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The In Between

The other morning, I began going about my highly regimented routine as I do everyday:

Step 1: Make the coffee. This is by far the most important piece of my ritual and is the only one that has proven itself deserving of my undivided attention.

Step 2: Place water glass under the refrigerator water dispenser and let it fill up while opening our dog (Bean’s) can of food.

Step 3: Take water glass out from under the refrigerator water dispenser before feeding Bean. This one sometimes gets missed, which leads to me, 3 minutes later, wondering why the kitchen floor is soaked.

Step 4: Feed Bean while microwaving the milk for my coffee. Because why would I put cold milk into my piping hot cup of perfection.

Step 5: Make my daily yogurt bowl/pour the coffee.

Step 6: Wrangle water glass, coffee mug, and yogurt bowl to the couch to begin my much-needed, quiet, peaceful time. Yes, I very often drop things and/or slosh coffee all over the house.

I then proceed to place a couch cushion on my lap, precariously balancing the yogurt bowl and my journal on top of it, coffee mug in one hand and pen in the other. After my 20-minute journaling session has been accomplished, I promptly turn on the Bluetooth on my phone and begin playing an audiobook. I then head to the shower, waterproof speaker in tow, audiobook blaring. The other day, as I congratulated myself on a morning of self-growth well spent, I noticed that the air conditioning fan had been left off that night. Consequently, there was no hum of ambient noise pulsing through the house. Out of nowhere, I realized the only sound I could hear was the padding of my cat’s footsteps as she walked towards Bean. I froze and was struck by how adorable this sound was. Our animals have a very strange relationship, and our cat, Gelsey, actually LOVES Bean. As in sleeps on his stomach, tries to rescue him from bath time, LOVES him. When Gelsey was about 5 steps away from Bean, I heard her start purring. She actually purred in anticipation of cuddling with him. I had never noticed this before. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed with real, internal quiet. I started laughing. I realized my “quiet” mornings were often another checklist– I wasn’t really listening to life. If I had been, I would have noticed that during this particular morning, the simple acts of watching and listening were worlds more calming than journaling.

My tendency has always been to plan out every minute of every day, making sure that I use my time in a way that will be the most “productive” in achieving my outward, society-approved goals. I quite honestly don’t even remember high school. I did my math homework during religion class, studied for French quizzes during band, worked on the yearbook at lunch, and left early on occasion to go to the ballet studio. I watched TV while getting ready in the morning and listened to music while I drove. Fortunately, I would now consider myself a recovering “busyaholic.” “Recovering” clearly being the operative word here. While I value cultivating quiet in my daily life, I still wake up many Saturday mornings and find myself subconsciously planning how I can most effectively and efficiently unwind that day. Sometimes I even get stressed out by the idea that my day might end and I won’t have relaxed correctly. It appears that while some of my values have changed (i.e. actually valuing relaxation is a major step forward), the tendency to fill the crevices of my life with pre-planned activities has not.

The thing about peace is it has its own time schedule. Peaceful moments will respectfully walk up to each of us, tap us on the shoulder, and ask us to please pay attention. If our TVs are always on, peace will simply walk away and try again tomorrow. If we fill all of the crevices of our days with music, TV, or even something as seemingly benign as yoga, we can forget that the quiet we’re searching for is right here. The journaling and meditating are just tools to remind us that we have nowhere to go and nothing to do to experience peace. I remember the first time I read Claude Debussy’s quote, “music is the silence between the notes.” It was almost as if my entire being wanted to scream out YES. THIS is what I need. I need to focus on the in between. The rest takes care of itself, for the most part. Our society has trained us to be good at making the notes of a song. The thing we haven’t learned is how to breath, and by doing so give our music rhythm. I wonder how the cadence of my days would change if I slowed down and listened each morning. Maybe I would spend a little less time throughout my day noticing posts on instagram, and a little more time enjoying the small, seemingly insignificant moments that combine to form a life.

 

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Lessons From The Velveteen Rabbit

The Velveteen Rabbit

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.

“It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

–Margery Williams

 

I’ve noticed that I often have a problem making certain goals and dreams become realities. I’ve thought a lot about why this is. What I am doing wrong, what is blocking me, and what could snap me out of this cycle. I’ve come to the conclusion that my fear makes me hide many of my interests, talents, and passions. My dreams seem much safer tucked away inside my mind where no one and nothing can hurt them. They’re preserved there for me to visit anytime I like. There they are, perfect little untouched toys. Never touched, never harmed, never real. And there I am next to them, the same.

I do, however, feel safe in certain pursuits. Goals of mine that are clear-cut and follow a certain pre-paved trajectory have always seemed attainable to me. I like benchmarks and objective measures that let me evaluate my own achievements by external standards. I don’t want to have to rely on my own internal judgment too much for these things. For me, school was one of these places. I was lucky enough to go to a great school, with teachers who encouraged and believed in me. I was able to take tests well without ever feeling too vulnerable or exposed. However, the main place I thrived was in the ballet studio. Again, ballet provided me with a defined way to achieve my goals. Take ballet class 5 times per week. Work on your own after class. Attend rehearsals. Always, always, wear your pointe shoes. Even if your feet hurt, and you have blisters, and your stress fractures are throbbing. Always. Wear. The. Pointe shoes. The measures of success and failure in this environment were always apparent to me. You fall out of a pirouette, there’s no wondering whether it went well or not. You get into prestigious summer dance programs, you know you’re on the right track. I loved ballet, and it felt as if everything else in the world fell away during those years. I was pushed in the studio beyond any limits I thought I had. I discovered that limitations are just an idea– they’re a fake concept we make up about ourselves and are something to be discarded as soon as possible. I am forever grateful for these lessons.

It seems that since my dancing years (which ended 10 years ago), I have become gripped by many dreams that do not follow such a clear trajectory with defined rules and benchmarks for success. I want to do well in graduate school, which means doing “good science.” Where are my exact rules for that? Unfortunately, I must read, synthesize and evaluate for myself what that means. There’s no one to tell me what my own particular brand of good science will be. This concept leaves me feeling like I’ve been dropped in a giant black box, forced to feel my way around while worrying that everyone else was given night vision goggles. In short, it’s terrifying.

I also want to write. I want to write papers, books, and blog posts. But again, there will always be people who dislike what I write. What then? I’ve chosen to believe that this means I will be REAL. I will be roughed up, but stronger. My endeavors will be weathered, maybe have lost some fur and look a little shabby at times, but they will be manifested. I have decided that the imperfect book that impacts just one soul is better than the perfect book that may impact hundreds but only lives in my mind. It all comes down, in essence, to vulnerability. Authenticity requires vulnerability and courage. It also requires the confidence to re-enter the stage after being struck, even if we have are nursing a black eye and aren’t feeling entirely “presentable.” I’d like to thank my years of ballet, for gifting me flexibility. May it help me to bend, not break, in this process of becoming real.