Winter Sunshine

Unbelievably, I never had an answer to that question, even though I should have. I certainly had the time to come up with one. What was I *doing* all those hours I spent on the couch, gazing out the window like a prisoner? (Oops. There I am, asking myself the dreaded question.) Anyway, I should have made up an answer, the way we were taught to come up with a sixty-second description (the "elevator speech") of our dissertation topics in grad school. Instead, I hemmed and hawed, tried to change the subject, hoped the asker would die before I had to come up with an answer, etc.

Why couldn't anyone ever ask, "Who are you?" or "Why are you?" instead? Those are the questions I was actually wrestling with. I couldn't have given a rat's ass what I was or wasn't doing, but I was really interested in why the fuck I was put on this earth. There's nothing like crashing, burning and just utterly failing in general to take you to the core of things. There've been times (like now) when I've had to face the possibility that I'll never find meaningful work, let alone a "career," again. If I may never "do" anything worthwhile, I darned well better "be" someone worthwhile. At least inside. At least to me. But no. No one ever asked those questions. I seemed to be surrounded by the world's most productive people, spitting their productivity questions at me like that machine that blasts out tennis balls when you want to practice your backhand.

But now, thanks to one of those calendars with a noxiously cute quotation for every week of the year, I think I've found the answer. Listen and be soothed by the words of Emily Dickinson:

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."

How perfectly wonderful! How absolutely true! I think that the next time some well-meaning person asks me what I've been doing with myself these days, I'll smile sweetly and just a little bit patronizingly, sigh, and say, "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." I'll pause for a moment, then finish with, "Don't you agree?"

I'll let you know how that little experiment goes. I've no doubt I'll have plenty of opportunity to practice it, since I'm still on that slow road to building what some people call a life. I have, as Anne Lamott puts it, "accidentally" become a Kelly Girl for a while. In other words, I still don't have a good answer to that "what've you been doing" question. In fact, perhaps the Dickinson quote would be a good way to account to my supervisor for the way I spend my time at work. (Hey, at least I'm not photocopying my butt or anything.)

Anyway, I think that the moral (or morale) here is this: Hey people, I'm not what I do (or conspiculously fail to do). I just am. I am. I am...a patch of sunshine in the winter woods. Upheld in the arms of the Father. A child of the light. I've decided that it's kind of good to be able to define yourself in terms of the one who was the first to declare, "I AM."