retrospective

Looking back through the posts mom and I have made in this space during 2011, I see a shift in my focus over the twelve months. As the year began, I was in a very strong and powerful place. I had made some decisions about my life and was enjoying exploring those choices. I would hazard to say our first koan, about ethical awareness and consciousness, came more out of where I was at the time than where mom was.

Sunset - Land's End - January 1, 2012

We covered a lot of ground quickly and briefly moving from topic to topic. And while mom's post tended to be about what she was experiencing and feeling, my posts tended towards what I was thinking about and seeing. Getting up on my soapbox about a few things was both fun and slightly embarrassing (though well received). By mid-spring, I felt like the blog had settled into a pace and flow.

Sunset - Land's End - January 1, 2012

Then, there was a silence, which was very much related to life things happening and not anything between mom and me. But I can see someone reading something into it. At the same time, I know that as I look and think back over that time, there was something shifting for me during that time. I started to go to a much more internal, vulnerable place. Asking myself more personal questions. Not focusing on the world at large as much. And in many ways, less willing to share that journey in a public place.

Sunset - Land's End - January 1, 2012

After the silence, there was a flood. For me, July stands out almost as a separate blog. 60 posts. Reading through them is beautiful and bewildering. It is so different from the other content. No agenda. No purpose. No koan. Just simple daily observations and pictures.

Afterwards, it was hard to move back to content driven posts. Which is interesting retrospectively, because the goal of posting everyday for the month was to get us back in the habit of writing on the blog. I wonder if we almost burnt ourselves out that month; I definitely found the commitment of posting everyday sometimes to be daunting. Or perhaps it was the fact that after July was over, we did have a new koan or direction to move into. And one cannot forget that the fall signaled the start of the school year for both mom and myself.

Sunset - Land's End - January 1, 2012

While I'm not upset about how the blog dwindled in the last few months of the year, I wish that it had turned out differently. I don't that it could have knowing the state that I was in from September through December, but that doesn't stop me from struggling with my unfulfilled expectations. In the end, I do feel like I was able to connect more with my mom, which was what this whole project was about anyway.

No one said it would be easy

Highly edited photo of a sticker at the bottom of a street lamp near our apartment in SF.

Around the age of 13 or 14, even though my strongest subjects in school had always been math and science, I latched on to the idea that I wanted to be a novelist. A writer. I loved imagining that someday the dog-eared book on someone's nightstand would have my name on the cover.

Now even though I wanted to be a writer, I didn't really spend a lot of time writing. I wasn't bad at writing, but I didn't do it unless there was a reason - an assignment, report, paper, etc. On the other hand, I loved to read. Summers were spent waking up to pull the novel from my bedside and reading it until I could barely walk downstairs because I was fainting with hunger. Libraries weren't safe from my methodical hand (still aren't) as I would check out as many books as they would allow at a time.

Still, the idea of writing books was so strong in my imagination that I purposefully went to a university with a Creative Writing program. Ever the over-achiever, once I was at college, I found myself adding a second major - Music - and soon falling in love with Dance, which would become my minor on top of my two majors.  As a side note, they don't let students at my university have two majors and a minor any more and I totally understand why. Yet somehow, amidst all of the rehearsals, classes, performances, my campus job, studying abroad, etc, I managed to get myself in the position of writing a thesis for my Creative Writing major during my senior year.

Now a thesis for a Creative Writing major sounds great, right? No research. No documenting sources. No experiments or data. Just doing what I had dreamed about doing - writing. My thesis was to be a novela that told the story of young girl from an Arthurian story I had read in one of my literature courses. She was a minor character in the story who did an amazing thing that was glossed over to get to the more important parts about, you know, the men. So, I was going to give her a voice and story. Sadly, she ended up stealing mine.

Early on in the process, I started to panic a little bit.  Over three years, I had never created a habit of writing so actually making the time to do it was very difficult. And when I did make the time, I couldn't think of anything to write. After a few months of struggling, I had pretty much psyched myself out. My story revolved around my character doing nothing over and over again. I couldn't articulate my problems to my advisor, so I just kept trudging along, alone and afraid of when everyone would find out that my work wasn't really going anywhere.

Needless to say about three weeks before my thesis was due, the lack of anything substantial in my writing came to light. And the stress and negative feedback from my advisor over the following weeks was enough to make it completely impossible for me to write for the next two years. Slowly over time and with help of amazing mentors in the dance community, I was able to begin writing again. It's been seven years this May since I graduated from college and I still struggle with writing today.

But each little step - carrying a notebook around to jot ideas in, writing a grant for the organization I worked for, starting a blog with my mom - is helping me get over the trauma of that experience and to continue struggling towards my dream of my own dog-eared book.

Time for a New Koan

What is the nature of struggle? I believe I am not alone when I say much of my life has been about struggle. How are we going to make ends meet this month? What are we going to do about fixing the car? Are we able to meet the needs of our growing family? How can I possibly find the time to do that? How am I going to get my needs met when I feel compelled to give to meet the needs of others? The list is endless and surprisingly familiar to many people. If there are different questions raised by the nature of struggle, the fact we all find the subject relevant in our lives is telling. Simply put, struggle is contending with an opposing force or an adversary. Life is struggle. Just the very act of sitting, standing or walking puts our bodies in opposition to gravitational forces. For some these ordinary movements are not easy, especially if there are physical limitations due to age or infirmity and so even simple things we take for granted can be a struggle. But is struggle necessary? Consider this story.

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. On the day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the moth for several hours as the moth struggled to force the body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. It just seemed to be stuck.



Moth resting on the sidewalk



What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening was the way of forcing the fluid from around the body of the moth into its wings, so it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the moth of health. www.inspiring-quotes-and-stories.com/emperor-moth.html

I wrote a poem over 20 years ago about emerging from a cocoon.

Creation is a process ongoing. From the point of origin it begins, not unlike the caterpillar moving through this world. After a time of growth and development it stops,wraps in a cocoon and all its energies are directed toward the inner working. Out of this is transformed a butterfly, no longer limited to earth's surface, but airborne into the clouds. sam 1987

I was a newly trained Montessori teacher and I was eager to begin transforming my own life and those of the children I served. Two of those children were my own daughters, Lauryn and Krista. I notice I didn't mention any struggle then, just a fluid transformation. My children were little then and still close to me and I knew I could provide them with the gift of a Montessori education. But back then I already felt life to be a struggle, so there was no need to articulate it. It just was. Life is struggle, or is it? If we take the story of the emperor moth as a metaphor for our lives, it would seem we do need struggle to shape us and give us strength and character.

Our new koan is to look at the nature of struggle. What does it mean to struggle? Is striving for something beneficial? What if there were no such thing as struggle? How can we live lives of grace and ease and let go of struggle? Should we even try?