Little Moments of Gratitude

There is one theme throughout this change of existence since last March that remains consistent for me each day. A lack of control over the things I always took for granted like being free of anxiety around crowds, meeting friends for a meal, and visiting family without underlying dread that I’m going to make them sick is forcing me to look for other areas in my life where I can hold on tight and feel like I am in charge. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it’s the exact opposite of what I need. Because trying to control something that doesn’t want to be controlled leads to more anxiety and frustration. It can be a downright nasty little cycle that is very hard to get out of.

The busy-ness of life creates in me a permissive force aligned toward chaos. At 40 years old I have finally accepted this about myself. It shows up in different ways- it’s how I eat, how I take care of myself, how I take care of the environment around me. And although life is not busy in the same way it was, there is still a fraught mindset that leads to disorganization. An omelette is an omelette no matter how you fold it. That bag is fine sitting on that chair in the kitchen after work. This hooded sweatshirt isn’t bothering anyone hanging at the top of the upstairs bannister, even if it catches my eye every time I walk by. I’ll ultimately be painting the other side of that bedroom door at SOME point in the future, so it’s fine that can of white paint is till taking up space in a linen closet. These five pieces of cheese won’t eat themselves. Being aware of all of these little decisions is a constant act of mindfulness, a challenge on the best of days. Lately I seem to be having less and less “best” days.

Fortunately, I’ve discovered a more positive way to direct my desire for control, by organizing the “stuff” that I see as a physical representation of my state of mind. No junk drawer is safe in the Dawkins house these days. I have (mostly) embraced the idea of a place for everything, purging our home of the things that no longer serve a purpose and spending money, another way I exert control, on all manner and size of storage container. In positive news, I have gotten rid of items that I didn’t even know we had. The purging feels good. Of course, I’m not purging everything. I derive joy from having things, something else I’ve just accepted in 2020. I will never be a minimalist. It’s all OK, as long as those things have an agreed upon place. We can agree where the forks and spoons go in the kitchen. We should also probably be able to agree where that 10th blank notebook I bought for myself should go, too.

But what does this have to do with gratitude? As I was cleaning last week, emptying a file drawer that contained receipts and papers that lost any sort of importance a long time ago, I came across a card that I must have put away for safe keeping and then promptly lost track of. It was a simple little notecard from my paternal grandmother who passed away in April of 2018 at 93 years old from late-stage Alzheimers. In the card, along with a short note from her, were two recipes. It was amazing how happy this simple, nondescript discovery made me in that moment, a reminder for me that it is often the smallest things that bring the greatest joy. If you know me, you know I’m someone who often equates memories with food, and these two recipes were the embodiment of Gram. I had been searching and searching for them after she passed, and I thought they were gone for good. It turns out they were hiding, waiting to reveal themselves maybe when I needed them most, and I never would have found them if I wasn’t on my new found mission to purge and organize my life.

I’ve been missing a lot of things that were part of life pre-pandemic, and I know I’m not alone there. I also know that I have the privilege that comes with being a white, middle-aged, well-employed, and financially stable man in America. I want for very little. I’m lucky on so many accounts, and I think that Gram wanted to remind me of that when I stumbled on her recipes. I believe that things happen for a reason, and these two little index cards came back into my life at a time when I needed a gratitude reminder. Gram was good at that. I’ll do well to hear her voice more often when I turn toward despair. I believe we all have our own version of Gram guiding us through the tough stuff. Sometimes, in order to hear them, we just need to take breath, pause, and maybe clean out a drawer or two. Now if you’ll excuse me, this goulash isn’t going to make itself.

The Grief of Lost Expectations

A morning walk around suburbia

Grief is not a linear phenomenon, although so often in life we talk about it as if someone we knew once experienced it that way. “I don’t understand why they can’t just get over it and move on,” you’ve almost certainly heard someone say. Or maybe you’ve even said it yourself about someone you love who is struggling with a loss. Loss, too, is a nebulous thing that changes depending on who is experiencing it. In fact, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross outlines this in her landmark book on the topic of grief and loss, On Death and Dying, when she says, “The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.” And this doesn’t just apply to the loss of a person. Grief infiltrates so many experiences in our lives, and it often shows up when we least expect it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief, sadness, and the unique disappointment that comes when we expect things to go one way and instead they go in a completely different direction. I’ve been considering how these emotions can pop up when you least expect them, when you think everything is fine, and all of the sudden discover that it isn’t. This, for me, is 2020 in a nutshell. It is the grief of lost expectations. It’s not the loss of any one thing, but the loss of many things during a time that feels saturated with disappointment and struggle. It is a year that started like any other and has since morphed into a science-fiction alternate timeline where everything you thought you knew about the world and the people around you shifts. We are surrounded by and immersed in struggle every day, beginning with the slow descent into fear that has come with a global pandemic, the restriction of our daily routines where even the most simple acts feel stressful and overwhelming, moving as nation through a long-overdue national reckoning with racial injustice, wrapping our heads around the environmental destruction that comes with uninterrupted worldwide climate change, and living through what feels like the most important election cycle of our lifetimes. Just one of these events would be enough to fill an entire year, and here we are digesting the consequences of all of them at once.

