Sweat the small stuff

Can you please not drive that way?
How many times in a day must I hear these complaints, unnecessary instructions or umpteen now-too-familiar descriptions of how you feel about sweets?

My voice stumbles over unexpected tears when I explain these annoyances and just like that, it is my mother's tone, the one my brother and I commiserate about when we hear it.

Is it really so hard for you to change? Can't you do this one little thing to make me happy? I hate the person I'm becoming with you.

After the words are spent and their anger quieted, their echoes splash back in my mind. Is it really so hard for me to change? I ask you to control the person you are, and yet I behave as though I have no choice in who I am, how I respond.

If you love

If you love something, set it free.

I've been hearing that cliche for more than 30 years. Last night -- for the first time -- I realized it applies just as much to loving oneself as it does to another. Imagine the possibilities, if only we could find enough self-love to set ourselves free -- of expectation, anxiety, insecurity, fear -- of all the things that hold us back. And from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh:

"When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. That’s why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness."

This joyful noise

On my mind today after an oddly hurtful exchange about how much my words are worth. Let me not forget why I write.   

A wise old gentleman retired and purchased a modest home near a junior high school. He spent the first few weeks of his retirement in peace and contentment.

Then a new school year began.

The very next afternoon three young boys, full of youthful, after-school enthusiasm, came down his street, beating merrily on every trash can they encountered. The crashing percussion continued day after day, until finally the wise old man decided it was time to take some action.

The next afternoon, he walked out to meet the young percussionists as they banged their way down the street.

Stopping them, he said, "You kids are a lot of fun. I like to see you express your exuberance like that. In fact, I used to do the same thing when I was your age. Will you do me a favor? I'll give you each a dollar if you'll promise to come around every day and do your thing."

The kids were elated and continued to do a bang-up job on the trashcans.

After a few days, the old-timer greeted the kids again, but this time he had a sad smile on his face. "This recession's really putting a big dent in my income," he told them. "From now on, I'll only be able to pay you 50 cents to beat on the cans."

The noisemakers were obviously displeased, but they accepted his offer and continued their afternoon ruckus.

A few days later, the wily retiree approached them again as they drummed their way down the street.

"Look," he said, "I haven't received my Social Security check yet, so I'm not going to be able to give you more than 25 cents. Will that be okay?"

"A freakin' quarter?" the drum leader exclaimed. "If you think we're going to waste our time, beating these cans around for a quarter, you're nuts! No way, dude. We quit!" And the old man enjoyed peace and serenity for the rest of his days.

The courage to read

My mother indulged me in the strangest ways. Through most of middle school, there were times when I'd skip a day of school -- claiming to be sick -- and instead go to the school where my mother taught. I'd hang out in the library all day and inhale stories. Some were familiar old ones, others were new. Looking back I wonder what the librarian made of it, how and why I was allowed to do this two or three times each year. No one censored my reading. I could borrow as much delicious fiction as I wanted; at my own school, students were only allowed one story and one textbook each week.

Stacks of books are still my comfort spots. In my twenties, big decisions -- college applications, graduate school woes, friend troubles -- always led me back to bookstores. Alone in the US, I'd drive to Barnes and Noble late in the evenings just to reconnect. Run my fingers over the spines, like touching the fingertips of old friends. Open a book, any book, and the familiarity of print was enough to comfort. I'd find the quietest row, lean back against the books and surround myself with stacks of stories. My makeshift fort of fiction was where I remembered how to be strong and safe and sure.

It's been years since I've been able to take a day off from the world just to read. A day when food appears, clothes are washed, chores can wait, and all that lies before me is the open road to a story world. It's gotten worse lately. Ask me my hobbies and reading tops the list. But ask what I've read lately, what I'm reading now, and the answers slip back to what I read months or a year or two ago.

In part, this is the narrowing that comes with age: there are fewer authors I will tolerate, less genres I'm likely to crack open. But it's made me worry. How could the people I was -- the child who ran to libraries for comfort, a woman who drove through snowstorms just to be with a bunch of books -- turn into someone who can't remember the last good thing she read?

Here's a secret: there's a book I'm halfway through that I love, the sort of love that makes me want to fall through the pages and live in this writer's mind forever. There's another one I just began that's brought wonder back to the world -- I will never look at the fingers on my own hand the same way again. But I haven't finished these. I don't even know where I put the first one. The other sits on my nightstand. Instead I'm racing through trashy romances, the kind with bad writing and pathetic characters that leave me feeling cheap afterward. Almost as if I'd rather indulge in one-night stands (and that's all it takes to get through these) than commit to an actual book.

