Here are two interesting passages side by side:
"I came to poetry relatively late in my life. When I decided to leave my job teaching middle school in order to enroll in an MFA program, I left behind a pension plan, health care, a house, and the small, independent music shop my husband and I had owned for over 20 years. And, frankly, the prospects of finding any sort of financial success or recognition as a poet are not good. Granted, the world seemed like a very different place 15 years ago, but that choice was not, even then, a wise fiscal decision. It was, however, one that changed my life and improved it immeasurably in all of the intangible ways that sustain us essentially. I have been, without question, unusually fortunate, and still, I would describe my present economic circumstances as rather bleak. To have little financial security in middle-age is very different from being broke when one is 25. Most poets live humble lives, I think, and maybe that is by temperament or design, or maybe it is just a necessity. To receive this fellowship is very, very wonderful. It provides not only economic support in a moment of great need but also no small amount of artistic validation and encouragement. It permits me in some way to honor again my own decision; it reminds me that this is the right life for me to be leading."
"I was so angry with my mother for so long. Now I’m old enough to recognize the disillusion I saw dawning on her face that night. Happiness is elusive. I’ve learned you can become the kind of person you swore you’d never be. Your sense of self can slip out from under you. You can fall so far. She must have known it couldn’t last. Her eyes were closed against the future."
This looks like one of those critical reading exercises from high school, and if this weren't my blog I would actually leave it like that. (Recently - okay, forever - I've secretly believed that everything worth writing has already been written, and the more I read, the more I feel that way.) But this isn't a critical reading exercise.
The first passage is Kathleen Graber's artist's statement from when she won an NEA grant, based partly on "The Telephone," which is an amazing poem. (Seriously, it took Nicholson Baker an entire novel to attempt to say what Kathleen Graber accomplished in just three lines. Although that part about falling in love with a man's voice over the phone made me shudder with sympathetic and foreshadowed angst, having just advised a younger co-worker to stay away from well-read men precisely because "there is no gold at the end of that rainbow, only coal" but that's just my present opinion)
The second passage is from "The Norwegians," a short story by Elliott Holt.
Recently, I have also been thinking a lot about the relationship between our choices and our happiness, and relatedly, what it means to want something.
I've come to the belief - not really so unique - that we get out of life only and exactly that which we demand. By which I mean, everyone (either deliberately or not) sets a bar in his or her life, and says to the world "I will accept nothing less than this." And they get nothing less, but they don't get anything more, either. (Obviously there are stories of people who randomly win the lottery, but I'm not talking about freak accident. That happens, but it's not relevant to what I'm discussing)
A very wise friend of mine once told me: "You can't force an opportunity. But when it arrives, you had better be ready to take it."
The difficult - the most difficult - thing about wanting anything is that the things we really want - success, vindication, love - arrive at their own pace. It's easy to say you have to wait for what you want, but the reality is that you have to accept nothing less than that. And maybe people do accept less, and maybe they don't. Maybe we don't set that bar where we always want to, sometimes we set it where we must. (Last night at dinner, me and a friend were talking about a mutual friend of ours. And my friend said of him: "I always got the impression that deep down, all he wanted was to find the girl of his dreams." Which I thought was a strange observation, because isn't that what everyone wants? But maybe not, not in the way that I'm talking about wanting things.)
And also somewhat related: I used to tell people that it's not our capabilities that distinguish us from each other, but rather our choices. But increasingly I also feel like maybe the two aren't very different. That the most important characteristic a person has is their ability to set that bar.
Here is why I posted those two passages side by side. In the second passage, the narrator says: "Your sense of self can slip out from under you." (She's referring to her mother, who in her forties had an affair with a work colleague.)
Meanwhile, in the second paragraph, Kathleen Graber writes "[This grant] permits me in some way to honor again my own decision; it reminds me that this is the right life for me to be leading."
What distinguishes people from each other is their ability to make difficult choices. To identify happiness, to know exactly where to set that bar in their lives, and then to refuse to compromise on where they have placed it.
But that raises a lot of questions:
If Kathleen Graber hadn't been such a good poet, then she would never have won an NEA grant, and her decision to leave her stable career would be seen as a huge mistake. She'd be just another failed dreamer (and isn't the world full of those?) BUT. Could she have been such a good poet if she didn't want it more than anything? Is she good because she refused to accept nothing less? Did she win the NEA grant, and then the PEN prize, and numerous other awards, because she couldn't do anything besides that? (And could someone who didn't really love poetry, in a way that few of us really ever love what we do, have been able to make those difficult sacrifices for it?) Or was she just lucky? (And by the way, there are plenty of people more lucky than her - it's not like she's the Poet Laureate of the United States. But again, I would compare this second thing with getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery)
In his admittedly unscientific book "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell says that people who achieve greatness in their field have usually spent about 10,000 hours practicing whatever it is that they want to do. There are 8,760 hours in a year.
As a kid, I remember my parents forcing me to practice piano, dance, ice skating and whatever else it was that we were studying. I also remember (and have mentioned before) the example of my old piano teacher, who, when he fractured his arm in multiple places, invented a lever system so he could continue to play the piano with his cast on. And I remember that apocryphal tale about a famous painter, who, when his hands failed, took to painting with the brush held between his toes. Anyway. My point is, we get what we demand out of life. Nothing less, but usually not more, either. We get the same thing from ourselves - what we demand.
