Tag: mystery

60

Julie Fanselow

I know I’ve been scarce here on my blog. Rest assured: It’s not for a lack of joy. But since it’s been a month since my last post — and, hey! I turn 60 this week — I am here to share a few thoughts on attaining this milestone. 

First and foremost, I’m feeling nothing but joy at the prospect of being 60. My 50s were my favorite decade of life so far, and I have reasons to believe my 60s will be as good. Or better!

Regular readers know that while I named this blog for a phrase from Henry David Thoreau — “surely joy is the condition of life” — I have come to associate my mission more with the words of Brother David Steindl-Rast of Gratefulness.org, who has said that joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. The corollary to this is that fear is sometimes — usually? — what keeps us from feeling joy. Fear of aging. Fear of death. Fear of disability or decline or the loss of love. Fear of the other. Fear of the unknown. It’s not that I never feel fear. I know I do. But somehow, my optimistic, hopeful orientation usually overrides whatever fear I have. I believe some of this is innate — a product, perhaps, of being surrendered and subsequently adopted in the first three weeks of life — and some of it is learned. 

Like most people, I was a bundle of anxieties in adolescence and well into adulthood. It takes time to overcome that early uncertainty about worth and purpose. (Dear young reader: Know that you are awesome just as you are, and it gets better.) Giving birth was probably the first indication I had that I could do anything, but that was nearly half a lifetime ago. So I continue to whittle away at my residual anxiety, and I feel less fearful at 60 than I was at 50, for life has shown me again and again that the hardest experiences are among the most rewarding and revelatory. 

As I greet this new decade, I’m ever aware that two of the most important people in my life, my mother and my husband, were gone at 62. As painful as these premature deaths were, they’ve helped me know all too well that our time here is finite. Rather than live fearfully, I really do try to live as though each day could be my last.

At the same time, I know it’s possible (perhaps probable) that as a healthy 60 year old, I have somewhere around a third of my lifespan still ahead of me. What fresh wonders and knowledge are still on my horizon? How will my expectations be upended? Will I feel even more joy when I turn 70? 

I am especially joyful that, after a year of anxiety in 2020 over losing most of my work in the pandemic, work is now the least of my worries. I have just enough, and best of all, it’s flexible work that allows me plenty of time for adventures, for community service, and for living a creative life. 

Over the past month, after three years of flying solo, I’ve had the utterly unexpected and delightful joy of new companionship. The day after tomorrow, I leave for a trip to Alaska — on my own. The day before I return, my friend will be off on a multi-week trek he planned long ago. I’ll be away for nearly two weeks in September. Indeed, it is likely that we’ll be apart for much of the next two months, and so a tiny bit of anxiety bubbles to the surface: Will this sweet, summer-kindled romance wind up a fleeting memory by fall? Will we be able to create time together in two lives that are already full of dear ones, commitments, and plans? 

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that although lifespans are finite, love is not. I am learning anew that although I’ve prized and often prioritized walking my own path, our time here is made richer by connections and relationships. I think he and I will find a way to keep the flame lit, and I feel ever more grateful for all my family and friends, including the ones I haven’t met yet.

Happy birthday, Julie. May the next how-many-ever-years we may have be full of joy and service and surprise and peace and love. All the good stuff. 

Pandemic postcard #52: Last in a series (for now)

Julie Fanselow

One year ago tomorrow, I wrote the first of what has become a year’s worth of dispatches from our pandemic year. Although I’ve been blogging since 2003, I’d never been especially faithful about posting here at Surely Joy, but that changed last March. “I am going to write here every Friday, as I am able,” I said a week later — and I have. (Well, sometimes, I’ve posted on Thursday or Saturday. Close enough!)

We’ve all been marking anniversaries this month: the last time we went to an office, a classroom, a concert, or a religious service. The last unmasked visit with a friend. The last time we got to see someone who is no longer with us. So much lost. And yet so much gained, too, in understanding and perspective as we’ve navigated what Sophie Gilbert recently described in The Atlantic as “our unholy era of perpetual March.”

