First things first. I am shamelessly (shamefully?) copying a format for writing this in two parts from my dear friend who posted a two-part blog entry. When I read hers, I knew that would fix the problem of how to tell this story, which when I started assumed would have one arc, but it turned out to go another way. So thank you, Kristin, for letting me piggy back.
(Insert Ira Glass voice here) Here’s Part One:
There’s a book I began for what I call bedtime reading – nothing with much literary value, but that allows me to relax and quiet my mind before sleep. These aren’t the books I read for ideas, nor do I read them for life lessons or because they have a buzz about them from being well-known titles or authors. I read them to help put myself to sleep. I picked this book up without knowing anything about it or its author, just that it had a picture of a woman leaning back in lingerie, so I figured at best it’s a romance novel.
The other day, I was perusing old writing files all the way back to 2000. I sometimes copy meaningful passages from novels or poetry to keep for later use. I came across a document with the author’s name on it, dated May, 2006. This I find interesting, as I have no recollection that I’ve read anything by this author before, and didn't remember this entry.
I opened the document, expecting to learn something from another book by this author, something that might relate in theme or format to what I’m currently reading. Instead, the excerpt is from the same book I’m reading, although I haven’t yet made it to the text I’d copied. How strange. I have no recollection of the story, the characters, the meaning I could have possibly found so compelling from this story that I would have written it down before. In fact, as I’ve been reading it (this time) I’ve been wondering why I’m reading it – as I get distracted when a main plot line is an affair, and the main character seems headed toward an affair and hasn’t picked up the signs that her husband has already begun one. Further, there’s a cancer subplot, which is a bit distracting. But I kept reading it. And it did help me doze off.
I titled the excerpt, “On Wanting.” I have grappled with wanting, with the fine line between the absolute right of a person – me – to want, and the accusation that wanting makes a person – me – selfish. I’ve grappled with this for as long as I can remember, and have only very, very recently shifted my understanding of my own wants, and my history with them. I was apparently grappling with this in 2006, but trust me, it goes back way, way further.
Old view: I wanted too much, I wanted the wrong things, I wanted things no one else wanted and therefore I was wrong for wanting them, I was selfish for wanting what I wanted, and, ultimately, it didn’t matter, because I wanted things that were impossible, and therefore I’d never get what I wanted.
New view: My wants have always been reasonable. I’ve never wanted things that were impossible, or things that were out of reach. My yearnings have never really wavered, despite the years of telling myself - and being told - that I must want something else, or deep down I just want what everyone else wants, or maybe I don’t know what I want.
In the past, my only problem was wanting that which was beyond the capacity of those around me to give. That’s it. I wanted something that my family members, when I was young, couldn’t give. My wants might have threatened their own experiences, since no doubt they were living without their wants being satisfied. My wants and wishes weren’t “wrong” – the want-granters were limited. I didn’t know this at the time, and I didn’t know this for such a long time. My guess is that those early want-granters still don’t know this.
There’s a quote I used in my wedding invitation that said
(Insert Ira Glass voice here) Here’s Part One:
There’s a book I began for what I call bedtime reading – nothing with much literary value, but that allows me to relax and quiet my mind before sleep. These aren’t the books I read for ideas, nor do I read them for life lessons or because they have a buzz about them from being well-known titles or authors. I read them to help put myself to sleep. I picked this book up without knowing anything about it or its author, just that it had a picture of a woman leaning back in lingerie, so I figured at best it’s a romance novel.
The other day, I was perusing old writing files all the way back to 2000. I sometimes copy meaningful passages from novels or poetry to keep for later use. I came across a document with the author’s name on it, dated May, 2006. This I find interesting, as I have no recollection that I’ve read anything by this author before, and didn't remember this entry.
I opened the document, expecting to learn something from another book by this author, something that might relate in theme or format to what I’m currently reading. Instead, the excerpt is from the same book I’m reading, although I haven’t yet made it to the text I’d copied. How strange. I have no recollection of the story, the characters, the meaning I could have possibly found so compelling from this story that I would have written it down before. In fact, as I’ve been reading it (this time) I’ve been wondering why I’m reading it – as I get distracted when a main plot line is an affair, and the main character seems headed toward an affair and hasn’t picked up the signs that her husband has already begun one. Further, there’s a cancer subplot, which is a bit distracting. But I kept reading it. And it did help me doze off.
