little things
Writing is such hard work. Yet, so liberating, getting the thoughts out. Away from me and just out there to you or whomever. Somebody, anybody. Is anybody listening? It matters more these days, therefore, I write less. But I ponder more on what I hear, and I respond carefully. I want the words to have meaning and to be heard. Pondered back. Talking to a therapist may or may not bring more meaning to my life, my relationships. I’ll keep saying it does, it should. But we are tricky beings, having to connect to someone else; disclosing such deep things to a stranger is intense, but she has to be a stranger to do any good. So how crazy is that? Talking to someone you barely know about the things you can’t even say to those you thought you knew so well. Right now, it’s not good for me, because all I can remember is her hand writing down what I said and me wanting to grab her notebook and run out of the room, fast. And never go back. Don’t write it down; just take it, but not too seriously, because next week, I will think in a whole different way, and I will not want to tell you this stuff if you keep writing it down. But of course I can’t tell her any of this. I say the subdued things, the things that are workable. How can anybody handle my unspoken, hardly-felt grief, when it comes and goes so elusively, not like a butterfly, but like a hot flash. Gone before you know it. No trace of harm. Wash over me, river of life.
So, listening to Tracy Chapman has helped. It’s an old CD, as I await her new one coming out tomorrow. She is just what I need these days. She repeats herself in a bluesy sort of way and I fill in the words in my head, and I feel soulful and beautiful and understood. Hearing the blues while you’re blue is a good thing. It feels right.
Maybe I’m blue from listening to others’ blues. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I hear, and how my words may help. Just a brief line or two to help someone get a new perspective, focus on the positive aspect of their character, not the negative, which seems to be the focus of those who are depressed or anxious. They seem to define themselves too simply, too black and white. In The Tipping Point, the author, Malcolm Gladwell tells us about the FAE, the Fundamental Attribution Error, “which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people’s behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of situation and context.” Oh, this is so true. Look at an interview of the neighbor of someone who has just been taken away for some terrible deed. He is such a fine man; there’s no way he could have done such a thing. Unbelievable, they say. And lawyers, well, it’s what most of them do for a living. “Isn’t it true, Mrs. Jones, that since you lied to your husband on these two occasions, that this would make you a pathological liar?” Somehow, in all her honesty and good character, Mrs. Jones doesn’t want to lie now and says, why, I suppose so, through a broken voice and shame-filled tears. And there you have it. No context. Only character: Liar. Never mind that she lied to protect herself or her children or because in her state of mind, she thought she was doing the right thing at the time.
Mr. Gladwell says that “ there is something in all of us that makes us instinctively want to explain the world around us in terms of people’s essential attributes: he’s a better basketball player, that person is smarter than I am.” The FAE “makes the world a much simpler and more understandable place.” But, he goes on to explain, “Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.”
I wonder if certain religious folks might take offense to this, preferring to ignore our environments that change us, and needing to see things a bit more black and white, following the good book, doing what Jesus would do. Shaping our own character, in His image. But things are pretty complicated in this world, with children being abused, adults re-living the cycle of abuse, surviving by thinking certain ways, mostly wrong ways, or hurting themselves to feel again, or running from painful places. And some of us survive by talking it out or writing it down or listening to the blues. Works for me. I’m a lucky one. Understanding comes in waves. Just before the crash, I see a little light, a different perspective. And I’m lucky to have someone who can listen, take it in. I’ll give it back in ways he’ll feel lucky.
Mr. Gladwell also talks about how it’s the little things, structured in just the right way that can make a big impact in our lives. There is that moment that an idea or a trend catches on, reaches that tipping point, and suddenly, it takes on a bigger shape. Then, change happens.
Oh, there’s a tipping point in every day things, too, isn’t there? That point we can’t take it anymore, we’ll either fix it or throw our hands up in despair. And it’s all the little things around us that move us into action, cause us to think a little differently: the consistency of a favorite blogger, the tears in that Chicago crowd last Tuesday, the therapist who draws the boundaries so tight that I feel so far away, but it works, the little things she said or did all begin to add up and something clicks.
They gather themselves silently around us, shaping us, holding us.
We don’t even see them most of the time.
These little things.
11:42:29 PM 
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