This is my last weekly pandemic postcard; I’m going to return to posting here when I feel I have something to say. As I conclude this year’s worth of weekly musings, I’d like to leave you with an exercise you can do to mark the end of your year in the pandemic, something I am borrowing from my friend Laura, who suggested it on her blog earlier this month. Laura described re-reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning and seeing anew a passage about how we store memories, “the full granaries of the past” into which we bring the harvest of our lives: “the deeds done, the ones loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.”

Laura writes, “The passage from Frankl’s book prompted me to begin a list of things I have done during this pandemic year, which has also been a time of change and loss in a different way. I have often felt unfocused and wondered where the days have gone. Have I lost them?” She continues, “My list included everything from caring for my husband post surgery to writing every morning (finally) to holding yoga practice with friends in my front yard. I quickly realized, this wasn’t a list of accomplishments, but rather a list of experiences. I had so many valuable memories that I quickly ran out of room on the page.”

At this time last year, we all had many ideas on ways we could bring meaning to a time that seemed devoid of any sense. We thought we might have a few weeks of isolation and weirdness, so most of us felt compelled to use it wisely. Then time folded in on itself; weeks became months and months became a year and here we are. Forget everything you didn’t do (or that you didn’t do as much as you had hoped). Think about what you’ve done — your storehouse of experiences and memories. Make a list or a drawing or a collage to capture it. Maybe write a letter to yourself to read a year from now.

I’d also love to leave you with these words, which I recently read in Creative Care, a book by Anne Basting. She writes, “Happiness or joy can spring from immediate pleasure in the moment. Meaningfulness, on the other hand, needs more cooks and more time to cook.”

This past year, we’ve all been part of creating something the world has never seen — a stew that has been seasoned by tears, laughter, despair, resilience, and hope. The kettle is still simmering; we’ll need to stir it from time to time.

We may never know when it’s done, but I still look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. A special thanks to these people who offered support via my Patreon page over the past six months: Natalie, Jeff and Kevin, Rebecca, Laura, Marge and Lew, Jim and Kitty, David and Carrie, Chris and LeAnne, Anita, Jan, Nancy, Marianne, Joanne, Victoria, Tara, Scott, Kevin, Felicia, Eileen, Linda, Karen, and Mari. If you enjoy my writing, you can continue to support it via sharing my posts, hitting the tip jar, or buying a book. And elsewhere on this page, you’ll see a place where you can sign up to get Surely Joy via email when I write again — which I will. See you again soon.

Pandemic postcard #49: Reel life and real life

Julie Fanselow

Like most of you, I’m sure, it’s been nearly a year since I’ve been in a movie theater. Of all the activities I’ve missed most this past year, sitting in a big dark room with strangers ranks near the top. Here’s how I described the experience in a column I wrote many years ago:

Everyone knows why we go to the movies. To escape, right? And sometimes, there’s nothing like a few hours away from reality, bathed in darkness, completely consumed by a story that sweeps us far from our daily routines.

The last movie I watched in a theater was exactly like that. Portrait of a Lady on Fire took viewers to France in the late 18th century, immersing us in a forbidden romance. My act of seeing it in a theater on March 14, 2020, had a hint of danger, too, even with only a handful of people at the Saturday afternoon showing. Two days later, all theaters in Washington state shut down. Some are reopening now, but I’m not especially eager to go—except, perhaps, to a no-concession matinee where people need to stay masked the whole time, and that doesn’t sound like much fun.

Still, there’s a part of me that aches to see a film in a theater. That feeling was reawakened last weekend by Nomadland, a film currently in theaters and on Hulu that is about solitude and self-discovery amid community and hardship. I was captivated by its indelible characters, by its understated music and lovingly photographed scenes of the American West, and by its portrayal of resilience—so much so that I watched it again the next day.

From rom-coms to action epics, films sometimes serve as Rorschach tests, giving us a chance to see aspects of ourselves through the characters on the screen. We needn’t identify with a character to love a film: The weekend before last, I re-watched an old favorite, Harold & Maude. I thoroughly enjoyed it, yet I don’t see myself in either of its main characters. But I see much of myself in Fern, the central character in Nomadland, an uprooted woman in the residual stages of grief, a person near my age who enjoys the company of others yet is prone to wandering away from the pack. For that matter, I see myself in Dave, the other lead role, someone who is more of a people person than Fern.

