It occurred to me the other day that I’ve got life all wrong.

So today I decided to stay in bed until I got it right. 

It’s 12:55 in the afternoon, and I’ve gotten up, jumped in the pool, showered, and I’m ready to think out loud with my fingers on the keyboard.

 I think when I was born, I arrived with a plastic strip that ran the length of my spine like the plastic strip that keeps the batteries from working in new toys and things that need batteries to light up, flash, or make noise--the strip you pull out so the battery-operated thing can come to life. 

I think the plastic strip was a response to the trauma of being created in a body that was most likely flooded with cortisol since it was carrying a baby and the body had to hide from the world it knew until the baby was out and gone. I think the plastic strip was a way for the baby’s body to negotiate the shock of going from one universe (the mother) to another (no mother for a while and then a new mother) without a space suit or training. 

At 56, my spine is beginning to collapse. In my low back, one vertebra is moving forward and another is moving backwards. This is called spondylelothesis. It’s also called instability. My upper spine has a slight curve to one side. This is called scoliosis. That started a long time ago when I was a teenager. If I were to walk towards or away from you, you wouldn’t think, “What is wrong with her back?” I look, at least I think I do, normal. If I walk for an extended amount of time, over an hour sometimes, sometimes less, sometimes more, my toes start to go numb because my spine is pressing on a nerve. Walking on numb toes is a yucky feeling. 

The spine is like a guywire for the body. Without a spine, we are headed for jellyfish territory. Oh, the freedoms that come with the ability to stand erect! Oh, the applause we get as children when we first stand, take our first step! 

Our spines carry us forward into our lives! 

What if our ears were attuned to the hum of the spine, to the nerves that run top to bottom, to the attached tendons and ligaments? What would we hear? 

I’m starting to think my spine is rolling its eyes at me, which means, technically, I’m rolling my own eyes at myself.

My spine and my eyes are like, Sweetheart, why do you make such a big deal out of everything? Who cares if you gained four pounds? Who cares if you didn’t accomplish anything you feel is worthy of bragging about this week or this year or maybe ever? They are confused. They are doing their work. The building stands. Why is the building trying so hard to be something else? The spine and eyes don’t know what to do. They aren’t getting the resources they need because the blood flow in impinged by tension and a body that is more holding than flow. Okay, okay, the spine and eyes say, if you don’t want us, okay. We’re here just to listen to you and do what you want. We can go away.  

The spine and eyes are not alone. The brain and organs and even the teeth are also listening. Okay, okay, they say. We hear you. We can hurry this gig called life up. You’ll be able to be relax one day soon. 

I think I have misunderstood life. I think I saw it as transactional: I’ll be good and you’ll be good to me. I’ll work my ass off and I’ll get to sit at the table. I’ll prove over and over and over that I am worthy of being in a body and you’ll keep me alive. Something like that. Freshman year in high school the economics teacher taught us that Milton Friedman said there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

I took that to heart.

If life gives you lunch, and it seems that lunch came out of nowhere, out of the kindness of someone’s heart or from some wild and unlikely promotion at Whole Foods, the mental mathematics kicks in. If A is the free lunch, what do I have to do to equal B, the payment of the lunch so that I don’t end up a freeloader or in debt to the universe? How do I keep the books even? How do I show that I am not a baby, not a taker, not unaware of what I have been given? 

But what if this sort of equation is where my mind is brilliantly confused? What if what equals A, the sandwich, is not B, the value of the sandwich, but the value of the connection, of what got A to me? What if I give you $100 as a gift and what you carry in your head is not that in some way you need to repay me $100 in some form in this life, but that B a kindness miracle happened, and B is your willingness to accept love? What if B is your willingness to receive? 

How willing are you for someone to give you something precious? How willing are you to bathe in the fact that you live in a world where you may receive more than you believe you give? How willing are you to take the risk of being one who receives? 

I think part of me believes life is supposed to be hard. I say “I think” because I don’t want to fully own that thought. I am living in one of the most beautiful places I have ever lived, and essentially this life here is a gift, and yet I look out the window and my stomach hurts. There is so much to do here. So much that needs tending and labor. 

The thing is, I’m the only one saying it needs work. I could live here and it could be easy.  

What would I do with my hands? What would I do with my mind if I wasn’t full of an ocean that washed over my brain and organs saying you are in trouble, you are not doing enough, you are going to be found out, you are not alright, you better get moving, you better pay attention, you better look out. Trouble is coming and you better be working your butt off when it gets here so you can say, but look, look how hard I am working? Doesn’t that make me okay? Won’t that keep me safe? If I keep running, no one or nothing can ever truly get me. 

What if you’ve grown up in a stressful environment where your job was to be the peacekeeper? What if you are a living stress thermometer and your job is to take the temperature of every situation and make sure things don’t get to a boiling point? What if you grew up in a house that believed there was never enough time or resources, and that you swallowed those beliefs even though there was plenty of both in front of you? What if the belief made you see not enough even though you were sitting on enough?

What if these beliefs and voices were a plastic tag that ran the length of your spine, a tag that someone, you!, could pull out, freeing your body to operate unimpeded? Freeing you to be you? 

What if just by taking one full inhale and exhale, you could make your life 10% easier? What if you are carrying a ridiculous load on your shoulders, things you really don’t even care about? Things you carry because you have the weird feeling you wouldn’t know who you were without them, and even though you don’t like yourself very much, you still carry these things because it’s what you do.

I am terrified of living an easy life. It feels certain to fail. It feels like I’d be showing up hungry to a delicious meal, and that after I took my first amazing bite, someone would pull the tablecloth and the meal would scatter, and I would be the fool for sitting there.

Easy means “achieved without great effort: presenting few difficulties.” It means “(of a period of time or way of life) free from worries or problems.”

I feel like such an idiot.

It’s all right there, waiting.  

Yank it out, little sister, little brother; let it go.  

Because why not.

 

 

 

For C.