Author: beckylevine

Each year for the past few years, maybe on and off a bit, I’ve picked a word for myself. That word was usually focused on my writing, because, well, I’ve been pretty darned lucky, and I have room and ease in my life so I could focus on my writing. 

This year feels a little different. Okay, it feels a lot different. On the one hand, I still have a life of room and ease, and I feel relatively safe from the things I fear are coming down the road. On the other hand, I know I may NOT be safe–I’m a woman and I’m Jewish and I’m a liberal…all groups who are already coming under attack and who will almost certainly continue to be attacked.

Still, the odds are decent that, if I chose to, I could tuck myself into my sheltered little life, duck my head, and come out relatively unscathed. 

But I don’t want to. I want to stay out of my shell, keep my head out of the sand, and fight.

This will take, I’ve been thinking, courage. Which is the word I’ve been leaning toward for 2017. And which, ironically, I’ve been leaning away from, too…out of fear.

And then, today, I picked up my copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, thinking I’d start a reread to get inspired for the next year of writing. And almost immediately I came across a description of what a poet named Jack Gilbert (no relation) told some of his writing students. 

“Most of all, though, he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, he instructed, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small–far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.”

I was not a brave child, teen, or young adult. Cravings for adventure? I had none. Impulse control? Enough for a dozen kids. Fear of what MIGHT go wrong? Drove most of my decisions (usually to NOT try something). Growing up and growing older has been, in many ways, a process of growing braver. 

In the past few years, I’ve thought that maybe I had got “there,” that I was a good level of brave, that I didn’t have to keep stretching myself. And then November 8 happened and now January 20th is right around the corner, and I find myself thinking about bravery and wondering–yet again–if I’m brave enough. And, honestly, dreading having to get back into that stretching place.

But in one paragraph, Jack Gilbert and Elizabeth Gilbert reminded me that bravery and growth isn’t only about the struggle, but also about the growth of capacities and richnesses we maybe just can’t see yet. They reminded me of all the rewards I’ve claimed whenever I did step out of my safe spot and taken a risk (which so many other people wouldn’t even see as a risk). They made me sit up and look around at the bigger, happier life I have, because–sometimes in very small steps and occasionally in leaps–I was being brave.

So, it may be just semantics, but I’m setting aside “courage” for 2017 and choosing “bravery” instead. The bravery to get my introvert self out there, with people and crowds and noise, and find some way I can volunteer and make a difference. The bravery to make a time commitment and stick to it, when maybe (probably!), I just want to go home, hold my cat, and read my book. The bravery to attach my name and identity to my beliefs, in public and in person.

And, on the other side, the bravery to take care of myself and choose to tuck myself away when I need it, trusting that almost 3 million people voted for Hilary Clinton and Tim Kaine and against Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and that some of them will keep the shields up if I’m not there that day or week. The bravery to actively look for and at the good things people are doing for each other every day and to soak in that goodness, not discount it as not enough. The bravery to find balance between valid worrying and overall happiness. And, finally, yes, the bravery to carve out time for my writing–unselfishly because words and stories are important, and selfishly, because the writing nourishes and sustains me.

Bravery. 

Have you got a word for 2017?

I’ve been thinking about motivation lately. About how, even when we want to be writing, when we have a project we love, when we want to see that chapter or that draft or that book get done, we still might not be writing as much as we can.

Where does the motivation come from, I was thinking. And where, when it’s not there,  did it go?

And then today, at my day job, I was reading a study report about the maker movement and its place in education. (If that’s of interest to you, or you want more context for the small part I’m about to quote, the report is from Agency by Design at Project Zero, a research organization at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and you can find it here.)

Anyway, I’m reading along, and I get to this:

“…to be called a cyclist, you not only need to have the ability to ride a bicycle, but you have to be motivated to ride your bike on a regular basis, and you have to be alert to occasions to do so.” (Bold font, mine.)

Huh.

And a bit more:

“…the biggest bottleneck to behavior isn’t a lack of motivation and skill, it’s a lack of sensitivity.” 

Double-huh.

The article goes on to bring the metaphor back to students, and I went on to read more about them. But in that one instant, you just know that I completely replaced cyclist with writer. Oh, come on. So did you.

Maybe I haven’t been thinking about motivation. Maybe I have plenty of motivation. Maybe what I’ve been missing, especially, since–oh, I don’t know, early November?–is the awareness of opportunities to do the writing. Maybe I’ve even been helping to pull the cloud cover of fear and anger and worry over my awareness and blur the edges of whatever awareness I was managing.

