Making Life Less Difficult

Cornelia at the train tracks

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?"- George Eliot, Middlemarch

Sometimes we may be walking along talking about decreased bone density, the missteps of our hair stylists, or the nightmares of bathing suit shopping. (Cornelia swears by a "miracle suit", Vickie has discovered the "tank-ini", and I conveniently see no need for a bathing suit since I never go in the water.)

In other words, we are not always deep, but these two friends of mine are brilliant and substantial women, and I am very grateful that we are on this journey side by side. All three of us are "women-of-a-certain-age"...no longer young, that's for sure...and we are facing the accompanying changes concurrently: kids grown and gone, careers gradually shifting towards retirement and mentoring, undeniable reminders of physical aging, and ongoing efforts to craft graceful and meaningful lives.

What we often do, as I suppose is generally true of girlfriends––and I have to wonder here if men friends do this for each other?––is share the narrative of our experiences, air our questions, frustrations, and grievances, and seek interpretation and counsel from each other. In other words, we try to make sense of things. We check in. We encourage and validate. We gently redirect when needed. We accrue wisdom and put it into words.

Ah, yes, words. We are full of them.

But we also laugh a lot.

As between-the-line readers of this blog know (and maybe it is even more obvious than that) I have been trying to navigate through a rough patch for a few months now. I have probably told you already that it concerns a tragic and ongoing nightmare that is not "mine" but near enough to cast a dark shadow on my life, and it has dredged up a lot of very fundamental issues. I am learning about boundaries, for example, and about acceptance of what cannot be changed, and about one's right to enjoy one's life even if it has to be reconciled with the fact that someone you care about is most emphatically unable to do so, perhaps ever again. I finally see that drinking from someone else's deep well of bitter sorrow does not diminish it for them. It remains at the same level, no matter how much you try to swallow.

I am learning, too, about the origins of some of my habits...my reflexive tendency to try to help or rescue, for example, or thinking that I should and feeling guilty when I don't. I thought these were virtues, but without moderation they are misguided folly. And I am learning to take my own side sometimes, and to respect my own needs. It's about time.

Some of this learning is painful, and some of it is taking me back to long-ago days that I would just as soon not revisit, but all of it ultimately distills into basic age-old themes. The coexistence of the terrible and the beautiful, for example, and the acknowledgement of both, and of sorrow living right across from joy, the pair of them inhabiting the same instant. It's about the recognition of loss and impermanence, too...and the ability to live fully with that awareness.

They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And that's what has happened for me lately. I am in such a state of readiness, the whole universe seems to be my teacher right now. It's exciting in a way. Life as an intensive class...but with a real sense of urgency, time's winged chariot bumping up against my heels.

I have been reading the book Middlemarch by George Eliot...another smart and amazing woman whose little asides and bits of wisdom reveal a remarkably spirited and modern sensibility. I appreciate many of her quotes but chose the one above for this post...because I do believe that we are here to make life less difficult for one another, and that's one of the most important lessons. (Which is not the same as bearing someone's pain for them or jumping in front of a runaway train to try to stop it. See? I think I'm getting the hang of this.)

Which brings me back to my Besties, Vickie and Cornelia, two of my favorite teachers ever. We walked at Ocean Beach on the weekend (that's Cornelia crossing the train track above) and decided to eat lunch in a new Thai place in Lompoc afterwards. We started out with spring rolls and dipping sauce, followed by Tom Kha Gai, that heavenly soup with lemongrass and coconut milk, and then there was a bowl of fried rice and pork and pineapple, and we never ran out of things to say, and the late afternoon sunlight filled the room...and we left feeling full, in the nicest way.