Not every day is hearts-and-flowers. NYC, June 2012.
This blog… it can be intense, no?
I challenge myself to tell “it” like it “is” and not varnish or sugarcoat my experiences, perhaps a bit to my peril. I live a not-completely-private life, functioning as a figurehead some days, as a talking head others. A voice. A representative. An advice-giver. An answer girl. An easy-to-idealize font of facts and suggestions. Type my name into Google and woah—lots and lots and lots and lots of photos come up. Often of me with overstyled hair standing next to celebrities. (Thank god I was fit and trim and allowed to style my own hair the day I was photographed with Cindy Crawford!)
I suppose that collection of public imagery means I have a something at stake when I’m unfurling such raw sheets of emotion. And I get it. I know why this isn’t typical, isn’t a “normal” thing to do, if you’re a person who has public currency. I could be judged! I could be deemed as being flawed, unstable, depressed, out of my mind, downbeat, dark! These are not at all the traits that support the viability of my public persona—which, I assure you, is as real as this one you see here. But as we all know, soundbites are not the place to search for complexity. (Though I do my best.)
But I go ahead and keep this blog for a reason. I do it to heal. Both myself, and others. I do it to be an example. For myself, and others. I do it be a dare, a challenge, a line in the sand. I do it because I think the truth is a powerful force that we don’t rely on enough in our culture—which is pretty ironic when you consider that I tell stories, find stories and shape stories for a living. Ha! But every story has to have that underpinning that rings and resonates like a clarion bell, sending its reverberations into the minds and hearts of those who read it, so it doesn’t turn into another random distraction, read and discarded, another 11 minutes passed in a life full of minutes easily dispensed, tossed away on a tide of distraction.
Truth is freedom. Yes, that old saw “the truth shall set you free” is one of my guiding principles in my life. I’ve often joked (and maybe I shouldn’t be joking) that I want to write a book called “The Truth Will Set You Free (But That Doesn’t Mean That It Won’t Feel Bad First)”. And I guess I live that axiom out loud here for myself every day.
So when I find an article called “There’s More To Life Than Being Happy” (from The Atlantic, one of my few daily must-reads), I have to admit, I get pretty excited. And yes, perhaps a touch smug. Because when decades of research—including a brand-new not-yet-released study—show yet again that happiness, both as a pursuit and as a reward, is fleeting. But then conversely finds that creating meaning in one’s life supports resilience, self-worth and compassion (which in turn, support meaning), and it’s all created by having a sense of connection to something larger than oneself. Yes, yes it does.
I know my life has meaning. And I know my experiences, even the dark ones, have meaning. And not just because I type them up and share them here with you. But certainly, sharing those experiences is another beautiful way of being human, of being connected, of commiserating about experience and pain and life and loss and love and the achingly poignant and ultimately incomprehensible burden of consciousness.
I can be only who I am. A blonde who shows up on TV from time to time, coiffed and well-packaged. A mom who worries and wonders and weeps with the magic of motherhood. A friend who tells off-color jokes, no matter who’s listening. A black-belt internet shopper. And yes, a woman who aches and hurts and bleeds, just like everyone else. And who isn’t afraid to admit that that suffering—and we all get our due—is worth looking at as closely as the triumphs.
And if you don’t believe me (though I know YOU do, you who read this blog), believe the research:
Having negative events happen to you, the study [from a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology] found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life. Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. “If there is meaning in life at all,” Frankl wrote, “then there must be meaning in suffering.”
I’m always meaning to be happy. But I’m happier to have meaning. A meaning that I have dug up out of the earth of my own life, with my bare hands. The dirt under my nails—and the pain on this blog—is proof that I’ve lived, and that I expressly desire for life to leave its marks on me.
The shiny marbles of truth and meaning I’ve pulled from depths of my own experiences are the lights in the heavens, my guiding stars. And yes, indeed, often the very words on these pages.
