Like you I’m sure, I subscribe to way too many mailing lists.
Since information fatigue seems more and more rampant, a whole lot of them are trying to manage my anxiety by telling me that yes, they’re going to inform me…but in only the most moderate doses, ones I just might be able to handle.
In fact, at least seven of those lists define themselves by reassuring me there are only going to be five bullet points.
Whether it’s Tim Ferriss’ “Five Bullet Friday” or Gretchen Rubin’s “5 Things Making Me Happy” or CNN’s “5 Things You Need to Know to Get Up to Speed and On With Your Day” …. these media giants have determined that 5 items is pretty much all the additional information I’m even able to consider processing.
And they’re probably right.
This week has been very brutal emotionally (specifics later this month) so like my newsletter mentors have modeled for me, I’ve decided to be easy on myself and only share five things.
And rather than “Five Self Care Tips” or “Five Affirmations that Will Fix Any Problem,” here are five things that made me tear up this week.
Why tears?
Well, I find forced optimism…forced.
More importantly, as Dolly Parton said in Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias:
“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.”
And finally, if you recall my email from this summer re: Papa’s rules HERE, one of the House Rules is “No crying for no reason.”
Quite literally every time someone reads that before entering my home they have the same response.
“There’s always a reason I’m crying.”
Anyway, here are five of my reasons for tears this week.
#1 • MUSIC
I read a wonderful essay in the LA Times about one of my favorite pieces of music, Bach’s Ich Hab Genug HERE and how it relates to our Covid times.
The cantata’s subject is death and the title translates to “I Have Enough.”
It is about letting go.
It’s easy to forget (or just never know) that not only did Bach’s parents die when he was young, as did his first wife, but so did 6 of his 20 children.
…6 of 20 children…
He takes us to a place he knows quite well, in other words.
The version of the piece that always moves me most is by one of my favorite singers, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
She performed it in an indelible Peter Sellar’s production twenty years ago.
Lorraine sang the entire piece alone on a bare stage except for a dancer holding a light.
She was dressed in a hospital gown and had an IV attached, portraying a terminal patient awaiting the sublime transformation of death.
If all that weren’t enough, many in the audience knew that not only had her sister died from cancer relatively recently, but also that Lorraine Hunt Leiberson herself was in remission from the disease.
She would pass away in a few short years after this performance.
Here’s the amazing thing though:
The tears the piece provokes for me are strangely almost “feel good tears.”
They come from a place of release and comfort, where death is “a mission accomplished, a good night’s sleep and the cheery trip home to report the good news of salvation.”
Listen HERE and let me know if you agree.
#2 • CRACKPOT EXPERIENCES
A few years after college, I shared a downtown loft in Chinatown / the Lower East Side.
It was an exciting, scrabbly moment in my life, WAY before that area of the city was trendy and had a $50 artisanal candle shop on every street corner.
My roommates were artists and academics, equally attracted as I was to the spiritual (make that “crackpot”) universe.
In fact, even when rent was past due, they both regularly consulted a pet psychic.
By far the funniest detail of this time (and I swear this is true) is that one of them focused her psychic sessions on asking her cat’s opinions of her PhD thesis.
Even though my roommate’s feline friend did guide her to a successful completion and academic awards, I was skeptical, to say the least.
Yesterday, though, my friend Cristy gifted me with my first pet psychic reading so I could communicate with Belle.
It may have been nothing more than a sweet sham, but honestly…no half-hour of therapy has ever been as gut-wrenching.
I’ve never felt so connected to anyone…plus it’s allowed me to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in an entirely new light.
#3 VIDEO (and more music, too)
Another one of my favorite musicians is Simone Dinnerstein.
Hers was the first classical concert Belle ever attended where Simone played the piece in this video HERE.
(And, as everyone knows, my little dog’s favorite composer is Schubert).
I love this visual representation of the feeling of the music, focused on Simone’s family.
And I also love the title of the album, “Something Almost Being Said,” from the wonderful poem of Philip Larkin HERE, particularly its last lines:
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
#4 • MESSAGES FROM STRANGERS
I’m not going to reproduce them here obviously, but every week I get several powerful emails from people who’ve experienced positive transformation through something I’ve shared in my courses and books.
(There are also some lovely public comments on this month’s and other meditations HERE though ).
It’s incredibly moving to know that something I shared or created actually made a difference for someone I’ve never met.
Those emails have enormous value and I sincerely thank you (through tears of gratitude.)
#5 • POETRY
Well for that there’s always Mary Oliver…
In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
In these challenging times––and frankly always––I’m truly wishing you a week of laughter through tears.
Namaste for Now,
