I have possibly the most phenomenal day-job in the known
universe: I office-manage a small company that provides technical design and
production for theme park attractions. In layman’s terms: if you walk into a
theme park (or museum or aquarium or other entertainment venue) and see
something magical, chances are if we didn’t do the work ourselves, we know how
it got done (or, in some cases, how it could have been done better.) One of the
many perks of this job is that virtually every year, I get paid to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. (Marketing
research is a beautiful thing if you do it right. And by “right,” I mean “with
Butterbeer.” Sometimes when the concept of gratitude feels far away and
impossible to me, I can summon it a little closer to where I live when I recall
the existence of Butterbeer.)
A few years ago I was taking meeting notes for a design
charette on a proposed new theme park somewhere in China, and the minds around
the table were trying to come up with a basic story structure for one of the
attractions. One of the story concepts someone brought up was the “Quest for
the Magic Meatball.” It’s a common enough story structure. You set out seeking
a particular artifact that will grant the bearer… something. Power. Protection.
Parsnips. Other things beginning with P.
In my day-to-day life, I am constantly on the lookout for
the Magic Meatball. I have this semi-subconscious belief that someday, I will
watch the right movie / Oprah special / TED Talk, or listen to the right song /
podcast / NPR segment, or read the right book / article / blog post, or attend
the right conference / church service / party, and then I will wake up the next
morning and my life will have fallen magically, effortlessly into place,
meaning that any or all of the following will be true:
·
I will prefer kale salads and fruit smoothies to
pasta and cheesecake.
·
I will arise magically before the sun every day
and joyfully launch myself into a vigorous exercise/ writing / apartment
cleaning / personal grooming routine strenuous enough to convince anyone (even me) that I have earned the
right to live on this planet today.
·
I will have a magnetic, effervescent
personality; everyone will love me; I’ll throw great parties and be a paragon
of hospitality and a witty and gracious conversationalist.
·
I’ll be the kind of office manager through whose
fingers no detail, however minute, would dare
to slip.
·
My to-do list will be, and will remain forever,
100% under control, and no item that could
be accomplished today will ever, ever, ever be put off until tomorrow. …or
a week from this Tuesday. …or possibly a year from next Arbor Day.
·
I will have a literary agent, a small fortune,
and a man.
·
Etc.
Spoiler alert: I have not found the Magic Meatball. I still
prefer pasta to salads most of the time (although I did recently eat a kale-quinoa salad wrap thing that was spectacularly delicious.) No matter how many times I tell
myself that I really do function better when I get up and get moving early in
the morning, eight or nine times out of ten, the alarm goes off and sleep just
seems more important than whatever else I could (or arguably should) be doing.
I’m still socially awkward and chronically behind on about four dozen tasks
(and those are just the ones I have written down.) I make mistakes in the
office; I’m still unpublished, in debt, and comprehensively single.
Rationally, I know that there is no Magic Meatball. Neither
Oprah Winfrey nor Jillian Michaels nor Brené Brown nor any pastor; neither my
own competence nor someone else’s ingenious new system nor the hot new fad diet
nor anything else in all of creation can totally insulate me against the
reality that life is hard.
I think sometimes I hang onto the Magic Meatball delusion
because it’s easier to believe that there is a Magic Meatball and everyone else has already found it, and
that that is why I always feel so
tired and inferior… than it is to accept the fact that life is hard. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for you. Research (by
which I mean “my own intuition;” “research” just sounds better) indicates that
anyone who says they have their life handled and everything is easy and perfect
is a big fat liar (and will probably
not be invited to any of my Fabulous Parties once I acquire a magnetic,
effervescent personality). Sure, I can always find someone else whose life
sucks more than mine. Actually, in my case, lots of peoples’ lives suck more
than mine. I have a job, a car, and an apartment; those things alone put me
ahead of the vast majority of the human populace in terms of ease of life.
And how many times has knowing that information made it
easier to get out of bed in the morning?
Never.
Not even once.
Know why?
That’s right.
Because life is hard.
