A Eulogy For Expectations
A Eulogy For Expectations
and the secret beauty of it
Happy New Year!
The lists of what is in and what is out on instagram is intriguing, although I have yet to take part. Actually, I know I won’t. I write lists nearly daily, sometimes weekly (a trick an ex told me about), and what I have learned going into this new year is that unless it is a journal or a to-do list, I would rather not write it. I would rather not seed expectations just yet. Even if its bottom line is playful and casual, “ OUT—JOBS.” Even if it is hopeful (I love everyone’s lists). What I have learned is that I want to swim as far from expectation as I possibly can. And when I don’t swim far enough, I want the feeling of whatever that is, to wash over me as I hold my nose, dip below its wave, and then come back up for air when it is settled. Expectation is a monster I didn’t think I’d fight with last year. It is a monster I am relieved to have (for however brief or long) beat, in my own way.
However, I have my previous expectations to thank for why any new ones may not vegetate. The slow death of what was and what would be, and could be; a eulogy for tomorrows. Yesterday, a new friend mentioned the sheer absurdity Americans have that tomorrow is promised. And I thought, in response to that, how in 2020 I stood shoulder to shoulder with a thought that tomorrow wasn't promised (as did everyone), in the same way I grew up. In the same way, any young adult would in the face of sudden young familial deaths and at times, unstable housing. In 2021, as I ventured into the complexity of what’s not promised and what we feel “we deserve '' and what pushes against that (several years of capitalism and racism) I have found that that’s where my expectations grew. Fraught with passion, yes. But in stepping in with the “big machine,” and by de facto, moving classes by becoming a homeowner, expectation wasn’t the wave that I knew growing up. Instead, it became the cloud that I couldn’t step out of.
We like to think, for better or for worse, we are immune to this kind of disease. The disease that is entrenched in the perceived simplicity of partnering and co-living, heteronormative child-rearing, having a steady high-earning job, being educated, and, of course, buying a house, that seems to instantaneously separate us from them. Or specifically, us, from the unassured. Somehow, in these efforts, we forget to wade in the merkiness of our humanness to feel our most alive. And in those moments, do the work in seeing one another.
See, what I have learned is that the present moment is far more complex and greater, full of all the answers and none at all. What I have learned, in the gaps where the list ends and a new minute begins, is that most of us know nothing. We spend so much of our lives creating a story for that unknowingness (in fear of it) before it has the chance to tell our body what it means.
Yesterday, I packed the living room and my children’s room, and thought a lot about this before writing to you. I sat down on the floor, switching through memories of my son healing on the living room couch after having his heart repaired (how did that even happen?), of the days I stood in my kitchen crying, and of the evenings I made love and had fights between the walls. I thought about the hours the kids and I spent cleaning, only to have it get messy again, and of the ways it all so often made sense and did not. When the memories had their moment, I flipped through film images of this time last year, the kids and I stuck in this apartment together. We danced when they felt better, sang when they did not. I had hoped, rather, I had expected, we’d get another chance of a healthier Christmas and new year in that magical space. But I knew didn’t know much of anything.
What I have learned is that it is hard to say goodbye, even when you’re relieved to do so. Whether to a person, a home, a year, or even to the glue of belief. It is hard to let go of expectations, although it is much better for us and our collective community.
It is also hard to be in between time. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is precisely that.
I am not good at wrapping things in a bow. Things slowly break down until they decompose somewhere in my body where I may find it again one day. So, in speaking to that, I will say this, goodbye, hello, may we all see the beauty in what we may not know.
Leaving you with this quote I’ve meditated with a lot last year by Thomas Merton,
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
With love,
L