I titled the excerpt, “On Wanting.” I have grappled with wanting, with the fine line between the absolute right of a person – me – to want, and the accusation that wanting makes a person – me – selfish. I’ve grappled with this for as long as I can remember, and have only very, very recently shifted my understanding of my own wants, and my history with them. I was apparently grappling with this in 2006, but trust me, it goes back way, way further.
Old view: I wanted too much, I wanted the wrong things, I wanted things no one else wanted and therefore I was wrong for wanting them, I was selfish for wanting what I wanted, and, ultimately, it didn’t matter, because I wanted things that were impossible, and therefore I’d never get what I wanted.
New view: My wants have always been reasonable. I’ve never wanted things that were impossible, or things that were out of reach. My yearnings have never really wavered, despite the years of telling myself - and being told - that I must want something else, or deep down I just want what everyone else wants, or maybe I don’t know what I want.
In the past, my only problem was wanting that which was beyond the capacity of those around me to give. That’s it. I wanted something that my family members, when I was young, couldn’t give. My wants might have threatened their own experiences, since no doubt they were living without their wants being satisfied. My wants and wishes weren’t “wrong” – the want-granters were limited. I didn’t know this at the time, and I didn’t know this for such a long time. My guess is that those early want-granters still don’t know this.
There’s a quote I used in my wedding invitation that said
Blessed are they who remember
that what they now have they once longed for.
-Jean Valentine (1992). The River at Wolf.
Farmington, ME: Alice James Books
Farmington, ME: Alice James Books
I’ve come late to the experience of wants being met, of being seen with my wants and desires and longings and not being talked out of them, not being ridiculed for them, and not receiving the odd, silent eyebrow rise that suggests I’m in for some strong disappointment if that’s what I think I wanted. Now, I’ve tasted the joy of getting what I have always wanted. I was, after all, as right as I thought I was. And I have to say, it was possibly even better than what I’d dreamed it could be.
I was curious about this former oh-so-important passage that I had to write down to remember forever (and then go on to ignore on my computer for 4 years, ignore so completely that I didn’t remember anything about the book).
Here’s the passage:
As she looks at this man underneath her, she knows she could get sucked down into wanting. Of wanting what she’s always wanted. Mia knows she’s greedy. To want more is selfish. To want more is to test fate, pulling one final, gaudy thing on board simply to lose the rest of the load she’s collected for years. Hasn’t she been gifted with her children and her husband and her writing? What about her teaching and mother and sisters and friends? But the need for this thing in her body, this loving with Robert, has always been there. For years, she’s been saying good-bye to her want, watching it float away on a life raft to the middle of an uncharted ocean. Good-bye, she thought, waving as she sailed on. Maybe next life.
-Jessica Barksdale Inclán (2006, pp. 176-177).
The Instant When Everything is Perfect.
NY: New American Library.
The Instant When Everything is Perfect.
NY: New American Library.
After reading this, I see the parallel story line about a woman trained to give up wanting. So I have struggled with wanting, for years, and have tried various ways to not want what I wanted. What was happening 4 years ago? Was I about to give up the old view for the new? Was wanting becoming something safe for me, so I could notice other people who had given them up? Did I rail against the author/character, “NO – don’t wait until the next life. It’s possible now. Want it, just keep wanting it. You’re not wrong. You’ve never been wrong.” Did I root for Mia to do whatever possible in the service of her needs?
Four years ago I was ensconced in the luxury of living out my oldest longings, the ones I’d tried to say “goodbye” to. I was relatively new to the experience, and didn’t trust it to last. I was awash in the largesse of having my wants acknowledged and respected, the spaciousness of having no one who made my yearnings seem small or wrong.
After reading this passage, which is ahead of where I was in the book, I still couldn’t remember how the book unfolds, although I guess it’s obvious the main character, Mia, is going to have an affair, as Robert is not her husband. I gave myself permission to stay up as late as possible that night so I could find out how the story unfolds, and to see if it gave me any more clue as to what was so important about my wanting back then. This permission giving is a small example of how freely I now throw around my wants. It’s a reasonable one, I get to want it, and I even get to allow myself to try to meet the want – I just have to stay up late enough to finish the book.
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