OK, once I got past the weird feeling that comes from Googling my name and seeing what images come up, I was able to focus on what you’re saying here. As is often the case, you’re just ahead of me in tackling some thing that’s been working at me.
Having a hard time coming back to my life from time off, I’ve been thinking about why it so often seems so hard to live this life I’ve crafted (full of choices I’ve wanted to make). And it occurred to me that perhaps life is not supposed to be easy. That there was never some good old days in which people felt more rested, more balanced, more unified in their lives. That it is always, for everyone, a continual struggle. A continual work in progress. A continual chance to keep becoming.
As an older and wiser woman told me when my life was going through enormous upheaval: Birthing anything is hard, messy, painful work. I think I’d rather have a life that is being continually reborn than one that is stagnant. It’s hard to be meaningful if we aren’t growing.
Ha! Yes, the self Google is a strange one. I did use it once to score a hotel room upgrade, though, I’ll admit. (Totally worth it.) I agree life isn’t supposed to be easy — I’ve always thought that. Both my parents struggled so obviously, and one of my mantras as a child was “‘Deserve’ doesn’t mean a thing.” I’m an “earner.” I think I earn my meaning, my right to exist. Though I’m also working to stop thinking I have to earn my way in everything. Just being is good, too.
How is it that EVERY SINGLE TIME I come here I gasp, see things a new way, fight tears. Yes. Those shiny marbles. That’s what it’s about. xoxo
What a lovely thing to say, Lindsey (the see things new way part; not so much the fighting tears, though I understand what you mean). Thank you, friend. I love your company, too.
This is so true, (the tagline for my blog is “Life is beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible–keep your heart open,” so pretty clearly I agree). I had to experience the biggest losses, hardest times to finally wake up and start to live. It was through that, those shadow moments, that I learned that being “okay” didn’t mean making sure everything was okay, but that I attempt to remain sane, compassionate, wise, honest, awake, and openhearted no matter what. And I giggled at the beginning, because a friend just asked me the other day “have you always been able to be so open, so honest about your life?”
“NO MATTER WHAT.” Yep, no matter what. That’s where faith lives, and the glory and majesty, too. I was born “open” — parents with no boundaries, being fused with my mother did that. Also: natural extrovert and adrenalin addict. But the irony is there was a part within me that was closed and afraid, and I’ve only recently begun to know her. What a tender/terrible journey, indeed!
It’s striking for me to come to this page after a very long, intense, and teary day of my own – one in which I set aside my public face (such as it is) and went for my own version of “truth telling.”
Intense?
Yes.
But we don’t all operate in the same way. One of the most startling realizations I made about my marriage didn’t come until 7 years after divorce, and it was through writing something one blistering morning that I blithely called, Something Like Marriage. In the process of writing, among other differences, I recognized that his preference seemed to be living at the surface, where mine is the opposite.
“I am not made to live at the unruffled surface of calm waters. I am made for the depths and their discoveries, for swimming through reefs and caves, kelp and coral, for the buoyancy of floating and staring up at the blue of the sky, guessing at the forms of each cloud like a child, reaching outward – for a hand. For a beloved.
I am not made for the glassy surface.”
I love that you are not made for the glassy surface. I love that you dig for meaning with your bare hands. It’s a hard life in some respects, but a significant one. And we’re the richer for it.
Wolfie, I love your writing so, so much. Thank you for sharing this. And for sharing your oceanic depths, both on your blog, and on mine. xoxo
If your ears were burning yesterday, we namechecked your authenticity and bravery as an example of what this interweb is for.
(we gave a speech as whoweareinRL at random house)
Brava, lady.
Wow, _gloria, that’s amazing! Thank you for bestowing such a compliment on me. Coming from you, means a lot. Kisses to you in your new LA home!
And thank god you do. On the days that I can’t half lift my eyes least I catch someone’s gaze and they see my sadness, I know I have somewhere else to look to. Thank you.