It’s no surprise, then, that every little change that happens feels like a loss. I have been combatting this, sometimes successfully sometimes not, by establishing new routines for myself. Self-care comes in many forms, and for me it’s making lists, crossing off accomplishments, and exerting control over the things that I can actually change. Did I go for a walk with the dogs today? Did I wash my face in the morning and before bed? Have I meditated, mindfully breathed, for any amount time? It is more important than ever before that these small routines are a consistent part of my day. I use an app, called Streaks, to track my completion of these and other tasks so that it becomes useable data for future-Tim to review and reflect on. This visual, tactile approach works well for me. Writing-as-reflection, too, has been a way for me to process and organize the jumble of thoughts in my head. It’s a way to, as my dad would say when he wanted us to get outside as kids, “blow the stink off” my mental process in this upside down time.

When anger, frustration, anxiety, distrust, and a loss of control are an ever-present fog for so many of us, recognizing and reflecting on what we can and cannot control can be a major jumping off point for personal wellness. Some days I’m better at it than others. Some days I’m able to shut out the echo chamber of division and derision that seems to pop up at every corner. It turns out that I actually can survive without refreshing Twitter at five minute intervals, without reading the news ten times a day. It turns out that a world without constant connection to the external and a connection rooted instead toward the internal can actually make a difference. I can shift my expectations for myself and the world while still grieving for what I hoped would be. I know that I’ll continue in a cycle of success and failures, and that’s OK. On the days that I fail, I’ll try to have the grace to forgive myself, take a breath, and start again. Maybe you’ll do the same.

Push through that fog

The Bridge

There’s just something about bridges that makes me want to photograph them. I’m not quite sure what it is; maybe it’s the ability to play with different types of symmetry when composing the shot or it might be the availability of some typically cool backdrops. Either way, I can never pass up the opportunity to snap some pictures of these feats of engineering. Have you ever thought about how these old school bridges were built? Imagine putting one of these suckers up at the turn of the century; neither a simple nor a pretty process.

So you were promised a story behind every picture, and this one definitely has a story. However, the story actually has nothing to do with the bridge itself but rather why I was standing over the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn alone on a frigid, blustery morning six years ago in February of 2011. I had traveled to the city that particular weekend to participate in a fundraising event for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Specifically, I was part of a team (the cheering part because I signed up too late) that was riding stationary bikes in something called the Cycle for Survival. This is an annual event, basically a large scale spinning class, that happens all over the country as a way to raise money that will help to fund research into very rare cancers. One of my closest friends who was being treated at Sloan-Kettering had recently passed away, after a 2 year long fight, from one of these cancers, and I needed to make amends. Sure, I was there to cheer on my buddy’s family as they rode, but I was also there as a way to seek forgiveness for not being the type of friend that I expected others to be to me.

You see, it’s very easy for me to put things off.

I'm a procrastinator at heart, and unfortunately I missed out on the chance to support my friend when he needed me the most. Every time that I had an opportunity to visit him in New York City something else would come up, or nothing would come up, but I was just lazy. And he would always understand. And I would always convince myself that there would be another time, a better time, for me to go. I made promises that I didn’t keep, and those are the worst kind. For whatever reason or no reason at all I waited until it was too late to finally commit to drive down and see him. He died the day before I could get to him. I never was able to tell him so many things. I’m not sure he knew how much fun I had those nights during high school, nerding out in his basement playing video games and watching movies, or that I actually looked forward to the rounds of golf that we shared on sunny summer mornings, not because I love golf but because he didn’t care if I cheated. I never got to really tell him how much I respected him for earning his PhD in engineering at 28 years old, a degree he was never able to use. I never got to tell him how lucky I was to have him as a friend.

And here I am standing on the Brooklyn Bridge alone before the event, talking into the wind, hoping that it will carry a message for me; a message of sadness; a message of humility; a message of apology.

That’s what this picture means to me.