blahg, blahg, blahg…

Details, big picture. One, many. Singular, plural. Close up, far away. Cellular, systemic. Back yard, green pastures. Focus, pan. Look closely, take a step back. Rush in, rush out. 

A lot of thinking, not much writing this morning.

An interesting card to pull out of the box this morning as I woke (and went to sleep, as well) trying to think of the right word to describe something. I couldn’t come up with it. I did come up with despicable, but knew that really that wasn’t the right name. And besides, one cannot even think the word “despicable” without hearing Daffy Duck say it and then… well, it doesn’t work for another reason.

There is that saying about Eskimos and the number of words they have for snow. And last week I read Sue Monk Kidd’s wonderful novel, “The Secret Life of Bees”, in which one of the characters speaks of a particular society (the exact one escaping me in this early morning hour) that has hundreds of words for love. Her point is that we are sadly limited in ours; that we use the same word to describe both our feelings for a friend’s new hairstyle as we do for the friend herself. And surely there’s a difference.

But being limited, either by my own vocabulary or the vocabulary of our culture, I was having trouble finding the right name last night. It’s interesting, too, how perplexing things can become for us when we can’t name them. Or when we can’t find the right name. Or we’re labeling them the wrong thing. The name is important. It gives clarity and meaning. It can help one feel better about the unknown, because if you can at least call something (or someone) by its name, you’re on the way to understanding it.

But I’m sitting with the not knowing right now. I’m not sure at all what to call it. I do know that Daffy’s choice is way off. The name I’m seeking has no sense of negativity or judgement. No. That’s not it. Maybe it’ll come to me in time. Or maybe not. And maybe that will be fine. I do know what it is, even without knowing its name, it just makes it harder to describe.

[These are writing exercises. I pull a card out of a box, read what’s on it, write something related.]

Become the other person? Swap places with someone? Adapt the qualities of another? 

There seem to be many shows on television of late – not that I watch, but that I’ve seen advertised – that involve trading people, places or things. Swapping spouses, trading houses, somehow being or doing something that somehow allows the contestant to become something other than s/he or the family is in reality. (Oh… and then they call it “reality television”, but that’s another point all together.)

I wonder about the appeal of these shows, both for the participants and the audience. Do they provide some break in the humdrum of the ordinary? Is there a thrill in being someone else, if only for a little while? Is there some guilty pleasure met when you’re legitimately allowed to swap a spouse or a child or a neighbor for another? After all, it’s not really real. Just television. Right?

Or is it perhaps that it’s just downright easier to trade places with another person, to assume aspects of their life, rather than to change aspects of one’s own?

I work on a study that has the lofty goal of helping women achieve permanent lifestyle changes. It involves changing diet and exercise patterns, but even more, it involves changing an awful lot of other relationships that the women have; relationships with themselves, family, friends, and co-workers. It involves developing new relationships with the stresses of life, with the work of work, with how one deals with everything from caregiving for elderly parents to going out to dinner with the kids.

We all live with very ingrained thoughts and behaviors that develop within us over long periods of time. They’re hardly given up and/or replaced with others very easily, even if and when the others are better for us. No, I imagine it’s way easier to pack a suitcase and move in with the family next door, to assume all of their dysfunction rather than try to untangle the mess at home. On some level we all must believe this and that’s what makes it entertaining – both to watch and to participate in.

My doctor once said to me that the human body, for some mysterious reason, seems to like to exist with a certain amount of pain and discomfort. It actually, in an odd way, becomes comforting to be uncomfortable. Perhaps it just becomes familiar and it’s the familiarity that’s comfortable. But then, at the same time, there’s that craving to move next door. There’s that curiosity to be someone else, live someone else’s life, swap this for that. It’s a curious juxtaposition. 

Last night I led my study group through an exercise where we listed the pros and cons of (1) exercising and then (2) NOT exercising. We had things in all of the columns, but when we looked at the board afterward, we quickly saw that we’d been able to easily list many more pros for exercising and many more cons for not exercising than the other options. So then I asked, “If this is true, why do we so often get stuck here (pointing to the shorter lists)?”

And it’s true. That is where we get stuck. We get stuck with the familiar uncomfortable. We get stuck in the place where we long to become the other, but longing and becoming are two completely different things. One makes for good television. The other, sometimes, makes for good living.