Dreams of Others

Crowd of protesters holding signs
Photo by Life Matters on Pexels

I see you:

Standing there with the sign
Walking for miles
Shouting ’til you’re hoarse
Reading books
Watching documentaries
Calling people out
Giving yourself up
Wondering, constantly wondering, what more can I do?

You’ve acquired a new anxiety.
You’re standing in someone else’s pain.
You’re up at night, up early in the morning, earlier than usual.
You need more hours now because the world needs you.

It’s not like you’re looking for recognition but every once in a while, you ask yourself why are you doing this? Or, can you keep doing this? Or, is this really what you think it is?

And you feel a bit guilty for asking, for not knowing, for having the need to know. You feel guilty for enjoying the softness of your bed at night because so many for so long went without softness, were only fed in order to be owned, were instructed to walk on broken glass and not bleed.

So, you think to yourself, my blisters don’t matter, my hoarse voice don’t matter. My tired shoulders don’t matter, my new anxiety….

Wait.

I have something for you.

Deep below the stillness, there is a great vibration. The plates are shifting, thunderous like a million beating hearts thumping at the exact same time. It is a rumbling approval from the earth, from the rocks and the bones that were here the whole time.

Believe it. This is your reward.

Heads of long ago are turning toward you. They are raising their eyebrows, sucking in their cheeks for the first time since they were lost — the great thinkers, the great workers, there in black and white, with bent backs carrying heavy loads, squinting tired eyes, and craning tired necks. “Really?” They’re nudging each other to look, restless bony elbows into bony rib cages. They can’t believe it but they’re letting themselves smile. They’re dropping shovels and pens, they’re pulling babies into their chests. They’re mouthing the words they’d always hoped to say. It’s happening…”

An unrest, an awakening, a clumsy, angry scribble on our timeline that is already being seen as a milestone.

But for now, the dust and the heat. The voices and the hands up. The walking and the screaming. And you, beautiful you, fighting, dreaming, wondering, tired…

You can see it now: the dreams of others coming up through the ground, inhaled by a new set of warriors, by your beautiful mouth, taking in the new language and the new pain, harsh in the throat, jagged going down into the lungs and stomach.

It’s hard to see all the way through. It’s hard to keep walking.

We know, the voices whisper, so pained, so patient, they’ve been allowed to reach across time and space, to send their dreams through the layers of the earth.

We know.

Acting Out

grayscale photo of police riot team on pedestrian lane

Riots are not the problem.

In Family Therapy, the person who acts out — the cheating husband, the depressed wife, the son who threw a brick through the neighbor’s car window — this person is not to be vilified, not to be punished. Quite the opposite, actually.

If there is a real commitment to fixing the problem, to closing the wound, the one who acts out is to be celebrated, indeed appreciated for bringing the deep-seated problems of the family to the surface, where they can finally be addressed.

It is the entire family that is sick. A therapist knows this, which is why they can sit with their hands folded in their laps and not show a look of disgust at the mention of a broken window. They don’t have what they need yet. Not even close.

Instead of launching into lecturing, they keep looking.

Are they wrong? Are they being soft?

Imagine watching a movie where the husband beats the wife for being depressed. You wouldn’t root for that guy.

Yet, when the police come in with batons and tear gas, there is applause. When the president unleashes the dogs, he is commended, for being strong, for standing up to the “children” in the streets.

Children. Ironic.

Because the ones at the podiums, the ones with the batons, they’ve stopped searching for answers. They’re not interested in, or capable of, repair.

So they, themselves, become children, gathering up their toys and pulling them in close, pointing to their rules and hitting back harder, claiming with bellowing voices and fists raised that they’re ending the violence when, in fact, they’re giving birth to it.

And to stop the children from acting out (it doesn’t matter which children you think I’m referring to), to stop the cycle of violence, you have to keep looking, you have to rewind past the raised batons, past the broken windows, way back before the streets filled, back before the breath was lost.

If you want to solve the problem, you have to believe that you don’t have the answer yet, and you have to get down on one knee, at eye level, with humility, with the belief that you’re both hurting from the same thing, and you have to speak only to show that you’re listening.

And then you have to listen.

Why Our Cities Are Burning

[Certain Voices Aren’t Being Heard. Here’s one of them. Please listen.]

I hear on the news that a cop station went up in flames and I’m like yeah. Then I feel bad about cheering for that shit, but if you’re cheering at all right now, no matter what side you’re on, you’re cheering for that kind of shit. Seems like we can’t get away from it, this loop we’re in.

