Searching for answers
Ever since the first of this year, or really since the 4th of this year when I started back to work after being off through the holidays, I have felt unsettled. Going into work that day I felt bluer than I have in a long time.
"oh - this routine again." I remember thinking as I walked from the subway to my office. "another year of this. and it's only january."
And by "this" I meant the broad pattern of my life at this point - the frenzied morning rush to get to daycare and work, the minor panic that I'm not on top of what I need to be at work, the frustration that can occasion client service jobs because essentially you're always doing someone else's bidding. the rush to finish and leave the office to get to daycare before six, before they charge for being late, before - even worse - it's your kid who's the only one left, again. the brisk walk home pushing a heavy stroller over uneven pavements, snow and slush, around people who take up too much space on the sidewalk, in between rush hour traffic blocking the crosswalks. the scramble to figure out what to make for dinner that Phineas will eat and then watching and coaxing while he doesn't eat...
It's not that I don't want to do these things, or that I'm unhappy that this is what I am doing. It's just that all of that leaves no room for personal creativity. Is it just discipline that enables someone to stick to routines? No, I guess not - it's has more to do with responsibility, sacrifice and the desire to do what's best for the people you love. I used to think that people who were more routinized really just lacked imagination and creativity.
Anyway - one way I've developed for dealing with monotony is to be impossibly obsessive over politics. Following the daily debates, reading about political ups and downs, and just tracking the news - literally minute by minute. It really works to sublimate the incredible absorption that comes from creating something. My energy is instead channeled into absorbing the details of health care reform, or political races, or how some idiocy from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh should be refuted. It's not really a good trade-off... I know.
This evening, between the fallout from the Massachusetts senate election and the Supreme Court decision in favor of corporate funding of political campaigns - I felt a complete and utter despair. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Anthony cannot at all understand why any of that would matter so much to me. And his point is valid - worry about the stuff over which you have some control. But... for me, it's complicated.
To get myself out my misery pit I did something that is instinctual - take a book down from the bookshelf, think about writing or reading or art. I picked two books - and found something in each of them that instantly soothed my passions.
The first was the Tao Te Ching - which I like opening at random to read what it has to say to me. I opened to this stanza:
Act without doing; work without effort.
Think of the small as large and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.
The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.
I also picked up a book by Annie Dillard that I'd read some years ago - For The Time Being. Rifling through, I found this passage -
"Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy - probably a necessary lie - that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?... The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper... It is life's noise - the noise of the news - that sings 'It's a Small World After All' again and again to lull you and cover the silence while your love boat slips off into the dark."
After reading those, I felt light years better.
Night-time in a strange place
"oh - this routine again." I remember thinking as I walked from the subway to my office. "another year of this. and it's only january."
And by "this" I meant the broad pattern of my life at this point - the frenzied morning rush to get to daycare and work, the minor panic that I'm not on top of what I need to be at work, the frustration that can occasion client service jobs because essentially you're always doing someone else's bidding. the rush to finish and leave the office to get to daycare before six, before they charge for being late, before - even worse - it's your kid who's the only one left, again. the brisk walk home pushing a heavy stroller over uneven pavements, snow and slush, around people who take up too much space on the sidewalk, in between rush hour traffic blocking the crosswalks. the scramble to figure out what to make for dinner that Phineas will eat and then watching and coaxing while he doesn't eat...
It's not that I don't want to do these things, or that I'm unhappy that this is what I am doing. It's just that all of that leaves no room for personal creativity. Is it just discipline that enables someone to stick to routines? No, I guess not - it's has more to do with responsibility, sacrifice and the desire to do what's best for the people you love. I used to think that people who were more routinized really just lacked imagination and creativity.
Anyway - one way I've developed for dealing with monotony is to be impossibly obsessive over politics. Following the daily debates, reading about political ups and downs, and just tracking the news - literally minute by minute. It really works to sublimate the incredible absorption that comes from creating something. My energy is instead channeled into absorbing the details of health care reform, or political races, or how some idiocy from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh should be refuted. It's not really a good trade-off... I know.
This evening, between the fallout from the Massachusetts senate election and the Supreme Court decision in favor of corporate funding of political campaigns - I felt a complete and utter despair. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Anthony cannot at all understand why any of that would matter so much to me. And his point is valid - worry about the stuff over which you have some control. But... for me, it's complicated.
To get myself out my misery pit I did something that is instinctual - take a book down from the bookshelf, think about writing or reading or art. I picked two books - and found something in each of them that instantly soothed my passions.
The first was the Tao Te Ching - which I like opening at random to read what it has to say to me. I opened to this stanza:
Act without doing; work without effort.
Think of the small as large and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.
The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.
I also picked up a book by Annie Dillard that I'd read some years ago - For The Time Being. Rifling through, I found this passage -
"Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy - probably a necessary lie - that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?... The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper... It is life's noise - the noise of the news - that sings 'It's a Small World After All' again and again to lull you and cover the silence while your love boat slips off into the dark."
After reading those, I felt light years better.
Night-time in a strange place
posted by bridget at
10:32 PM
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