Nomadland reminds us of what we are missing in 2021, as many of us who live alone mark the first anniversary of our last hugs. The film is a feast of human connection, from haircuts to campfires to stargazing parties, from breakroom conversations to Thanksgiving dinners. It made me deeply miss seeing people in person, but it was comforting to watch the people onscreen casually go about their lives, especially because—with the exception of lead actors Frances McDormand and David Straithairn—people in the film are playing themselves.

That’s yet another remarkable aspect of the film, how it blends real life with reel life. It shows that there is dignity in hard work, that 99 percent of people are essentially decent, and that everyone has a story. You only need to ask—and to listen. Nomadland also serves as a 108-minute meditation on why we decide to keep the things we hang onto, from homes to vehicles and jobs and relationships and stuff, and why we choose to let things go. It’s also about how people and things come back to us.

I could go on and on; Nomadland is a cinematic onion, revealing many layers and asking many questions without resorting to political debate or judgment. In the end, its central question seems to be: What makes a good life? If one version of the good life goes away, do we have the inner fortitude to make another one? Do we greet these changes as obstacles or opportunities? Can a restless and often difficult but ultimately free life be as satisfying as a settled one in a comfortable, well-furnished home? Is there a middle way?

We’re all living with versions of these questions in 2021, no matter what the past year—or decade—has thrown at us. I expect I’ll watch Nomadland many times over the coming years as I live into the answers.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. If you enjoy my work, please consider sharing it with others.

Pandemic postcard #47: True love

Julie Fanselow

“Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are.”—Forrest Church

It was a Sunday morning in September 2018. I had just met a fellow traveler to the Port Townsend Film Festival; I don’t remember her name, but the short conversation I had with her lingers to this day. We had both just been to a screening of a movie in which a man with a terminal illness had decided he wasn’t going to fight it any longer.

Having lost my husband to multiple myeloma less than three months earlier, I was seeing everything through the lens of grief. The woman I’d just met was a cancer survivor who had become a patient advocate in Seattle, a job that was giving her a lot of meaning after what she’d been through. I told her I’d come to believe that I was put on Earth, at least in part, to help Tom through his final journey–but having done that, and done it well, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next.

For much of my life, I thought my highest fulfillment might come through work, and to an extent, it has. I’ve done a lot of good work, and some of it made a real difference. After losing most of my paid work in early 2020 and falling short last summer in the pursuit of new work that might feel truly meaningful, I’m now trying to find satisfaction in simply doing the work I have.

As for romantic love, I have experienced it in its fullest, once-in-a-lifetime-if-you’re-lucky expression. Although Tom and I had just five years together, we “got” each other completely. I don’t expect to find that intense level of connection again, and I’m not sure I’d want to; I quite enjoy living alone. So if I am not eager to experience new levels of fulfillment through work or life partnership, what’s left?

As I near 60, I think service may be my true love for the next decade of my life, and perhaps beyond. I am here to serve, but to do so selectively. When I am selective, when I try to intuit the next right thing, I can serve with all my heart.

Volunteering at the food bank these past 10 months, I’ve often worked beside two people who are role models for this ethic of service. David, who has a ton of vacation time after many years with the same company, spends many of those free hours volunteering, both at the food bank and with victims of domestic abuse. Patti is retired and lives out of two suitcases, a level of minimalism I’ve considered before and may mull again a few years from now. She has been waiting this pandemic year for clearance to travel to Mongolia, where she plans to volunteer with children.

A week ago Wednesday, the co-chair of my church’s leadership committee emailed to say that my name has been coming up as a possible board member. Would I be interested in a conversation about the opportunity? The request came a bit out of the blue and felt a little flattering. I love my church and I love to serve it, but it only took me a few hours to intuit that a three-year term on the board wasn’t part of my plan.

