My daughter, a married college sophomore, wrote an email a while back. She felt overwhelmed with all the work she had to do, and discouraged that she wasn’t doing it as well as she could or should. She was even worrying about how she’d have the energy and time to earn a master’s degree, a task still several years off. The storm of things she had to do challenged her self-image as an intelligent, capable person. “So what’s wrong with me that I can’t handle too many things at once,” she asked. The overwhelming ocean of tasks made her lament, “There’s just too much for me to do well. I’m afraid I’ll have to settle with being a little less.”
Her last line: “How did you and mom do it? You’re in your 50’s and you have 3 grown children. What’s the secret?”
Here’s what I wrote to her:
I also sometimes wonder how we did it. We were such energetic, arrogant whipper snappers. But darned nice and optimistic, too, full of hospitality and hope, faith and love. I think our current job has whittled away much of our optimism. And energy. I want myself back though I’m not sure it’s all still available. I’m starting to wonder, though, if a decent bit is.
I’ll tell you one of my secrets. I’ve always mastered being a b plus student. Good enough to be good, but never excellent. I was even asked once (during an exit interview after seminary), why I didn’t get better grades (though mine weren’t bad, just B-ish). It was obvious from test scores, the kindly old reverend doctor professor said, that I could have. I got A’s in what I loved, and struggled through what I didn’t, and did what I needed to with the rest. I was satisfied, at least with some things, with good enough. I learned to allow some of my own laziness. (though my memory of college, then seminary, then my work life until I left the ministry is that I was very, very busy. I still have a good dose of Yankee work ethic to think of myself, especially then, as lazy.)
I “joke” to myself that I memorized a sonnet for you and David (that I recited at supper that night) because you two are my perfectionists. I feel bad about that, feel bad for you both that your standards are sometimes what seem to me to be awesomely high. But there you are and there it is.
Not sure this advice completely works for surgeons or rockets scientists. I hope they strive for perfection. I also hope that they (if any, for some unknown and strange reason happen to be reading this), know when perfection is a must and when it’s o.k. to turn the knob down a tad.
I’m going to market the concept of cleaning a messy room by starting in the corner. I do this with much of life, now, whether writing a memo at work or memorizing a poem. I say, just get that word down. Get those two words. Pick up the towel and the shoes. I don’t worry much about the whole enchilada, the rest of the messy room. Because guess what? You’ll get there! Who cares about the masters degree to teach in Indiana? What does it matter now? Just finish your class. Do the paper. Get a C on it. Just pass. In two months, let alone two years or two decades, who will give a hoot about it? And you’ll be just as valuable as a human, just as loved, just as happy or sad at any given moment no matter what you do with the paper.
The thought of writing and trying to publish has depressed me because I can’t write like E.B. White or John Irving, or John Updike or a number of other writers I admire. And even in discussions, whether with actual people, or in my own inner reality, I’m bothered by how little I know about literature, writing, poetry, and a ream of other things. Then it dawned on me (something sparked the dawn…wish I could remember what…I’m only 51 and losing my marbles already…), that E.B. White and John Irving, and having read all the classics and all the new books, and being conversant on anything is the goal, not the journey. That’s why I’m going to start a website called The Life Literary to talk about, to model the quest for, the movement toward a literary life as actually the literary life itself! I think I could sell, and I know I want to, a way of living that has a half cup of deeper thought, a dash or two of metaphor and simile, a tart, funny turn of phrase, and a plate of buttery slices of well-written prose and poetry. I’m not going to go into it all now. Suffice it that I’m ready to put it out there and not worry about how bad it is, because maybe it isn’t bad, or else maybe it is and someone will suggest a way to make it good.
It doesn’t seem to do much good when I say this to you or (guess who…?…Your MOM!), but I’ll say it anyway: I think who you are and what you do is real swell. More than that (I liked the sound of real swell), it’s admirable and often funny and consistently thoughtful and creative. It’s o.k. to put yourself out there. It’s very o.k. to get B’s (maybe even better than killing yourself for A’s), and it’s also o.k., highly o.k., to fail from time to time. Or if it isn’t o.k. to fail, it’s not the end or your or anybody else’s world if you do. I like and admire you now and I will after you fail, too.
Which leaves me with the final bit which might have been the first, or in a way, could be the only bit. I completely believe in redemption. I believe that what was bad can be made good. What was wrong can be turned round right. I believe that ugly can be made (or recognized, in fact, to be) beautiful, and hungry can be filled. At root, I believe that dead can be made alive. I would take a bullet for this reality. It’s the thin (but cosmically strong) thread that holds me in the church. It’s the only place I know of in this world with that sort of wacky, but real, historic-yet-current optimism and reality. The end of any story rooted in this reality is good and that means so is the movement to that end, act 1, 2, and 3, even the stupid assignments, the illnesses, the late nights and early mornings, the bitter coffee, the resentments and betrayals and deaths: they’ll work out. So cry and yell and mourn, then say screw it stuart, finish the paper however and go to bed, that place of miracles where you’ll wake up tomorrow to a new day with new opportunities to muddle through, yet still be able to clean a corner or a foot or an inch of whatever wreck of a room lies before you.
Dad
