I’m sitting in my mother’s bed at my childhood home in South Brooklyn. The rain is pitter-pattering on the window. It is a gray Saturday and Reva is fast asleep in her pack-and-play, which she is almost too tall for. We’ve just come back from a relaxing week away in the Hamptons with my husband Brandon’s family. It was your classic beach trip. Icy cold coffee in the morning, super sweet corn on the cob and grilled everything at night. We spent most of the day outside: walking, biking, swimming. It was perfect.
Today is the first time I’ve spent more than five minutes on my laptop in 8 days. While I was away, I was constantly tempted by my to-do list. I need to buy Reva all her daycare supplies. I need to email so and so. I need to figure out what to make for Rosh Hashana. I want to write my newsletter. So many drafts!
Ideas that needed to be jotted down before they floated away like a helium balloon in the hands of a baby. I had a backlog of work emails to answer. I had to contact the several women who I would be interviewing for my new series on motherhood. I had to map out the editorial plan for the next two months. I had to do yoga and meditate. I had to I had to I had to.
I know that I’m not alone in constantly feeding my always hungry lists. The constituents catalog in my mind, stacking one on top of the other, not unlike a Jenga tower. I knock off a few items for the satisfaction of a mental “cross-off” just as soon as 3 more seep in between the cracks. The tower grows taller, a true NYC skyscraper.
This past week, I decided that I would do nothing. I would trade in the satisfaction of crossing things off for the satisfaction of being in the moment with my family. I watched the waves as they crashed over the opalescent rocks on the shore line. I played with Reva, shoveling wet, gritty sand into her heart-shaped pink bucket to make sand castles. I (mostly) didn’t look at my phone.
The older I get, the more I realize that life is a push and pull between doing and succumbing. When I was younger, I always believed that there would be one thing that would click everything else into place. One thing that would finally, completely, fill my cup. All other desires would wither away once this one thing happened. When I hated high school, I thought that I would get into the perfect college and find my clique and have loads of friends, and be happy all the time. Then I thought that I would meet my husband and be infatuated for the rest of my life. Everyday would feel like my birthday. So consumed with love that my heart and my mind would be full forever, leaving no space for doubt, anxiety, indecision, uncertainty. After I got married, I thought that whatever itty bitty space was left inside me would certainly be filled by the birth of my child. Finally, I would have it all and I would be it all.
And yet, the seesaw teeters, wavering back and forth, undecided as to whether or not it will ever find balance. One half is always pushing, growing, moving, expanding. This half of my personality is desperate to do more and be more. To make the most of every day, of every hour, of ever minute, of every second. I want to be important. I want to make my mark on the world. I want a bigger apartment and another child. I want a hobby and I want to join a book club. I want to travel the world and finally complete the gallery wall in my apartment. I want to be a CEO and I want to “do it all” with ease. The other half is crushed by this desperation to be someone and wants to let the pieces fall where they may. This side wants me to look in the mirror and accept that if everything around me, including me, would stop moving, it would still be ok. Life would still be meaningful and beautiful and worth while. This side says that more is not always better. This side wants to sell jams at the farmers market and home school her children. With time, I’m coming to realize that it’s not actually about which side you lean towards more. Instead, it’s about the kinetic energy that holds the seesaw together. The push and the pull. The give and the take.
I watched a movie last night called “The Truffle Hunters” which felt like a taste of what my grandparents might call the “good old days.” Old Italian men spend their days climbing the hills of Piedmont, searching for fat and fragrant white truffles. They live in the houses they were born in. They don’t spend their days on or even around social media. Perhaps they wonder if they might like living in Sardinia more, or whether this career is what they were destined to spend their life doing. It certainly seems like they find contentment in the predictable rhythm of their lives. They appear to enjoy singing the same old song over and over again. They hug their dogs and kiss their wives. They haggle with truffle dealers, they sell their prized tartufi. They spend the earnings. They wash it down with a glass of Barolo and do it again the next day. A simple life. A good life.
When I watch movies like this, I always think of a quote I read somewhere years ago, which went something like this:
You are simultaneously the entire solar system, and you are but a fleck of dust in the atmosphere. You are everything, and you are nothing.
I am everything and I am nothing. Everything that I do has infinite potential and cosmic importance. Nothing I do is that paramount and nothing will last forever. Eventually I will die and you will too.
Until then, I will get up every day and decide what side of the seesaw I will put my weight on today. Will I build or will I rest?
I’ll leave you with this other quote I saw on Instagram, which sings to the same tune as my article:
Have a wonderful weekend. I love you, dear reader.
Hugs,
Jane