And here's the real secret: I'm afraid to finish the good books. I'm scared to fall too deeply into story worlds, to lean too far back against their strength, simply because one problem that I struggled with isn't one I could solve or hide from by climbing into my story fort.

Reading -- the kind that leaves mind and heart sated for a while -- is I think an act of courage.
The stories I read gave me permission to be not just myself, but all of my selves. Introverted, confused, tall, plump -- whatever the adjective, there was always a story to tell me it would be okay. Books are doors into other worlds, but they were also a window into my own life. Crack one open, and I could climb back in and walk through my world on another road, one not accessible without the book-window. Allowing myself to simply read, to walk away through wardrobes, fly through a stranger's apricot tree, or hurtle through space with a robot for company, is an act of trust in the writer and myself. That if I take a day to lean into walls that turn into doors and be swept up in a story, tomorrow will be brighter -- there will be a different light, a new way through.

All readers have a book alter ego, I think. Mine was a headstrong girl who wanted to be a writer and blundered her way through life with little care for propriety. Her only real beauty was her hair. When mine started to fall out in clumps this year, I've wondered as I clean my pillowcase each morning: What would Jo do? (Yes, I turned to a fictional character from the last century for hair care advice). It took me months to remember the answer: She'd take a day off, settle into the garret with some apples, and read her worries away.

A little unstuck

For years I complained that he didn't understand. He didn't see my troubles or concerns, only called to share his own. I'm so tired of this, I told my mother. Why does he treat me like I have no feelings?

I tried, now and then, to shove my way out of the box of opinions I was stuck in. This relationship with hard sides of labels like stubborn, carefree, impetuous, incapable of understanding life's seriousness because I always get my way. This isn't me, I screamed from the inside. Look at this! Listen! Understand!

I've tried for years. Because it's hard to breathe in this space. Cuts and scars need air to heal, fears need to be let out not bounced back, and enabling all these things, I said, is an act of love.* If you don't see the broken-hurting-scared me, you don't love. Because how can you love without understanding?

I asked again today. Why don't you ask about my worries? "Because we've never talked about them," he said. "You were always good at what you do, the perfect student even in school." And so we returned to his stories, the struggles then and now.

Today, I finally heard what I'd missed all this while. Sure, it's a box. The air's stale in here, even a little cold and unfeeling. But somewhere inside, there's a perfect little version of my world where nothing bad ever happens and I always get what I want. And in this messy, scary, beautiful life, maybe I can learn to live with that.




*I still believe that's true. Maybe it's not the only.

Hear today

I stumbled across a blog post a few days ago, titled: "Everything doesn't happen for a reason."

It's a sentiment I'd have disagreed with in the past: Just because we can't see a reason doesn't mean one doesn't exist, right? A bit like this lovely Carl Sagan quote: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Some things happen for a reason, of course. Exams go well when you study hard, races are easier when you've trained for them, well-laid plans usually lead to events that run smoothly. But not everything adds up quite as simply, or perhaps there's some celestial math I haven't learnt yet.

Patterns are soothing. Like hope and lessons from the past, they're the promise of a better return, a brighter future, a more definite outcome. It's why we seek them out, I guess. And yet, every spiritual guide reminds us to stop expectation and past emotion to live in the moment. Perhaps abandoning dreams and memory are about making room to be present -- not letting go of tomorrow, but a choice, instead, to hear today.

(Time) out of time

I'd rather forget last year. I'd rather believe this new year wasn't. When crystal fragments carve 

blood-bright memories into mind's flesh, why count the passing of twelve months? 

This month last year I held a knife to my wrists on my kitchen floor.

And there was a day when the sun crept up through my skin as I sat on a fallen wall and looked over a once-lost city on a mountain. Lost things, even mundane bricks, are more precious when found again. Do not sit on the Inca walls, the sign says, though I imagine these walls have heard so many children sit and whisper of wishes and fun.  

There was another week - several others - when I cried until I laughed at the insanity of optimism. Months when I thought it would be easier, smarter, more productive to slip into darkness than cling to some imagined future light. The line between depression and madness seemed marked in hope. 

There was a week when I walked foreign streets and laughed with the man I fell in love with. 

There was work I loved, and people I loved doing it with. 

I dreamed of death, more than once. 