Stop, no, stop no, leave me alone, you’re resisting, stop, no, STOP, please, no, kill, silence, oops, tears, rage, but he said oops, NO, violence, rage, violence, disgust, look, look, kill, he was one of ours, kill, kill, reframe, circulate, sigh, back inside, nothing to see here, back away, no, stop, no, no, NO…

Riots seem like the worst thing from the safe side of the TV but they’re not such a bad deal when you’re in the streets, when your life is nearly lost every day, when you’re expecting murder to happen around you, from the good guys, from the bad guys.

It wears you out, getting asked to be softly and gently murdered every time you go outside.

Besides, there is always a riot on the inside. Time people knew. Time to turn the inside out and let the fire burn down something else for a change.

And, no, I don’t fucking care what I burn because no one cares that I’ve been burning my whole life so why should I care what my hands are doing, that I’m throwing a stone, that I’m breaking a window, that I’m dropping a match.

Every day I’m told this city ain’t mine. This glass, this road, this sidewalk. It always seems to be someone else’s. So why should I think anything different now.

Nothing’s mine, not even this goddamn match, not even this hate. These things were given to me as gifts, gifts I didn’t ask for, passed down like a heavy cabinet I never wanted, carted from house to house from city to city.

So now I’m giving it back. I’m sick of crowding my own fucking house with this stuff. I’m giving it back and I don’t care what you do with it. I hope it’s a burden. I hope I’m a burden. That’s all I can hope for now: that you feel my weight, that you hate the fire as much as I do, that maybe it gets inside you too and you can’t get away from it, and you have to live with it and we can finally be the same.

Cuz maybe then you’ll do something, or just burn, like me.

Going Out for a Smoke in Uncertain Times

One of my most vivid young adult memories is with my high school girlfriend. We were 17, on the verge of graduating, each of our colleges already determined.

My mom was home and we wanted to get away but it was raining outside. With some arm-tugging, my girlfriend convinced me we could find a dry spot to have a cigarette.

So out we went, into the April rain, getting completely soaked by the time the storm door bounced shut. In reaching the curb, we were so immediately wet that the falling rain didn’t matter anymore.

We jumped in puddles, we looked straight up at the droplets coming down and let them fall on our cheeks and into our mouths. We stood under overflowing gutters and let the water pound our heads like hammers, our shirts heavy, stretching to our knees and sticking to our ribs.

We walked a mile. We were more interested in being alive than hooking up.

Without talking about it, we ended up at my old elementary school. With its giant covered walkway out front, it was the perfect place for a smoke.

But our cigarettes were soggy.

We huddled together in a dry spot, not cold, but trembling. We kissed a little but that wasn’t the best part.

The rain hitting the pavement, a million little white splashes exploding and disappearing, the drum roll on the roof, our synchronized breaths, and knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that no one was going to walk by. That’s what made it magical.

We sat in the last chapter of our own story, a silent contract between us, a sad joy in our stomachs, our thoughts already traveling in very different directions, down different highways to different exits, different orientations, different roommates, different cafeterias…

Both of us exactly the same in that moment, unsure of everything, crushed by the complexity of fear and love, hating the real world, hands on each other in cold clench, as if squeezing hard enough would keep it raining, would fill the roads, flood the highways, erase the walk home.

The past, present, and future all happening at the same time, while the gutters filled and the puddles rose.

I Miss My Gurus

One of the things that make self-isolation hard is that I can’t visit my gurus.

My gurus don’t have websites. They don’t tweet excerpts from their books. They don’t have a thousand likes. They’re usually not available anywhere else but in the world.

And they don’t think of themselves as gurus.

My gurus are hidden in plain sight: the Lyft driver who’s read more books than my English professor, the scuba store owner who has a smile so big on his face it almost does fit on it, the electrician who seems more interested in connecting with me on a human-to-human level than fixing my light, the clergywoman seemingly fine with no recognition at all.

They don’t preach. They live.

They’ve unlocked the room we all want to get into. They have the sun inside them. The things they do are not the person they are. The outer world is like a game; it’s less important where they land or what cards they draw. They’re more interested in the action itself and the action that follows.

Impact and empathy – the ability to truly know someone and go deeper into themselves – is the reward.

I love how I can’t seek out my gurus. I just have to live, trust the world, and let them find me.

How to Slay Negative Comments

When you’re feeling positive, it can seem like the world is more negative. You notice all the negative things people say, about themselves and about each other.

