Category — Uncategorized

I just read a gorgeous piece on Longreads about grief that I think a lot of people will appreciate here. It is a man grieving the loss of his wife after cancer (though his adoption story features, too), but the concept of loss becomes universal as he discusses what he has learned about time.

Like the Longreads author, Matthew Salesses, I also just finished Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. I started it as an audio book in the car, driving through the dark on my way home from my friend’s house, shivering as he tore down everything we think we know about time, staying with him because he promised to build a new understanding of time in its place. And as the Longreads author so apt states:

As consolation, Rovelli offers the mind as a time machine — we travel via memory. This is a disappointing compromise. In mourning, memory is only another cause for mourning. It does not change time, only reminds one that time has passed.

Salesses describes grief as carrying that time you had with the other person, of always having those hours, those days, those years that you spent with the person lost. He writes:

That shared life is the time I carry. In my dreams, I go to that other time. I dream that my wife is still in the middle of cancer treatments, that it is still conceivable she will come out of them okay. I don’t dream of a time that has never existed — I don’t dream of her recovery. I dream of taking care of her. I dream that our shared time has simply gone on.

It’s not about fantasy. It’s about carrying that real time with you as you move through current time; two layers of time that are carried simultaneously.

You need to read the whole piece. And then you need to go get Matthew Salesses’s books.

There is, apparently, a book about late bloomers that just came out, which explains some of the recent posts about late bloomers. But the rest are untied to Rich Karlgaard’s book. It’s just a weird coincidence; a moment in time when people are speaking about achievement later in life.

According to a multitude of authors, being a late bloomer rocks. Charles Duhigg points out:

Late bloomers learn resilience. Early disappointments force concessions, as Duhigg notes, and they reshape expectations. It is no doubt sad that the best way to gain strength is by falling and continually bouncing back, practicing, working around obstacles. But this flexibility is critical to long-term success.

Being a late bloomer puts you in good company since all of these articles also include a list of people who have achieved great things later in life. And it saves you from all of the drawbacks of being an early bloomer that are also listed in these articles. (Because you can only prove how great being a late bloomer is by putting down early bloomers.)

I’m being sarcastic mostly because I’ve always felt like you don’t know what sort of bloomer you are until you’ve bloomed, and because we bloom in cycles, blooming in different parts of our life at different times, declaring ourselves one or the other spotlights our life with one accomplishment instead of acknowledging that we make big and small contributions to this world every day.

Though I do like Karlgaard’s explanation of the two types of forces that make people bloom at different times:

It’s the difference between feeling being pushed — which I don’t like and I think a lot of people don’t like — versus being pulled by some vision and dream and higher purpose.

Pushed vs. pulled.

Josh asked me a few years ago where I would live if we couldn’t live in D.C., and I promptly told him that it would be somewhere in the North Sea or Northern Atlantic like the Shetland Islands or Faroe Islands, though I could easily be talked as far south as the Outer Hebrides. He was a little taken aback and admitted that he thought I’d throw out Boston or Philadelphia. Something a little more realistic. A little more in our home country.

And, like, yeah, I think we’ll probably end up living in this country forever, but my heart home is somewhere very cold with otters, puffins, and not a lot of sunlight in winter.

Like I said on Friday, it’s when you know you’re from one place but you always sensed that your heart is from somewhere else. That, for me, is Scotland since I was a little kid. That’s why I cried so much when we were in Scotland last year. It was like my heart for the first time was where it belonged. Like I brought it home.

I think if I could live anywhere in Scotland right now, it would be the Island of Yell in the Shetland Islands.

Do you have a heart home?

Speaking of not embracing change, I loved this article a few weeks ago because I eat the same thing for breakfast AND lunch every day. Breakfast never changes: a container of yogurt. Lunch may change if I need to meet someone for a meal, but if I’m at home, it’s a bowl of Special K. A scoop of peanut butter and raw fruits and vegetables are snacks. The only thing that changes is dinner.

I think of my meals in the same way I think of the benefits of wearing a uniform. It frees you from making decisions.

(I also don’t have a lot of variety in my wardrobe. I bought a dozen of the same black shirt and same jeans and mostly wear the same thing, day after day. I try to never buy new, seasonal clothes.)

I wake up in the morning, and I’m going to put on the outfit. I sit down at the table and I’m going to have yogurt. There are no decisions I need to make. I like not needing to think. I never get bored with the sameness. Instead, I think of it these moments in my day a little like a never-changing ritual. Now the yogurt is visiting. Later, the Special K will come around.

Do you eat the same thing for one or more meals each day?

I came across the perfect line to describe life on page 156 of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. The person is describing a hospital with a toxic work environment:

We called it the glass factory, because it felt like everything could crash down at any minute.

I realized, re-reading and re-reading that line, that the world is divided into people who see the whole universe as a glass factory and those who believe they’re working with something a little more durable. Like wood.

Actually, I think everyone rationally knows that life is a glass factory; that everything could come crashing down because nothing is permanent and certain. The difference is that some people always think about the figurative glass factory, and others can forget that life is a glass factory for big chunks of time and therefore take risks as if they’re working with something more durable. Like wood.

I am in that first category: I never forget the figurative glass factory. I think about the glass factory all the time. I assess all risk with the belief that if I don’t consider all possibilities that I’ll be surrounded by shards of glass. I’m just trying to do my part to keep things in one piece.

I don’t know if the cups in the figurative glass factory are half-full or half-empty. I just know that they sparkle all around me, reminding me of their shatterable quality.