There were fractions of peace and joy that glitter sharp-edged in the mess. Soft cocoons of connection. 

When the year tipped over one into the next, a dream I'd held was lost forever.

I clutch them all close, these shards of time, and still they fly free of a calendar's confines. It was a year. This is another. 

Last year I let go of hope. I let go of demanding prayer. And when I let expectations of success go, I left behind also the interrogation of failure.

I couldn't tell you if the optimism died when I let go, or if I let go because it was already gone. Perhaps orphaned hope is found in other dreams, like imagined whispers in the dark. In a parallel world, perhaps a woman stands surefooted on the sun-warmed bedrock I abandoned. Perhaps it is more cherished in its rediscovery, like miracle stones from a different time. 

Perhaps time can heal, but not in the way the years click one into the other. The seam between one year and the next is only a second. But each is broken into far more permanent bits already. So I count time instead in these fragmented essays of emotion.  

One year ends, another begins. Life rips across the imagined lines of time. I let go of my own hopes last year And I felt the warmth of a city that was a lost people's last prayer. Everything lost is found again. Perhaps there will be other magics, other footholds, on the shores of a time yet to come.

Break/ Open

Some hearts break, others open. I think there are in-betweens and extremes. Like the ones that splinter so hard and wide that the shards poke holes in an entire life. Or those that gape wide-jawed and un-discerning to draw in every blind word of promise. Or some that break but only enough so they can be fixed to hinge awkwardly open at certain angles. Hearts break and open, and some hold cracks while others hold windows. Hurts happen, and the light gets in either way.

The question is: What does the light reveal?

Pain can perhaps create as many new worlds as joy does. It's about perspective, much like in writing or art. In trying to logic my way out of broken and into open, these words come often to mind -- an old favorite.  

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears."

(On Pain/ Kahlil Gibran) 

A thought on sympathy

In each day a little learning. Today's is finding that sympathy is a craft. It's one I've been neglectful of in the past and I wonder, now, how much I've missed.

Perhaps it was simply that life came easy: good grades, easily cultivated talents, warm friends, love. Perhaps I was lucky, or simply oblivious to trouble, or perhaps my quickness at finding solutions made it easy. That same quickness made sympathy difficult -- easier, always, to fix a narrated problem than to feel it. Easier to think that the other person was lazy, unseeing, unable to solve, than to think I had something to learn in the space of their troubles.

When I'm on the other end of it, how much sweeter it is to have a friend's arms around me to say, "this really sucks," or a voice in my ear that says "I know how you feel." Simply that, nothing more.

Dip your toe in my little lake of sorrow, watch how it soaks my world. Sit on the banks and sniff the wind as it ripples this pain to you. Touch the wet sand, its grittiness scraping against your skin. Hear my words, not the echoes of what you yell across the water. Feel just this space for a little while. Feel what I feel. sym, together; pathos, feeling.

Don't tell me how to drain the lake, or that it shouldn't exist, or that the ocean outweighs my puddle so it's irrelevant. Don't throw your stones of advice in to see what floats and what sinks. On these waters, they all bounce. And when I'm on the receiving end of that advice -- particularly from someone I have been trying hard to be sympathetic towards -- all I want is to make the stoning end. I'm hurting enough already.

Perhaps it's that life comes easy to me. I can turn to other ears, other hearts. Ones that drift with me, however briefly, and say it's okay to wallow for a while. They'll be here, bright and strong and unsinkable, until I'm ready to move on.

Sympathy is a craft. Not an art that cannot be substantiated, not a grace that is impossible to attain.
It's a craft that I can hone -- of listening, of holding advice back, of not allowing my feelings for the other to overwhelm what they're feeling themselves.

Perhaps I could only learn to be mindful of the craft when I felt its absence. I'm grateful for the lessons and yet, a part of me wonders -- what are the lessons I missed when I was too busy with advice? How can I play catch-up?

Contrapasso

No going back.
Don't even try.
Why bother.
You don't get it.
It's too late.
I've seen this type and know this world.
I have no choice.
What's done is done.
It won't work.
She/he/ they will never allow it.
Some of us don't get to be happy.
I worry about good fortune.


Word by word, block by block. With each assumption and unplanned intention, you slay your own choices and build your own monsters. Each time you call I walk through your demons. Each time I fight to leave the shadows, and you choose to stay. I wish you'd come with me instead, find your true name.

But this is your blue pill, your story. I can stop reading, or I can keep letting the shadows scar me. Choosing how the tale ends is up to you:

"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
You'll find me by the red pill. I promise it's magical.

