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Last week, I was on a panel. This, for me, is the equivalent of a tax audit, triggering raw, unwarranted terror. I did my usual stupid thing: wrote out all my answers to the posed questions and tried to memorize them. Then the organizer encouraged us to ad lib, go off script, respond freely to one another and turn it into a conversation.
My stomach dropped.
Conversation would be great if we did not each have certain questions to address, in a particular order and time frame. My rigid memorization would be at least marginally fine, too, if we were not expected to relax into a chatty, loose conversation that is guaranteed to throw me off.
One or the other, I wanted to mutter. You cannot structure this and then unstructure it. An experience is either scripted or freeform, not both at once.
As I thought this—inaccurately, defensively—I realized that none of the other panelists had flinched. This was my problem. And it had been my problem my whole life. In varying contexts, I have always yearned for a middle looseness, a flexibility and confidence that would let me respond spontaneously to changes in a challenging situation.
In p.e., I froze or cut class. At bars or dances where I might meet someone, I froze and left early. The stuff within my control and ability went fine, but when there were uncertain results, I panicked.
Still do.
“Loosen up,” my exasperated watercolor teacher tells me. “Don’t be so tight. Use more water and a bigger brush.” I try, but to me, the result looks sloppy rather than artful. My tight copyist paintings at least are recognizable….
This is the sort of thing I tell myself. Paint loosely for a month and who knows what would happen, how I might progress. But I am scared by the initial mess, too eager for praise or perfection or just a result I do not want to rip into shreds. The same resistance kicks in when my life is tightly scheduled and a friend suggests some spontaneous fun that will throw it all off. But when will I do the laundry, and how will I meet the deadline….
Could it be that I invariably overschedule myself? And am still channeling my mother’s need to have everything done on time and on schedule, when in fact we have enough clothes that I could just do the friggin’ laundry the following week and throw in a few extra loads?
I do not want to live like this anymore, scripted and tight and rigid. Once I gave a speech to journalism students and they gave me a scathing review because I looked down at my notes too often, trusting the careful sentences I had composed in the peace of my own home rather than the blurt of nerves and adrenaline that might say God knew what. Good girls do not risk it. Grown women who pretend they are flexible need to pry their hands off the guard rails.
Especially now, when we are all forced to figure out how to live with uncertainty.
We can obsess; we can stop reading any news at all, not to mention glancing at the stock market’s arrows; or we can find a place in the confident middle, staying aware enough and resilient enough to meet whatever the future brings. Who knows where all this will lead, and how our individual lives will be affected. At the dog park, I meet an organic farmer who tells me the Illinois Eats program was just canceled, and he will no longer be able to sell his produce at a fair price to the state, so that food banks can be stocked with healthy veggies. A social work prof has to change his bio because his big research project was defunded. Same for a hotshot medical researcher. A local historic site has its staffing canceled. Every day, another handful of real-time personal experiences join the litany. Will The Common Reader survive? Will I find another job if it does not?
The helpful articles online all urge mindfulness, deep breathing, self-compassion. But I think what we need is confidence and creativity. We need an improv comedian’s ability to stay in the present, pay close attention, and trust our instincts. And we need an athlete’s ability to practice and prepare, get coached and cheer ourselves on, until we have replaced anxiety with confidence and can move without any self-conscious thought at all. In creative work, that state is called flow. Your attention stays completely focused on the present moment, not the laundry or the possible gaffes. You do not freeze or fret; you move, instinctively and well.
But here is the catch. In private life, we can find the right challenges, just hard enough to absorb us and easy enough to overcome. I can whisk away—albeit with real effort—my job worries. Hell, I can do anything. Sizzle up some fries, shelve library books, maybe even pick apples, since the people who used to do that are being ejected from the country. But the risks in the public sphere are a labyrinth of interconnected variables with high brick walls we keep running into, complexity we cannot fathom, random change at a bewildering speed, and zero control. Try messaging a member of Congress to urge reason and compassion. The implacable form-letter reply will make you vow to never try again. How do we stay flexible and resilient in that sphere?
No idea. So, instead of fretting, I will try painting with a bigger brush. Maybe if I muster a little more confidence, risk-taking, and creativity, it will spill over? Maybe I should erase that question mark and make it a declarative sentence?
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
