A Different One

The deal we are being offered appears to be

 that we can change the world without changing ourselves.

 -Wendell Berry

Recently a Little One and I were talking about Halloween. We were discussing carving pumpkins and costume parties. Polly was going to be a witch. A good witch, she explained. “What are you going to be, Miss Amy?” “I am going to be a piano teacher,” I told her. She looked at me for a long moment. “Maybe you could be a different one,” she said.

A different one. That is exactly what I want: I want to wake up and be a different one. A different piano teacher, a different person. One no longer burdened by the same old habits and ruts. One who no longer gets the same colds or migraines, who is free from the tiresome aches of arthritic knees and hips. I want to not be triggered into saying something I will later regret by the student who responds to my question, “So how did you practice this?” by shrugging. I want to not be bothered by the silly unimportant annoyances of everyday life: the bad driver, the inane chatter in the supermarket line, the person who always takes my favorite lane at the swimming pool and then uses it, not for actual lap swimming, but rather to do her physical therapy exercises against the side of the pool.  

Maybe that is the allure of Halloween costumes. It is the chance, even temporarily, to shed ourselves and become someone else. For starters, I want to be a Buddhist hermit, a ballet dancer, a poet, a landscape designer, an architect. In the meantime, I’d settle for being someone who wasn’t regularly avoiding the meditation cushion or the blank page or the side yard with the knee-high weeds.

Among my treasured possessions is my great-great grandfather’s diary from 1903. Firman Schenck was a farmer in Kansas. He was no inspired writer; the journal entries are mainly about the weather and farm chores, but sometimes when I feel like I am spinning my wheels in the muck of my own making, I read what Grandpa Firman was doing on a particular date. Turns out he shucked a lot of corn in November 1903. He mended a fence. He went to town.

Last week I picked up a bad cold. It was “only” a cold, not Covid, not the flu, but miserable nonetheless. I found myself in daily negotiations with myself about what I could or could not do: Swimming pool, no. Teaching (masked, distanced), yes. Practicing, yes. Laundry, yes. Evening walks, no. Yoga class, no way. Getting up at 5:15am, not on your life. I was moving forward, slowly, but I was tired, cranky and impatient with myself and others. Let’s just say, God help the child who didn’t do their practicing last week. Or shrugged.

I believe that trips, vacations, any holiday away from normal life and practices have a half-life afterwards. In other words, it takes half the length of the time away to get fully back into one’s routines again. Illnesses must have a half-life too, I remind myself this week, as I struggle to pick up the pieces of my practices again. At least ten times a day I am startled by remembering something that needs to be done this month, or this week: Wait! There’s a studio recital this month! I’m hosting two house concerts! And wait! Thanksgiving! … I am not just dropping balls, I’m forgetting that I’m supposed to be juggling in the first place. In desperation, I have resorted to Grandpa Firman’s level of daily accountability to try to keep myself attentive to the minutiae of my world: Order Christmas music for students and paper for holiday cards. Buy napkins for recital reception. Pick up paperwhite bulbs. Set up final rehearsal and arrange for recording time. Sort photos for slide show. Make reservations for Friday. Check the final rep list. Confirm date with…None of this is inspiring, or even interesting. Mend fences. Shuck corn.

In Ready for Anything, author David Allen has a concept he calls “open loops.” Open loops are anything in your life that needs your attention. It is that mundane chore or task at work or at home: the phone call to schedule an eye exam, the skirt that needs to go to the tailor’s to be hemmed, the rose bushes that need a last seasonal pruning, the hard conversation that needs to be had with a colleague. While open loops are a reality of life, according to Allen, too many open loops drain us of mental resources and rob us of creative bandwidth. Close loops in your work and life, he claims, and there is a huge return in terms of time and energy.    

And so, stumbling through a post-cold half-life, I close my loops. I mend fences and pull weeds. I shuck corn and clean out the refrigerator. I order music and make that uncomfortable phone call. I set my alarm for 5:15am. I return to the pool to swim my laps. I drag myself to the meditation cushion and the yoga mat. I vote.  

“Each year I resolve to believe there will be possibilities,” Wendy Wasserstein wrote. “Every year I resolve to be a little less the me I know and leave a little room for the me I could be. Every year I make a note not to feel left behind by my friends and family who have managed to change far more than I.” 

I have loved that quote for a dozen years or more, taking solace in the promise that change is indeed possible. A different one? Yes please.