vignettes

Truly

"Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him."
—Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

I once knew a woman who lost her sight. I cared for her one or two afternoons each week as I paid my way through college.

I helped her read her mail.

I helped her make tea.

I kept her company.

I watched her, and she "watched" me.

I remember the day she shared with me her story. She woke up, looked out the window, and said to her husband with a sigh, "what a grey day." His silence confirmed what she had long been fearing. The day was bright blue and sunny.

They say that when one sense falters, we rely more on the others to help us perceive our world. So what we may first consider to be a weakness, could actually be the very thing we need to build our strength.

Every so often, I think of Mrs. Zelditch and her journey of learning to "see" again. Her journey of building new strength.

Through her hands as they held your own and as they studied your face, finding the truth in you.

Through her ears as she listened to your words and the spaces between them, looking for hidden messages that you weren't even aware you had.

Through her heart as she felt the weight of your presence, measuring the mood you were in — your level of joy or worry or sorrow.

In other words, Mrs. Zelditch only had room to take in what really mattered: the essence of you.

A little more than two years ago my days went grey, figuratively speaking. I realized that I had forgotten how to see. So I bought a camera and I went on a journey.

And 100,000 shutter clicks later, I have learned (once again) how to see. People, mostly. People I love. People I respect and admire. People I meet in cafes or on the subway or on the street. People pursuing Truth and Beauty. People who inspire me.

And when I am with them, I look for clues. To who they truly are.

I look for their love.

I look for their joy.

I look for their passion.

I look for their purity.

And when I see it, I click.

When you look at your world and the people in it, what do you see?

What if

What if we took as much time to grow up as we took to grow old? That, as children, we would be encouraged to be children, with clean faces and pony tails and hide-and-seek and keds, instead of being seduced way too soon by the provocative (and often misleading) promises of adulthood.

What if we learned to live our lives whole, leaving no part out? That we valued our setbacks and failures as much as we valued our triumphs, and realized that we hold within us the power to create an even better future by bringing forward everything that we learned and experienced in our past. That it is our whole story that makes us interesting and authentic, not just the carefully edited highlights. That we could just be ourselves, in every moment of every day, and regret nothing.

What if we learned to see in each other art and possibility instead of rank and commerce? That we would separate the substance (who we are) from the window-dressing (what we do and what we have) and stand before each other — equal, naked, vulnerable, exposed — with only the feelings in our hearts and the ideas in our heads to bring us together. That we would make room for each other, creating a world where each individual is visible and valued for who they uniquely are. That we should each feel a deep sense of belonging to this world, and to each other.

What if we learned to stand still? That we valued the journey as much as we valued the prize. That we learned to hold this one moment — step inside of it, even — and honor it above the one that comes before and the one that comes after. That we allowed it to stretch and grow and carry us with it wherever it goes.

What if we all got quiet? That we stopped speaking to be heard, and spoke only when we had something meaningful to say.

What if we valued the possibility as much as we valued knowing?

What (kind of world would it be) if?

The bean field

"What shall I learn of beans, or beans of me?" —Henry David Thoreau

Last year I painted the interior of my apartment.

I scraped, taped, primed, and painted, and in between, I waited. And in this way, I came to know myself and the space I was living in.

I chose to do this work myself because of what the experience might teach me. I find that I am most alive when I am in the process of discovery. And for this stretch of time, my walls became the teacher, and I, the student.

It took me eight months, 150 yards of blue tape, 12 paint samples, 2 synthetic paint brushes, 1 large roller, 1 small roller, one dozen roller heads, 10 gallons of primer, 8 gallons of paint, 7 plastic tarps, 50 yards of kraft paper, 1 ladder, 1 metal scraper, 1 plastic spatula, 4 sheets of sand paper, 2 pints of spackle, 7 plastic paint dishes, four long weekends, four vacation days, countless hours, and two do-overs.

Each room became a new lesson in discovery, presenting me with fresh obstacles that challenged my endurance and ingenuity, and teaching me that the best adventures always lie in the unknown. That if we don't stay vigilant every day, pushing the boundaries of our world as we know it, we run the risk of assuming knowledge in place of experience, and watching life from a balcony rather than living it in the streets.

In a world of ready-made conveniences and help-for-hire, how do we fully appreciate what we do not fully earn?

*Walden, p. 168, Henry D. Thoreau, Yale University Press

What it means to be Rich

"In poverty there is great wealth, and in wealth there is great poverty." —Epicurus

We fear that which we don't know or understand.

Meet Rich, my fear. Ruddy cheeks. 65, a shock of white hair. Baggy coat. Cranky. Always carries a shopping bag. Sometimes he talks to people who aren't there.

You will find him every morning in front of Peet's on Chestnut, starting at about 7:25. And he will remain there, or across the street, or one block down, until at least 11:30. He goes there to hunt. One espresso at a time, from the people walking by.

During my Peet's phase, I would see him. And like other "upstanding" citizens, I would avoid him. As I approached the cafe, I would speed up or slow down so that he would tag the person in front of me or to my side. If I didn't have human camouflage to hide behind, I would do the next best thing—turn the volume up on my iPod and pretend that I couldn't see or hear him.

It's appalling, I know. But it's what we humans do when we feel helpless and afraid.

One day I realized that my efforts to avoid this man that I feared were creating an unexpected compromise. My world was shrinking. My morning routine had become the victim of a stranger's comings and goings. I had to do something different.

So I pulled a Judo move.

The next time I saw him, I approached him. I offered to buy him a cup of coffee, and it stopped him in his tracks. Suddenly, the hunter became the hunted, and we were equals—except he declined my invitation. He had already reached his limit for the day.

This was the day that Rich became a person to me.

How wealthy are you?

(Im)perfect

Technically, this photo is wrong. It's overexposed.

And that's exactly the reason I love it.

It's wild.
It doesn't follow the rules.
It embraces the extremes, the light and the dark.
It's mad, mysterious, and filled with passion.
It's life.

Every life has its share of defining moments. The choices we make that determine who we are, who we will be. Sometimes we choose deliberately. Other times we choose by not choosing. And instead of taking a chance on the unknown, we find ourselves settling into the "safety" of routine, or the path that offers the illusion of intimacy or community.

When Henry David Thoreau set up camp at Walden, it started as an experiment. In solitude and self-sufficiency. And rather than find loneliness and lack, he found Time and Truth.

Thoreau believed that "We must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together."* He understood that great communities depend on the quality of the individuals that come together to create them. He defined the standard by which he would live, and he tested it by living the extreme.

How dull and uninteresting would our lives be if we didn't use the full range of our life's experiences to challenge the limitations of life's theories?

*Walden, Henry D. Thoreau, copyright 2006, Yale University Press, p. 366