How many of you have found yourself in an unlikely shape because of the pressures from work, home, family, friends, or society? How many of you feel unrecognizable as you struggle to make it through the day?
I know I have.
One very distinct memory comes to mind when I think about pressure and how it changed me.
It was in 2013 when I changed work locations (not entirely because I wanted to) and I found myself in a new building, with new colleagues, new courses to teach, new curriculum to figure out and no department members that knew the school, students or staff. Both the department and the curriculum had been wiped clean like a blank slate and I found myself utterly alone and drowning the the amount of work that it takes to run a department pretty much alone and from scratch.
Looking back now, I realize that it was the most stressful work year of my life.
And the day I realized that the stress had changed me was when I was sitting in our basement office frantically working through yet another entire weekend just to complete lesson planning for the following week. I remember it was a cloudy November afternoon and when my youngest daughter walked into the room (again) and tried to get my attention (again) I turned to her then tiny 3 year old body and barked "WHAT?!" after she tried to gain my attention.
Her response to me made me freeze in my tracks.
When she dropped her head, eyes downcast to the floor, shoulders slouch moving slowly away from me she whispered apologetically, "Sorry mommy..." in response. That's when I knew something was deeply wrong.
Something had changed me.
In Allison Dickson's book The Other Mrs. Miller I was reminded of this moment when Wyatt said, "Pressure forces people into a lot of unlikely shapes." It rang true to me and not only did I recognize this in myself but also in what's happening in the world right now.
We typically live a life so full of appointments, responsibilities, events, meetings and get togethers that it's all too easy for us to loose sight of ourselves and become misshapen. Sometimes the pressures are situational and temporary - like my story of starting a new position at a new location. As stressful as that year was, it eventually came to and end.
But often it's simply how we go on living our lives day to day that wreaks havoc on us. We go about doting all the I's and crossing all the T's just so that we can say we're doing our part - but it ultimately makes us unrecognizable in the end. It causes us to change shape and lose sight of who we are.
Even in terms of the characters in this book we see how quickly they become twisted and misshapen doing things that (at least to me) are absolutely inconceivable. Even though this book made me question the goodness in people and the lengths people will go to get what they want in life, it was also interesting as I wanted to figure out how twisted and sick people can get. It's far from any experience I've ever had but it spoke to the human experience of pressure wreaking havoc on one's life.
You'd think that as things get ugly one would stop and say, "NO. This is not what I want in life." But this book showed me that under pressure we change shape and don't necessarily do anything about it likely because we can get away with it. As Phoebe's best friend Vicki points out, "The cream always rises. But turds also float."
Why make a change if what you're doing is working for you in some way?
Let me ask you this my dear readers, when the pressure is on are you the cream or are you the turd?
Because now that some of the pressure is off and we're spending our time going to much fewer places, generally doing less things, and seeing less people, we have the capacity to make some change.
Many people are feeling the pressure of home-bound living, social distancing and self-isolation citing boredom and anxiety as their primary ailments but some are not.
Some, like me, are taking a careful look at who they are and how they live their lives. Some people are taking this time to get back "in shape" now that the pressure is off. Even though we've given up so much and lost so many of our freedoms, we have a chance to find ourselves again.
Most notably I feel like now that the pressure is off I feel like I have the time to tune into what really matters to me the most. To take care of those things that I truly care about and that are within my control. It's given me this rare opportunity to live my life in a different shape.
What about you? What shape do you find yourself in?
On behalf of one of my readers who wished to remain anonymous, here is her post:
ReplyDeleteI came from a very dysfunctional family. Every time there was a problem (and there was a lot of problems) my sister, who was 7 years older than me, would say, "It’s all your fault and you don’t really belong to us - you're an orphan!". So I spent most of my life playing it small so that I wouldn’t rock the boat. Then one day I read a poem by Marianne Williamson. I read about how we are not afraid of the dark; we are afraid of the light. That's when I realized who my true self was. I stepped out of the box of playing it small and became the proper shape I was meant to be.