Just for today

Dear today,

You started with an alarm I slept through, making me late for work. Then you swamped me with one annoyance after the next: silly meetings, unreasonable boss, petty things that went wrong, a pile of chores that'll take hours but can't wait another day.

As if that weren't enough, you sent me a slew of reminders of how great everyone else's life is. Great stories, pitches accepted at magazines that turned mine down, another assignment to a friend that made me wonder if I'll have my space when I return to one of my favorite editors. A reminder that an old prof likes a classmate more than he does me.

Here's the thing I'm telling myself: You have five more hours to flood with annoyance and envy. At the end of it, I'll still be here, but you'll be gone forever. Petty consolation, but on a day like you, I'll take it.

Until tomorrow,
Yours.

A work of darkness

I've been coming to terms with medical uncertainties for a while now. There's little to be done with fresh sharp pain but to feel it. After a while, though, it sinks deep and stitches itself into skin and muscle. I can speak of it, often, without tears. The brittle pull during the day is discomfort not hurt, the sort of dull ache when flesh knits together but a scar has yet to form.

I still don't know how the story will end, or when. I don't know if the solution will be physical or mental, a coming to terms of some sort that some things aren't meant to be. I don't know how I will be changed on the other side. I'm trying not to grow bitter, not to ask the "Why me?" question to which my 25-year-old self would have replied: "And why not you?"

Really, it's an overwhelmingly common problem. My optometrist, the lady who gives me facials, my therapist and my mother are quick to share their stories, the stories they've heard, the things I should do. Everyone has a solution, except apparently the over-educated, wonderfully sensitive specialist who calls to check on me after every painful procedure. So really, why (or why not) me?

I wish I knew. I'm trying, for now, to reconcile the mental confusion with the physical. Is this something I brought on? Is there a reason I shouldn't have this thing I didn't know I wanted until I was told I couldn't have it? Are these medicines hurting my body to heal a problem that isn't meant to be solved? I could perhaps write a book (or at least a really long blog rant) with such dilemmas.

For now, I'm beginning to try to frame the issue with words, name it into something tangible I can nurse into healing. My own words elude me still, and so I pick from others', slip my hurt into their stories to try them on for size. The ones that fit right now are those of permanent loss and uncertainty: Death, cancer, the loss of a loved one. (I wonder if someday this feeling will shrink, so the words of a struggling snark writer for a popular website don't feel quite so skimpy when held against my hurt.) The words that resonate the most: "It is one thing to endure pain. It is another to have hope."

The days of physical pain I tolerate are minuscule compared to those who live these tales. It seems, probably is, silly to resonate with them. But measuring pain in this way always is futile. Yet I find myself -- the person who promised herself she'd never weigh feelings against each other -- doing precisely this thing, if only because I can't find another way to wrap my words around this problem. To a writer, finding the right words is always the answer. And I still fumble for phrases in the dark.

"Ode to Healing"
John Updike

A scab is a beautiful thing - a coin
the body has minted, with an invisible motto:
In God We Trust.
Our body loves us,
and, even while the spirit drifts dreaming,
works at mending the damage that we do.
Close your eyes, knowing
that healing is a work of darkness,
that darkness is a gown of healing,
that the vessel of our tremulous venture is lifted
by tides we do not control.
Faith is health's requisite:
we have this fact in lieu
of better proof of le bon Dieu

Wander some

There's an odd peace that goes with the words "I don't know."

Once in a while, it's comforting to simply face the facts and know that something hurtful crossed my life, but that is all it was. It had no evil intent, was not part of some divine plan, and lacked any medical basis. It could happen again, or it might not. It happened, and it sucked, but that's all there was to it.

It's easy to slip from this peaceful ignorance to rationalizing, piecing facts together to spot patterns so I can avoid future hurt -- whether through action or inaction. Worry, fear, hope -- all the things that squeeze the heart so painfully -- they come from this squished up mess of fact and emotion.

Better, simpler, more peaceful to only accept that I don't know. And neither does any higher power, or my doctor, or anyone else. There is no greater plan guiding us here.

But without one, I am free to choose my pace on this windy road: sometimes halting, sometimes racing. When I can't read the signs, I can simply follow whatever instinct forced me down this path, even when I don't know where it ends, or how, or why.

It is written

Remember these things: the food your mother cooked for a celebration. how your parents marked your twelfth birthday. the first time you called someone for Valentine's day. who you picture when you think of a successful person.

