10 Things: Loving, living, and letting go

By popular demand, I bring you 10 Things inspired by this quote/meme, shared on Facebook this morning:

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.” —Buddha

Apologies ahead of time for the rambling philosophization that gushed out. If you want to play along in the comments, skip over my bit and write your own 10 Things first, then come back and read mine. So, the first 10 Things that come to mind after reading that quote…

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1. I’m slicing up the three pieces of the quote and considering the value of love in all its forms as the foundation for all of our choices and actions. Quantity is implied here, but not the quantity of people or things we love but the amount we love, the amount we give love or put love into the world.

2. One aphorism leads to another. The more you give, the more you get.

3. I was thinking of the different ways we can love, and the marbles that started rolling around in my head were the Greek forms. I thought of eros and communitas, but then I couldn’t help myself and looked them up (I liked to get things right; I have a hard time letting go of accuracy). Agape, eros, philia, storge. We are capable of loving in many ways. The deep, true love we hold rare and precious; desire and aesthetic and physical love; the love of friends and family and community that requires virtue, equality and familiarity; and, of course, tolerance (also with many forms). 

4. None of the three statements is explicit about their antitheses. Anger, hate, abhorrence, intolerance, contempt, etc. Is the first phrase — how much you loved — or the judgment implied in the opening, like a bucket that gets filled up by love and emptied by the detrimental emotions? Is it that simple/complex?

5. Gentle living reminds me of parenting babies and toddlers and preschoolers. Gently when you pet the cat. Gently when you hug your brother. Gently when you touch Gramma’s face so you don’t poke her eyes out. Gently. I don’t say that word out loud to the Sonars very much anymore. They have pretty decent self control, which is what we monitored with the word ‘gentle’ in their wee years. But perhaps I should still use it. Gently with your words to your peers who are entering an age of sharp-tongued anxiety. Gently with your brothers who will likely be your longest friends and fiercest allies, even though they may always know how to push your buttons. Gently on the earth. Don’t waste the water or the paper or the electricity. Gently with your mama who is both proud to watch you grow and gain your independence and fearful of seeing you stumble along the way. 

6. How gently you live can then be kindness or conservation or through word or action it can mean minimizing the damage that we inevitably do to the people and the world around us. So that if loving much is maximizing what we give, then living gently is minimizing the harm we cause. 

7. How gracefully we let go of what is not meant for us. In my clumsy understanding of Buddhism, letting go gracefully seems like the ultimate goal. Not allowing material goods to weigh you down. Not allowing negative thoughts or experiences or people to weigh you down. To release the weight of everything. Though in pragmatic terms for the normal human who feels angry and jealous and slighted and loves things and people and feels sentimental and attached, then letting go gracefully is challenging and requires a strong hold on the first two concepts. Maximize what we give, minimize what we take or harm. 

8. My hand is tired and far more minutes have slipped by than a traditional 10 Things exercise usually occupies. I suppose that is the nature of philosophical contemplation. It takes time and might hurt. 

9. The sky just turned much more dim and the wind is gusting. An imaginary line on a weather map is manifesting as a line of force in the sky that blusters across the coastal plains like a dust squeegee pulling cold air behind it. 

10. That dust-squeegee metaphor is both hilarious and terrible. I love it and I give it to you with love, letting go of any embarrassment I feel about it as I release it into a gust of wind and into your eyeballs. Gently, I hope, for the sake of your eyeballs. 

Semi-Dreaming of Snow

I could hear him moving around in the kitchen, in the edges of my sleep. I was semi-dreaming. Half-awake, half-buried in sleep. I pulled the blanket up a little to cover a gap on my shoulder, guarding against the cooler air in the room. Not cold, of course, because this is Texas and this is May. But cooler than the warm coziness under the blanket.

I remembered days like this, years ago, when he would be awake so early, making coffee and reading in the semi-dark. I remembered those days when he’d lean over the bed and kiss me goodbye before wrapping the scarf around and around and around his neck against the frigid temperatures for his walk to work. But mostly I remembered those mornings when I could hear him, in the kitchen, making coffee, with mumbles of radio weaving in and out of his moving sounds. Remembering when the mumbles would stop and he would climb back in bed, careful not to let too much cold air under the blankets, and settle back next to me, whispering, “Snow day.”

He is young enough to be my son

The eight-year-old boy who died. The nineteen-year-old boy who likely killed him.

Or they could have been my students, a sibling. She may have smiled that beautiful smile over my lunch. He wanted to serve and protect. He wanted us to stop hurting people. She came here to learn. 

These people, living and dead, cause me pain. So yes, I want to know them. Not to exploit, or glorify, or justify, or apologize, or excuse. No. I want to know because I want to understand. I want to know why. I want to know if something could have been done to help angry young men with hate in their hearts to see a different path. Because I have the imagination of a mother. And the rage, and the heartbreak, and the ache. They are children. They have mothers. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines she will suffer in this particular way. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines he will unleash pain and death and torment. So how does that capacity for hatred grow? Where does it begin? I tell myself — the way we do — that my boys are different. But in this way or in that way, they are the same. And I have the imagination of a mother. And the guilt, and the worry.  

If we try to understand, if we seek to know, could we identify other children on a path that could be redirected, could be supported, be SEEN and treated as human and valuable, so they could see and treat others as human and valuable? So that our children will grow — whole, and alive — and without hate in their hearts. 

And still I’m talking about a bomb and a gunfight that killed four people and maimed so many others. For hate, yes. Which is terrible. No doubt. 

But what about the bomb that killed fourteen and destroyed so much in a tiny town? That bomb that people prefer to call a factory or business. That bomb that exploded not for malice but for what? Negligence or profit? That bomb that was not set by radicalization but is so much more eminently preventable if we give it the attention it deserves. So much more readily mitigated. But strangely not causing the same level of anger. I look out at the stacks of refineries and factories within my horizon, and I imagine possibilities. 

So many questions here and there and elsewhere. I can imagine something different. I can imagine something better. But first we have to be willing to value those lives, to look at them, ALL of them, to see them, to ask questions, and at every step to be humane and just.

155 Days

I will be thirty-nine years old for another 155 days. Then I will be forty. I’ve never worried too much about my age. At least not since lack of it in my youth felt like some sort of deterrent. And I’m not so much worried about forty either, but it sounds different than the other ages so far. Like a shift. Something deep in the ground. Something seismic but subtle on the surface. And 155 is a nice number. Not really round or aesthetically shaped, but far enough in front of the superstar 150 days to give me time to play. You know, on the off-chance that there’s anything I’d like to accomplish before I turn forty. So what could I do in that five months? A list of potentialities coalesces in my fore-brain. To be sure, this is not a midlife crisis yet. Ask me again at 100 days. 

Thao says, “Rest and Be Strong / Wash and Be Clean / Start a New Year / Whenever You Need,” and you know I’m a fan of Reset. 

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For the person who found my blog by searching “dani smith texas knitting”:

I can’t help but wonder if we know each other. Jump up and down in the comments if we do. Though the search for “things that don’t exist” seems somehow more appropriate lately. For the thirteen subscribers who have stuck around while I’ve been off Not-Blogging, I’m quite certain that we know each other. You should jump up and down in the comments section too.  

Or do you need a new hobby?