Here’s a thing I’ve been struggling with, hard. Why is it so difficult to not feel mad? Like, about everything. Being included too much, not being included, deciding, not deciding, apologizing, not apologizing. I feel like this problem stems from too much stress. But. Maybe it’s just how I am? Determined to be dissatisfied.
I spent a summer at sleep-away camp, as a counselor. I am a lazy person. That is to say, my preference all the time is to just sit around and think. In the house. Under a blanket. My mother was, quite understandably, not at all convinced that I would remotely enjoy living in a cabin with a bunch of 11- to 14-year-olds, using outside toilets. See also: huge Michigan bugs.
I’ll tell you what. I loved the heck out of that summer. I loved those kids. I loved being outside. I loved those bugs and riding my bike. I loved doing all my thinking while looking at those trees. I was peeved, often, that the counselors did not meet my platonic ideal of counselors (everyone is shocked! Who? Me? Expecting everyone to be perfect?!). But even in the moment I was intensely aware of my privilege. I was also under the impression that what I was doing mattered, that I was enriching those kids’ lives and changing them for the better. They gained something valuable from spending ten days with me. Maybe more importantly, I gained something valuable from spending ten days with them.
So maybe that is where my frustration really lies. How does one go about changing that perspective? That summer I also had a very important purpose in what I wanted from the world – namely, get myself into a good grad school – that colored everything I did. I was KJS, Musicologist, that summer. I had tidily organized binders and drafts of personal statements. That, of course, turned out to be the wrong calling. It was a thoughtful calling, though, and still close to who I am.
The search for purpose is always ongoing. Perspective shifting doesn’t get less important, though. Did I find a calling because I was already happy, or was I happy because I’d found something exciting?
My grandmother, Lucille, died on March 16th. She was 88, today – Mother’s Day – would have been her 89th birthday. She loved having her birthday on Mother’s Day. She had been sick – so gracefully, but sick, nonetheless – for a few years. She was a woman so vibrant – kind and honest, thoughtful, caring, smart as a whip – she felt to all of us like she could just go on living forever, even though she was sick and we knew she could not. She lived a very full life – taking on adventures with gusto. After my grandfather passed away, she took a roadtrip out west with her sisters and saw all the sights. What a hoot those ladies must have been.
She listened. She offered advice. She made us Swedish meatballs and cookies, and she loved us. Each of us – and there were so many! – had our own relationship with her, never felt upstaged by another (or, at least, not between my brothers and I), loved and important and seen. Do you understand how important that is? I didn’t, until now.