We collect these experiences like pebbles, and as we grow we piece them together to make sense of the world. It's how we put the things we saw, heard, or touched together with emotion, memory, and reaction, then attribute meaning and intention to the characters who played parts in a certain scenario. To put it simply, we tell ourselves stories about our lives.

In every story, however, there are spaces we fill in for ourselves. What was he thinking when he said that? How did my mother feel about packing lunch every morning? Why did my girlfriend turn down my proposal?

Whether we fill these gaps with kindness (she was strong and loved us), or with anger (he's a horrible person), or with self-loathing (I'm so ugly, no wonder she said no), the most important thing to remember is that these are fictions. So our life itself is, in some ways, no more than facts strung together on a fairy tale. In other hands and minds, the facts might weave a different yarn.

And in a world where so few facts are controllable, where the ground beneath our feet shakes more than we'd like, the greatest power we wield is this: we can change our stories.

When we start to think of our strung-up stories as rigid sticks, however, is when we stop seeing both possibility and improbability. Those random acts of change, redemption, fortune or miracle that make so much of joy and sorrow are also what make for edge-of-the-seat drama, nail-biting tension, walk-into-the-sunset happy endings in our lives. And when we put the yarn away and say "been there, done that, I know how this story goes," we leave no room for these surprises.

We are the writers, and we can choose to leave unwritten open spaces. Or we might say, as in the old parables, "and so it is written" -- and thus omit newness from the stories of our lives.

Crush

First this connection, the way I end up smiling over something you said. Then I see you face to face when you give an interview. Then I hear from someone else who connected with you over a different book. You made her think of literature as a white knight in a fairy tale, she writes. Her description bumps my heart just a little. 

I'm not committed enough, just yet, for an actual date. But the coincidences are just as delicious as bumping into a crush on the college campus. The frisson of pleasure, the way you lift my spirits with just a few words. 

I never know where I'll find you next. But soon, I might just borrow one of your books and settle in for a good long read. Will we connect, will your words find a place on my shelves? For now, I'll enjoy the anticipation of discovering a writer new to me. Keep it up and we might just spend a weekend together soon. 

Spin

With shadows so dark and thick I'm certain the light blazes bright and strong and close behind. But there is no turning time back, is there? I must hold faith instead that the earth spins and spins, and so must spin back into the light. If only I could feel the slightest shove, a little give as the path dips forward into deepening night.

Faith like water

Faith in the divine is not a flag to be hoisted at every opportunity with the expectation that all bow to your definitions of divinity. My faith is quiet like water. For starters, it's fluid. And secondly, I don't often discuss it. It's a small molecule with not much to be said for it.

It's more obvious at some times than others. Sometimes I get thirsty and want more. Too much faith makes my stomach bloat uncomfortably, with no room to hold other sustenance. Divinity, like water, is everywhere: in every cell, most soils, even on other planets. There's a big giant ocean of it around us. But still there are places where it is not -- and yes, this is okay too. Not everything must be divine or contain water.

The best food has water, and the worst. But it's not what we speak about when we discuss flavor, or texture, or the way some foods comfort and delight. There is no need to discuss the water, is there?

Unless you have discovered for the first time that water is in your vegetables. Like a child with a new word or toy, some who have "found" divinity tout it everywhere: Look what I know! Hey, did you know water is everywhere? Did you know that love is God, and kindness to all men is God, and .... is God? To some it is excitement, to others a need for validation. It's as though they can't fully believe that everything has water unless someone else does too. But just because vegetables have water, doesn't mean they are nothing but it. Just as all love is a bit of a miracle -- but it's also just a bit foolish, funny, mad, and more.

Faith, like water, comforts me. I swallow big gulps of it when I'm hurt and stressed. I stand under a steaming spray of it to sort out tricky questions. Once in a while, I dunk my head deep under until it leaves me breathless. Faith, like water, can drown everything else out. Including reason, and love, and logic. Too much water will kill you for lack of air. As can too much faith, when it cuts you off from the dust and heat and trappings of life.

There are variants of water: sparkling, iced, flavored, sourced from mountain streams. Pick your favorite kind of divinity. But here's the most important courtesy you can afford others: Sip quietly.

And in my view of faith as water, these are the simple rules:

Don't push your preferred brand or style on others. Don't claim they are all the same. Don't argue over the differences. Don't hold someone else's head underwater. Don't expect others to see the water in food. Some like to focus on the flavors and colors and other wonders -- let them be. Don't interrupt to demand they spot the water. In focusing on the divine, don't forget the rest of who a person or thing or place or emotion is.