Two days later, I was able to quickly turn down a tight-turnaround, detail-heavy project from a work client. Once again, I simply know at this point in my life what I enjoy and what I’m good at, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time–least of all mine–in trying to be who I am not. Just a few days later, a friend approached me with a project that would take about the same amount of time and pay the same as the work I turned down, but it is a project that I will find much more fulfilling. Things happen for a reason.

What is my grand plan? I no longer think I have one, but I know I want to be free to serve in a big way if (not necessarily when) the right opportunity arises. In the meantime, I have found small but not insubstantial ways to be of use, including the food bank and assisting in an English conversation class two mornings each week. Because I have committed to these activities, I take care to allow room in my schedule for them, even as paid work picks up.

At some point, I may get an offer I can’t refuse: for a paid job that makes my heart sing or a major volunteer opportunity that feels exactly right or even, though less likely, the chance to be a grandparent and meaningfully and helpfully meet another life at its start in the same way I was blessed to help Tom in his final years.

So I leave my options open, much as someone who is looking for true love might. But just as I did when I was young and hungry for a partner and purpose, I always seek to live life fully as it is right now—only now, I know the power of saying no, and of occasionally and wholeheartedly saying yes, and in getting on with things one way or the other.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. If you’d like to get my posts via email, you can sign up elsewhere on this page. The quote at the top of this week’s essay comes from Forrest Church’s book Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow. I’ve long thought it to be a good mantra for life.

Pandemic postcard #43: Wonder

Julie Fanselow

That’s my word for 2021: wonder. I appreciate this word for its many layers of depth and meaning. To wonder can mean to be astonished and amazed, and it can mean to dwell in a state of scientific curiosity or philosophical pondering. Occasionally wonder can signify all of the above, all at once. I think we call that transcendence.

Wonder is what led me to become a journalist: wonder as a license to ask questions and be inquisitive about how the world works. We live in the golden age for this sort of wonder, since answers to our questions are as close as the computer in our pocket. Yet if the past year–and especially the past week–prove anything, it’s that most big questions defy easy answers. I am grateful for the working journalists who are asking the questions anyway, and for the historians who are trying to make meaning of our times even they unfold, and for everyone who is navigating our layered pandemics and shutdowns and breakdowns with open hearts and open minds.

Although I appreciate wonder of all kinds, I am especially partial to wonder as magic and awe. This sort of wonder is what compels me to stop whatever I’m doing to watch the sunrise or notice the play of shadows and light in my apartment. I am grateful for these small, sublime moments. They seem to be happening more often amid and perhaps because of the chaos of the world, and I am grateful for this, too.

Wonder as awe often leads to wonder as curiosity. This scientific sense of wonder has been the key to our species’ survival and it may save us yet. The scientists of long ago discovered fire and the wheel and the fact of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Today, our scientists seek to address a global pandemic and tackle climate change. They are heroes in an era of competing narratives and cognitive dissonance, yet they’ve also long recognized the inadequacy of facts to explain much of the human condition. Take Albert Einstein, who wrote this in his book Living Philosophies:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

Or, if you like, Tom Waits. He’s neither a scientist nor a theologian, but I think he’s onto something here:

We live in an age when you say casually to somebody “What’s the story on that?” and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That’s fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.

I prize this sense of wonder as much as that of wonder as awe and curiosity. This philosophical strand of wondering helps us ponder whether and how the world could be a kinder, more just, more generous, and more loving place. It’s this sense of wonder that can make us more comfortable resting in mystery and reckoning with nuance and shades of gray. It’s what compels me to keep writing these columns for myself and for the few who see them. (Thank you, dear reader.)

Wonder as awe enriches our souls. Wonder as curiosity can lead to greater knowledge and wisdom. And sometimes, wonder itself is enough. May it be all those things for me and for you and for our world in 2021.

I’m curious to know whether you’ve adopted a word or phrase of the year for 2021. If so, what is it and why is it calling to you at this time?

This week’s videos: Iris Dement sings her song Let the Mystery Be; The Wonders perform in my favorite movie, That Thing You Do!; Mary Oliver reads her poem The Summer Day.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.