People don’t mean to be mean; it’s usually just a habit, conditioned by the generally accepted grievances that go with having a job, a partner, a family, a house, etc. It’s totally understandable.

But, you know, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to kill these comments right there on the spot, not as the sayer but as the hearer. And you can do just that. You can zap them with your positivity ray and watch them whither.

Ready for the trick? Here it comes.

Smile and don’t say anything.

Without oxygen, a fire can’t rage. Your positivity stays intact, the negative comment dwindles, your counterpart gets to make a decision, and your sacred breaths are reserved to fuel more important things.

The Wasp Among Butterflies

Early evening yesterday, after looking at a fallen tree in the yard and a deflated basketball, I snapped at my daughter. A loud snap, from the stomach and lungs.

Crap.

I was having such a good day, perfect marks for the peaceful dad – and then BOOM! This happens. There goes my A.

But I’ve been working on this up and down thing so I was ready.

It’s just a snap, I thought. One snap, a fragment of mood that deserves a space among the thousands of other fragments. Though it’s a part of me, it doesn’t define me, nor does it define my relationship with my daughter.

Here’s the best part: I get to stand back and let it pass through, a lumbering wasp amongst the butterflies.

And on with the evening.

Jogging After the Fireball

My grad school professor, in describing my laid-back ambition said it was as if a fireball were blazing down the street and there I am jogging gingerly after it, big dopey smile on my face, looking around at the sidelines.

I think of this jogging metaphor often.

It’s widely believed that sprinting is better than jogging. You get there more quickly, which means you can move on to the next thing more quickly, which means you get more done, more quickly.

All true, but there is a problem with this thinking.

When you’re sprinting, you focus on the finish line. You miss out on the buildings and the trees going by. You miss the woman standing in her doorway watering plants. If running fast is the goal and you’re not looking around, you may miss the shadowy alleyway that cuts through the block, and gets you where you’re going more quickly.

You miss all these things. Your life becomes a series of finish lines, met and unmet. Everything else falls away.

With jogging, you get the finish line, but you also get the wind, the shortcuts, the city, and the kind, lovely people cheering you on.

The Same Memory at the Exact Same Time

I sing songs to my daughter as part of her nighttime ritual.

My wife does it too.

She sings show tunes.

I sing rock ballads and alternative – Aerosmith, Poison, Radiohead.

I don’t get the lyrics right but she doesn’t seem to mind. The music quiets her down more than anything else, more than books, more than baths.

Sometimes she sings the chorus with me but, usually, she just lays still, eyes wide open with 4-year-old thoughts, fresh ponderings to figure out the important things in life:

Which stuffed animal do I hold?
Why can’t I let the pigeon ride the bus?
Will I have raspberries in my cereal tomorrow?

I’ve thought about playing the actual songs by the real artists but decided against it. I wanna delay that moment. To be honest, I’m hoping I’m not there for it. I think it will be better that way.

My daughter, in her future bedroom, surrounded by friends, someone puts on a retro track from the ’90s and her body tingles. She knows the song but she’s never heard it before, she can’t quite place it, and then it hits her and she says it out loud before thinking about what everyone else will think:

My dad used to sing this to me.

And all her friends say “Awwwwww” at the same time. And, maybe, sometime after the end of the track and the teenage thoughts that inevitably follow, after her friends dissipate into their own worlds and the silence settles back into her room, maybe she’ll come to me and tell me about that moment.

And, amidst all the change and uncertainty in her life and mine – the life of a teenager and a middle-aged man – maybe we can defy the odds and hold onto the same memory at the exact same time.

The Best Networking Question

Nobody likes an elevator pitch.

It doesn’t reveal you. It sells you, or, rather, someone like you.

So don’t do it. Don’t rifle out a prepared speech full of buzzwords nobody uses in real life. You won’t be remembered. Your business card will be one of many left in a pocket, on a desk, until it slides off behind it.

You’re better off just telling someone about your day or commenting on the lighting or sharing your excitement for what you’re going to do after the event.

That’s how people really get to know you. That’s how you build interest and earn the right to be remembered:

By seeing your heart.

My suggestion for an opening line at networking events, at parties, at friends’ houses, on first dates is simple:

How was your morning?

This way, you get them talking, you get them into the present moment. They will step out of their professional self and, whether they admit it or not, they will appreciate you for it. You will learn more than simply what they did and what they plan to do. You will surface their values, their priorities, their wants, wishes, and loves. You will gain a glimpse into their worldview. It’s impossible not to.

Be patient; you’ll see it.

Synergy comes after authenticity, never before.