One thing I’ve been learning lately, from Brené Brown as a
matter of fact—okay, so she can’t fix everything in the universe and organize
it and put it in a Bento Box, but she’s still a phenomenally wise and winsome
person whom everyone should listen to—is how critically important it is to admit that life is hard, and to let the people who care about you know when life is just especially hard, even if the reason why life is just especially hard seems
colossally Stupid and Embarrassing to you.
(Such as, to offer a real and recent example, the fact that
a friend and I both recently applied for something and she’s getting it and not
me. And I know I should mostly be happy for her because arguably she needs it
more than I do, but mostly I feel like a failure and I kind of just want to
curl up and die, especially when I remember the (half joking) things I said
after both applications had been submitted. And no, it doesn’t help that I know
that she’s not gloating; not even a little bit, and that she doesn’t think I’m
a failure, and that she didn’t think a thing of anything I said after the
applications were submitted. In fact, knowing all of that makes it worse
because it makes all my feelings even more irrational and Stupid and
Embarrassing.)
Actually, the moments when life is hard for Stupid and Embarrassing reasons are the moments
when it is, perhaps, especially critical to admit that life is hard. Because people who are willing to put themselves out
there over things that are Embarrassing and Stupid help other people to feel
they have permission to put themselves out there over things that are
Embarrassing and Stupid. And if you can reveal your Embarrassing and Stupid
enough times, eventually you might find yourself able to divulge—to the right
person, at the right moment—your Shameful and Terrifying. (Yes. I have Shameful
and Terrifying. And so do you. And anyone who claims not to have Shameful and
Terrifying is definitely not going to
be invited to any of my Fabulous Parties.)
And having the right people to whom to divulge your Shameful
and Terrifying—not being alone with it, in other words—actually does make it easier to get up in the
morning. And to sleep at night. And to put one foot in front of the other on
the days when life is just especially
hard—even for reasons that are Stupid and Embarrassing.
And that’s something else right there: Brené Brown may not
be able to fix everything and put it into a Bento Box—she neither is nor has
the Magic Meatball, in other words—but she does have many nuggets of wisdom to
share. In the interest of extending both the alliteration and the meat product
idiom, I’ll call them Numinous Nuggets. And partaking of Numinous Nuggets can
make all the difference when life is hard. Learning to be; pushing myself to be; giving myself increasing
permission to be vulnerable (like admitting
that I feel rejected and small that my friend got this thing and I didn’t) is
making a big difference in my life.
Learning—painfully slowly—to accept
love and grace from somebody once I’ve offered them my vulnerability (such as
accepting my friend’s words of comfort and affirmation about this thing she got
and I didn’t) is making an even bigger difference. Learning to cultivate
gratitude for that love and grace instead of feeling awkward and weak for
accepting it will probably make a huge difference once I actually get to that
point. I’m not quite there yet.
None of these things can make all my problems go away. They
can’t change the fact that life is hard.
In fact, living this way tends to open me up to feeling the pain of all the
problems even more keenly than I did before.
But.
It also makes it possible for me not to be alone with them.
No matter how many places I search for it, I’m never going
to find the Magic Meatball because it doesn’t exist. I’m still not managing to
get up at oh-dark-thirty every day like I’m getting off the bench at a basketball game, but the Numinous Nuggets that I glean from good books
(like Shauna Niequist’s Bittersweet;
just started it and I already love it); good TED talks (like Brené Brown’s); the
wisdom of good friends—all this makes it possible for me to get up at some point and put one foot in front
of the other, and to go to bed that night and sleep, and then to get up the
next day and do it all over again, even in the midst of living out the reality
that life is seriously hard.
There is no Magic Meatball, but it turns out there are a lot
of nourishing nutrients in Numinous Nuggets. And thanks to the people from
whom those nuggets come—and other bright spots like my job—sometimes, I even
get to wash my plate of Numinous Nuggets down with a flagon of Butterbeer, and
I get to eat that nourishing and delicious meal in good company.
Which is a pretty spectacular antidote, when I can remember
to / bring myself to take it, to the poisonous gases of despair and bitterness
that can be released into the soul when life
is especially hard.
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