You are water. But you are more than just water. Accept it as you will. Remember it. Hold it close. And stop talking about it.

On wanting

(You who never arrived/ Rainer Maria Rilke)

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Hear no prophets

When considering a partner -- whether it's a college crush-turned-boyfriend or a traditional arranged-marriage type scenario -- we try to answer certain questions. How does this person fit into my life? Is he kind? Is she funny? Do we value education/financial security/hobbies about equally? And so on.

Then we leave a little room for uncertainties. Markets may crash so jobs are lost, people fall sick without warning. Life happens. The future is uncertain, and so we hedge our options in the here and now. My boyfriend cares for his grandmother, so he's probably going to be kind to our parents as they age. She volunteers to read to the blind, she'll probably be a good mother to a disabled child. And so on.

The future is a mystery. There are risks. Etc. And so we make our choices in the present with these things in mind. Some assume that our actions now are a good karma stockpile for the future. Others say that all we have is the here and now.

To quote the cliche: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present. Break that down some more, and the present turns from this day to this hour, this second, this moment. Only now.

And so we choose a lover or a spouse to share our life based on moments.

I wish more of us would do the same when we choose a religious leader to follow. Does my faith distance me from the people I love? Is my religion disconnected from the life I live as a regular human being in the world today? If I had to choose, at this moment, between my family and my faith, which would I pick?

Recently, a 17 year old girl with a highly curable form of cancer refused chemotherapy because her religious faith forbade her from filling her body with toxins. In another context, this same girl might say her God placed all life on earth with a purpose. So was her purpose to die at 17, or was it to cure cancer at 45? We might never know, because a court overruled her decision and she's receiving treatment.

The trouble with such faith is that it drowns out the possibilities. Life emerged from randomness -- a beautiful, miraculous coming forth of molecules in perfect harmony. When we focus single-minded on a certain faith/ religion/ guru, we lose the diversity that comes from seeing the big picture.

Serendipity -- and yes, miracles -- stem from remaining in the infinite potential of now. Stick your head too far into the clouds, fill your ears with the ringing of a prophet's voice, and you might miss the soft strength of the earth you stand on, the very earth that lifts you high enough to reach the clouds in the first place.

That earth is ground reality -- the people that tend your basic Maslow-ian needs. Just for today -- for this moment, NOW -- try this: Feel the ground beneath your feet. Drown your beliefs. Hear no prophets.

They promise that their voices will ring through all eternity. But the earth slips away.

Walking without wizards

Middle Earth is littered with orcs, demons, giant man-hating trees, and power-hungry kings. But my teen self was more terrified by one character's death. Years after I read the books, I'd wake night after night from a recurring nightmare of being Frodo, knowing Gandalf was dead, and having to walk on anyway.

With a wizard around, you can be fairly sure that no matter how many monsters attack, the world will sort itself out at the end. The lack of certainty that haunted my nightmares was, as I'm beginning to realize, excellent preparation for being a grown up. Being an adult is essentially an act of embracing uncertainty.

Unlike the stuff of childhood, there aren't any grades or peers to tell you how cute you look, or how good or terrible you are at a certain subject. There's no grading curve to simplify the hard bits, and no parents to swipe away hurt with a hug. There is no binary outcome to most of life's tests, and several come with no guaranteed returns for the work you put in. Every once in a while there really is no version of the story where the good guys win. And no, there certainly aren't any dashing princes -- or wizards (who seem more useful anyway) -- charging up on shining white horses to rescue either hobbit or helpless human.

Sometimes you know the wizard is dead, but you walk into the scary dark places anyway, because there's a job to be done. If you're lucky, you'll have a friend to hold your hand. Maybe it'll even be someone who will carry and drag you through the hardest parts. Be certain there will be armies and giant spiders and trolls to throw you off your mission. If you're lucky, you'll hold something precious, and have someone dear to remind you of why you're in this mess.

Some  of us might get to go home at journey's end: to hillside hobbit-holes, or palaces with elvish queens, or more eternal dwellings. Maybe, just maybe, the walk will be worth it. But however it ends, we'll all have a story to tell.

And so, this year, a wish to remember the good parts: I hope you remember the precious things you carry. I hope you love the story you tell yourself when it's all done. And when magic is sparse, I hope you find your own light to shine through the darkest places.