense to everyone else that I was who I was and now I am who I am?

This is the impossibility of what I do.  I’m supposed to be a writer, capable of putting into words feelings and ideas that others can’t articulate.  Yet even the complexity of myself is something that I can hardly work out.  If a single life is so huge that you can get lost—so many memories, so many thoughts and events and things that change you—what about a story, which is the intersection of many lives?  What about a world?

I think that for everyone, no matter what they choose to do with their lives, it’s a process of figuring out who they are.  I only hope that as I go along my way, that fearless little girl with the messy hair walks with me, lending me courage when I need it most.