Last night I felt really organized. I had made a list
of everything I needed to get done this weekend, assigned different tasks and
assignments to each day of the weekend, and made a plan to get out of the house and actually work. I even cooked and prepared
food ahead of time so I could take my lunch and dinner with me downtown. I felt
like hot stuff with my backpack of everything I needed for the day as I got on
the bus to come to the library.
Then I got here. I realized that it’s the Grant
application due today, not the Scholarship, so instead of writing an essay, I’m
supposed to be making a video of myself, and I haven’t showered since yesterday
morning. I realized that I planned to blog about the books I read in September,
but my book log is at home. I realized that the research article I planned to
read and write about was actually a literature review masquerading as research.
The best laid plans, I tell you…
So I was frustrated. Could I still get work done with
the materials I have? Absolutely. Could I find another article? Of course (and
I did – it took about ten minutes). But something in my head was really mad;
rather than accepting that everyone makes mistakes and confuses deadlines, it
built on my two other forgotten deadlines in the past week and raged against
me. This is a hot mess, it said, you’re better than this.
Which, in a certain sense, is true. I think people
should always be working to better themselves, and that not missing deadlines
is kind of important for succeeding at adulting.
But mostly, I think it’s not. Who am I to think I’m
above making mistakes? Who am I to think that I’m better than someone else just
because I keep a calendar?
This month I worked my last two weeks as a nanny. I
can’t tell you how many times I faced this same issue in the past year with
those kids. When I was vacuuming sequins out of the dryer, or sorting out six
different sets of puzzle pieces from each other, or taping together yet another
box, or especially the time I was on my hands and knees under the kitchen table
trying to clean up the bowl of rice krispies that had spilled, with their milk,
onto the carpet, and since dried. So as I am, in these situations and many
more, on the floor, I would sigh and think, I
am better than this. Somehow, in my white, privileged, middle-class, home,
private, and post-bac educated mind, I got the idea that I’m too good to ever
be on my knees on the floor. Then I would get to my wonderful, liturgical,
church where we kneel together in confession every Sunday and I would remember
the last time I was so close to the ground and try to repent of all those
entitled thoughts and feelings.
This month, I listened to Cheryl Strayed’s book Tiny Beautiful Things, in which she has
compiled a number of her “Dear Sugar” advice columns from The Rumpus. One response to an admittedly well-educated, woman
writer who struggles with jealousy:
A large part of your jealousy
probably rises out of your outsized sense of entitlement. Privilege has a way
of fucking with our heads the same way a lack of it does. There are a lot of
people who’d never dream they could be a writer, let alone land, at the age of
31, a six figure book deal. You are not one of them. And you are not one of
them because you’ve been given a tremendous amount of things that you did not
earn or deserve, but rather that you received for the sole reason that you
happen to be born into a family who had the money and wherewithal to fund your
education at two colleges to which you feel compelled to attach the word
“prestigious.”
Y’all, I have an outsized sense of
entitlement. I have been given a tremendous amount of things I did not earn or
deserve, including a nearly-free education at one of the Top Ten Regional
Colleges of the South, and a free one at one of the Top Ten Universities in my
field of graduate study.
These things have led me to believe
that I am strong, smart, capable and full of potential.
But they have also led me to believe
that I am above forgetfulness, or not showering, or peeling glue-like rice
cereal out of the carpet.
This month I also read Wearing God, by Lauren F. Winner. Her
meditations on different images for God also challenged me – particularly the
idea of God as a woman in labor:
If our
picture of strength is a laboring woman, then strength is not about refusing to
cry or denying pain. Strength is not about being in charge, or being
independent, or being dignified.
If our picture of strength is a laboring woman, then strength entails enduring,
receiving help and support, being open to pain and risk. If our picture of
strength is a laboring woman, strength entails entrusting yourself (to
medicine, or to the wisdom of your own body, or to the guidance of someone who
is there in the room with you). Strength entails giving yourself over to the
possibility of death.
This is just one example. God
demonstrates the strength of vulnerability over and over and over again. His
very death, so often sterilized and cloaked in euphemism for our comfort, is
the greatest, most powerful picture of humility, vulnerability and love.
Christ, the one actually entitled to glory, laud and honor, suffered for the
sake of my sorry, entitled self. And this is the image that sticks with me –
Christ showed his strength in giving himself over to death, and I can’t give
myself over to making some scheduling mistakes?
And while I certainly don’t plan on
birthing a child anytime soon, can’t I give up my idea of being strong and
dignified, above pain, weakness, struggle, or error? Can’t I give myself up to
the small opportunities to die to pride and entitlement? Can’t I sit still for just
a moment and appreciate the things I have, that I did not earn and most
certainly do not deserve? The big things are hard: my family, community and
education. So I’m starting small – with the everyday, the ordinary, the simple,
wonderful pieces that piece together my ordinary, extraordinary life. I’m
starting with the Tiny Beautiful Things.
