saving the world is not our job
“Is that what you think you’re doing in our lives, saving us? I don’t need you to save me! I just need you to be on my side whenever you can. See me...hear me...give me some room, and save me some time. That’s all. I’ve already got a God, Sam. And I see Him all the time, everywhere I go. And He may seem limited and primitive to you, but the dances are fun and the songs are sweet, and every day is a holy day.”
Dear friend,
I’ve reached a season where everything I write on here starts with well, it’s been awhile. I’m coming out of a season full of hitches and leaps and wrinkles, and joys and vulnerabilities and the general practice of being an alive person in this world. The weather in my spirit has been a bizarre combination of falling deeply, madly in love and having surprising vocational success, and also practicing embodying the heavy, frightening feelings of sadness, grief, lack of control, etc. that I would rather not experience.
A note on practicing:
My counselor and I have been talking about my rampant desire to try so hard at everything I do and the residual shame that follows. After our first session, I was trying to try to notice every time that I use the word trying in my every day. And the reality of this habit overwhelmed me. This chronic trying, it turns out, has resulted in chronic, anxiety-induced stomach ulcers, among other things. During a recent session, my counselor used the word “practice” in a question and I thought: practicing is a much nicer word than trying. It’s the same idea of hoping for a different future for yourself without that heavy shame of coming up short. So, I am practicing saying practicing instead of trying.
An older woman at the coffee shop I am at is just leaving after an hour of gentle sketching in her journal. This moves me–the intent to simply come in and sit and pay attention and practice without worrying about whether or not what she makes will be any good.
Casey, my aforementioned partner in love, said the other day he loves watching me cook because I am so confident in it; this is a true assessment. Cooking is the singular thing that I do in my life that I do not second guess. Salt? Lemon juice? A touch of red pepper flakes? A bit longer in the oven? Sometimes I make mistakes, but these mistakes do not ruin me. I do not lay in bed re-hashing the cooking time or whether or not there was too much paprika and salt on the salmon. I simply make a note and adjust for next time. Cooking is fun, and it is the one thing in my life that is untainted by my performance anxiety– this deep need to try to be good and do the best for the sake of… whom? Myself? My loved ones? My past/current mentors? God?
This is an in-progress question. I am practicing approaching writing and acting and teaching and being somebody’s girlfriend and daughter and sister and friend and a human in general in the same way The Coffee Shop Sketcher does. With a sense of open-handedness to the results, trusting beyond a doubt that I am loved. That I am not the results of my efforts. That I am just enough. That I am not in control, even a little bit, of 99% of my life, which is secretly a good thing. That I can only choose to practice and be a grace-filled person to myself in the same way I try (practice!) to be in the world.
Last month, I watched that movie Interstellar with Casey, and cried for about an hour after it finished. You know that film? It’s with Matthew McConaughey and many other famous people about a post-apocalyptic world (not to be confused with our world) where basically all the food is gone and they’re going to starve and/or suffocate if they don’t find a different planet to evacuate to. They jump to different dimensions and galaxies and black holes, and spoiler alert, save the day, but in the most tragic way. Matthew McConaughey’s character ends up being gone for like 120 years in the deep recesses of space even though he’s only awake for about 8 days of that, and by the time he is reunited with his family, his daughter is dying in the hospital on the spaceship because she’s like, ninety years old.
It made me think about all the things that I try not to be afraid of as I go through the world: such as: suffocation, outer space, starving, the dark, being murdered, being attacked, wasting my life, old people, endless expanses with no air, failure, dying, fatal diseases, watching people I love die, etc, etc. When the movie ended, it was as if the only way to avoid all these things I’m afraid of would be fleeing the planet, which isn’t even a good solution because it results in entering Biggest Fear Number Two, outer space.
As I laid in bed this morning at 1:00 am, trying to not think about black holes, I realized that I could live in this fear or I could show grace to myself. I could wake up the next morning and eat cereal and go to church and get a chai latte and a raspberry scone and open up my computer and put some words on a page like a writer because that’s what I’m in the world to do.
Because the truth is, we live surrounded by uncontrollable tragedies all the time. My coworker’s best friend who just turned thirty years old passed away last month. And our earth is slowly getting too warm. And, somehow, no matter who you are, you definitely don’t love most things going on in the government. And there are at least three painful moments every day, and we carry loneliness in our pockets, and we fill up every second trying so damn hard to do it all right and not really getting anywhere at all. And this, ironically, pushes us away from each other even farther.
And I wonder: what if we practiced loving the people around us knowing that we won’t be perfect at it, and that love is the thing that holds us together, not political beliefs or families of origin or how good we are at the thing we think we’re supposed to be good at? Knowing that because we are loved, we can love without judgment?
Our lives are awfully short to be spending so much of it hating each other.
And still, there is so much time to practice loving, which is the paradox, isn’t it? We must do what we are here to do–to step into and join the work calling our names without fear, knowing that our work is meaningful and valuable and that our work is not the material with which we craft our identity. That we don’t need to hurry up and save the world–that the world every day is being saved, already, and we are invited to participate in the work.
Here is what God is teaching me these days: Saving worlds (this world, my world, the worlds of people I love) isn’t our job. It’s a heavy burden we are simply not asked to carry. Instead it’s a practice of letting go and surrendering, of choosing vulnerability and bravery, of moving towards empathy, boldness, and the everyday work of loving people with grace (especially the people you really don’t agree with, or like very much).
It’s not about trying to be better–we’ll never get there– but making a commitment to that for which you wish, fighting for that for which you hope. It’s about knowing the gaps in your efforts are not failure, but opportunities to watch God fill them in a way you couldn’t have imagined.
It’s about a radical practice that has grace as the beginning, the middle, and the end.
May it be so.
-Alyssa
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