"I came to poetry relatively late in my life. When I decided to leave my job teaching middle school in order to enroll in an MFA program, I left behind a pension plan, health care, a house, and the small, independent music shop my husband and I had owned for over 20 years. And, frankly, the prospects of finding any sort of financial success or recognition as a poet are not good. Granted, the world seemed like a very different place 15 years ago, but that choice was not, even then, a wise fiscal decision. It was, however, one that changed my life and improved it immeasurably in all of the intangible ways that sustain us essentially. I have been, without question, unusually fortunate, and still, I would describe my present economic circumstances as rather bleak. To have little financial security in middle-age is very different from being broke when one is 25. Most poets live humble lives, I think, and maybe that is by temperament or design, or maybe it is just a necessity. To receive this fellowship is very, very wonderful. It provides not only economic support in a moment of great need but also no small amount of artistic validation and encouragement. It permits me in some way to honor again my own decision; it reminds me that this is the right life for me to be leading."
"I was so angry with my mother for so long. Now I’m old enough to recognize the disillusion I saw dawning on her face that night. Happiness is elusive. I’ve learned you can become the kind of person you swore you’d never be. Your sense of self can slip out from under you. You can fall so far. She must have known it couldn’t last. Her eyes were closed against the future."
This looks like one of those critical reading exercises from high school, and if this weren't my blog I would actually leave it like that. (Recently - okay, forever - I've secretly believed that everything worth writing has already been written, and the more I read, the more I feel that way.) But this isn't a critical reading exercise.
The first passage is Kathleen Graber's artist's statement from when she won an NEA grant, based partly on "The Telephone," which is an amazing poem. (Seriously, it took Nicholson Baker an entire novel to attempt to say what Kathleen Graber accomplished in just three lines. Although that part about falling in love with a man's voice over the phone made me shudder with sympathetic and foreshadowed angst, having just advised a younger co-worker to stay away from well-read men precisely because "there is no gold at the end of that rainbow, only coal" but that's just my present opinion)
The second passage is from "The Norwegians," a short story by Elliott Holt.
Recently, I have also been thinking a lot about the relationship between our choices and our happiness, and relatedly, what it means to want something.
I've come to the belief - not really so unique - that we get out of life only and exactly that which we demand. By which I mean, everyone (either deliberately or not) sets a bar in his or her life, and says to the world "I will accept nothing less than this." And they get nothing less, but they don't get anything more, either. (Obviously there are stories of people who randomly win the lottery, but I'm not talking about freak accident. That happens, but it's not relevant to what I'm discussing)
A very wise friend of mine once told me: "You can't force an opportunity. But when it arrives, you had better be ready to take it."
The difficult - the most difficult - thing about wanting anything is that the things we really want - success, vindication, love - arrive at their own pace. It's easy to say you have to wait for what you want, but the reality is that you have to accept nothing less than that. And maybe people do accept less, and maybe they don't. Maybe we don't set that bar where we always want to, sometimes we set it where we must. (Last night at dinner, me and a friend were talking about a mutual friend of ours. And my friend said of him: "I always got the impression that deep down, all he wanted was to find the girl of his dreams." Which I thought was a strange observation, because isn't that what everyone wants? But maybe not, not in the way that I'm talking about wanting things.)
And also somewhat related: I used to tell people that it's not our capabilities that distinguish us from each other, but rather our choices. But increasingly I also feel like maybe the two aren't very different. That the most important characteristic a person has is their ability to set that bar.
Here is why I posted those two passages side by side. In the second passage, the narrator says: "Your sense of self can slip out from under you." (She's referring to her mother, who in her forties had an affair with a work colleague.)
Meanwhile, in the second paragraph, Kathleen Graber writes "[This grant] permits me in some way to honor again my own decision; it reminds me that this is the right life for me to be leading."
What distinguishes people from each other is their ability to make difficult choices. To identify happiness, to know exactly where to set that bar in their lives, and then to refuse to compromise on where they have placed it.
But that raises a lot of questions:
If Kathleen Graber hadn't been such a good poet, then she would never have won an NEA grant, and her decision to leave her stable career would be seen as a huge mistake. She'd be just another failed dreamer (and isn't the world full of those?) BUT. Could she have been such a good poet if she didn't want it more than anything? Is she good because she refused to accept nothing less? Did she win the NEA grant, and then the PEN prize, and numerous other awards, because she couldn't do anything besides that? (And could someone who didn't really love poetry, in a way that few of us really ever love what we do, have been able to make those difficult sacrifices for it?) Or was she just lucky? (And by the way, there are plenty of people more lucky than her - it's not like she's the Poet Laureate of the United States. But again, I would compare this second thing with getting struck by lightning or winning the lottery)
In his admittedly unscientific book "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell says that people who achieve greatness in their field have usually spent about 10,000 hours practicing whatever it is that they want to do. There are 8,760 hours in a year.
As a kid, I remember my parents forcing me to practice piano, dance, ice skating and whatever else it was that we were studying. I also remember (and have mentioned before) the example of my old piano teacher, who, when he fractured his arm in multiple places, invented a lever system so he could continue to play the piano with his cast on. And I remember that apocryphal tale about a famous painter, who, when his hands failed, took to painting with the brush held between his toes. Anyway. My point is, we get what we demand out of life. Nothing less, but usually not more, either. We get the same thing from ourselves - what we demand.
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