You think?

It pretty much always comes back to mindfulness, doesn’t it?

I’ve done better this month than last, in terms of separating politics from life and compartmentalizing a little bit more. Not as well as I’d like, but better. And it’s something I think I’ll have to keep working on, because what’s going on in politics (and life) is important and–guess what–what’s going on in my (our) writing is important. And having a knock-down, drag-out fight between them in my brain is only going to make me tired.

And tired brains miss opportunities for writing. Or drawing. Or composing. Or any creative art.

I can do battle with a tired brain. But I can’t write with one–not fully or deeply like I need to be doing. Like any readers I might someday have need me to be doing.

Like your readers need you to be doing.

So back to the now, whenever we can. Back to the safe, quiet place where the monkey brain is tucked into a soft blanket and told, gently, to hush for a while. Just for a while, while we go bring ourselves to awareness, to seeing and seizing the opportunities.

Right? Right.

I’m blogging today over at MG Lunch Break, talking about the amazing voice with which Jason Reynolds drew me into his new novel, GHOST, and kept me there, in love with his hero and his story.

http://www.mglunchbreak.com/2016/12/06/jason-reynolds-ghost-the-sentences-behind-the-voice/

This morning, I watched Hillary Clinton’s last ad for her campaign. You can see it here. As is typical for me when everyone is raving about how great something is, I started out cynical. It’s well done, but it uses words advertisers could and probably would us for any candidate, including her opponent.  Yes, it’s more true for her, obviously, but still…unbelievable as it is, there are people who would honestly say that about him.

And then I got to the end. Where you hear Hillary’s voice saying, “I’m Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.”

And I started tearing up. It took me a second to realize why, and then I got it. Because it was a woman’s voice saying those words. For a campaign for the Presidency. A super smart, capable, practical, get-things-done woman. And, once again, as has happened to me so many times since Hillary won the primary, it came home to me how over-ready I am to have this happen, to have a woman in the White House. How much it really, really means to me.

Logically, I have always known that life is harder for women, as a group. My mother was one of the first women to be accepted, attend, and graduate from UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine. And it’s not just in my personal life, it’s all around us–look at the numbers, look at the imbalance, look at the subtle, “well-meaning” comments. But I’ve also stayed out of that imbalance, in many ways, for myself. I have a father who thought it was a dream come true that he met a woman in the same field of his, a woman who wanted to join him in running their own business. I have two sisters, no brothers, so–if there was going to be even a subtle, unintentional bias in my own family–it didn’t happen. I majored in fields that were heavily populated by women and that were, in all probability, discouraging to the men who wanted to be there. And, overall, I have pursued careers that have a high percentage of women doing the job. But I can see and I can interpret. I know sexism is out there, I know it still governs so very much of the way our world operates. And as I get older, I get angrier.

Still, I have been surprised every time, in the past few months, that the tears have come. Surprised at myself for wanting this so badly, for craving the possibility so deeply. Because why?

Because we so often don’t let ourselves feel the emotions. We have to work in and through this world, we have to deal with the realities of the way things are. And so many of the people we know, who might not get how important this is, are nice…very nice. And funny. And engaging. And we have conversations that don’t include politics, and they like and respect us and we like and respect them. And we push down the need, the craving, and the anger, so that we can function in the society we have.

It’s not just about women’s rights and women’s opportunities, obviously. I grew up knowing a relative who had been in a concentration camp, other relatives who had left Germany to escape them. I know that the world Clinton’s opponents see as “great again” is anything but, and that it is truly, truly possible. Eight years ago and four years ago, I voted for Barak Obama, and I thought–how must it feel, to be Black and to see this finally happen. Is the weight lifted? Is it made heavier by knowing how long this has taken and that the world isn’t going to change overnight, maybe not over a decade or a century? What are all the layers African Americans in our country must have been feeling?

I think I may have a taste of that answer today. I  may have tried to push the want away, tried to tuck it into boxes of Well, we’re making some progress or It’s better than it used to be, but the want doesn’t actually go away. Sometimes it’s a feather tickling our brain, sometimes it’s a rock sitting in our stomach, sometimes it’s a dark cloud messing with our mood for days on end. But it’s always there.

It’s what brings the tears.