“When you was my age? When my old man was my age, when my brother was my age… You was never my age, none of ya!” –West Side Story

                A non-schooler, who’d grown into a life she loved without any official “studies,” once told me that non-schooling was the best encouragement for a child’s natural curiosity. Years later, a man explained how important it was for boys to be woken up before the sun and sent off to run through cold forests. That’s how he’d learned his own strength, back at his British-style all-boys boarding school. Other parents I’ve listened to seem to think that a good life can’t get started without art classes, or without varsity athletics, or without a christmas tree. I think many of us, myself most firmly included, like to think that however we grew up is how children should grow up. I loved my time at Amherst. If I let my mind do it’s knee-jerk thing, I think that everyone should go to a liberal arts college. And that’s silly.
                There are probably deep psychological reasons why I do this, and I don’t know what those are. Perhaps I’m trying to affirm for myself that I was given something worthwhile: that my path was a good one. (Once, when my brother was eight, there were two different desserts and we were each going to eat one. I let him pick, and after he did, he took a bite and then started talking about how much better his was. I said that didn’t make me feel very happy. He replied, “I have to say that, or else I worry I made the wrong choice”). Perhaps it’s something else. Whatever the reason, I think this tendency can be dangerous. It can propose a static approach to a changing world. It can narrow down the options that are open to (or seem open to) those we love. It can hint to those we love that their choices can’t be their own. And of course, those choices can’t be anyone else’s.
                Sometimes I look at my students and want to tell them how to move forward. (“I know, don’t I?” says a voice in my head. Another part of me wonders: perhaps the best advice usually asks another to feel their own heart instead of listen to mine: if I saw clearly, instead of “this is wrong,” I might say “consider this deeply–does it really feel right to you?”). I think there is a place for sharing my perspective. After all, people are people. Hearts are hearts, and aches ache. But I also want to write here and remember that I was never their age. Their childhoods, woven through with snapchat and the political backdrop of the day, are importantly different from my own. Even my peers’ childhoods were different: my friend is an only child, and my cousin is the oldest of three. We can still share a lot. We can support each other, look toward each other, and try to see clearly. But I don’t stand where they stand, and I don’t think I can know.
                I can watch as you climb this new mountain, and I can try to bring a bandage when you fall. I can share how I’ve struggled and learned, and I can shine my respect–my open-hearted, wide-eyed, playful, exuberant respect–toward the life that you’re living.I was never your age. You wonder. You learn. You choose.

                “Find your passion–because colleges want to see it. Find your passion by January 1st, or December 1st if you’re applying early.” -Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How To Raise An Adult

                When I was younger, people would ask, what do you want to do? What’s your dream? When I was a little older, I started answering: “I want to be a writer.” And that was a lie.
                Don’t get me wrong–I like writing. Sometimes I love it. (Another time I’ll tell you why, if you want to know).  But I’d been told, not by my parents and not by a friend, that I was supposed to have a passion. Anyone without that special elusive something was a bit of sunbleached cloth, forgotten in a field somewhere, watching the more vibrant world go by.  I didn’t want to be that someone. So I lied: I saw a passion that I could have, and I stole it from society’s shelf because it looked shiny. I told people it was mine. Sometimes I almost believed it.
                If we’re not careful, passion becomes a box to check, a proof of our individual flare. It becomes our saleable capital, the balance in our bank-account hearts that we trot out to show we’re a good investment to a lover, a career, ourselves. It’s the metaphorical cigarette from which, like the so-cool and so-successful James Dean, we blow a cloud of genre-appropriate smoke around our carefully posed heads. It’s what we find to get into college.
                Lythcott-Haims reminds me that I don’t need to prove my passion. (She has a TED talk coming soon, about how kids become adults; she’s brilliant and she’s researched and she’s fun). I don’t need to find it and sell it by December or January or, well, ever. But I can write. I can read. Teach. I can be confused and still learn: the harmonica, the steps of a dance, the habit of being open with another. I can ask a question, build a fence, cook a meal, hold my niece, make a friend–because all of this, all of this, is mysterious, and there are others here. I don’t think any of us have just one passion. I don’t think there’s only one me, a star to find in a sea of black: we are each a constellation, a yelling, singing crowd of identities and desires and values and loyalties. In any moment some of them are speaking, but there are others who could come forward. We are ourselves overwhelming and wild. I think I love that.
                People say that you’ve got to “figure out what you love.”  I must be pretty far behind with that. I suppose I could make a list: start it with chocolate-covered most things, run on through every shade of green in the forest, and end with a long roll call of all the people I love. But I don’t think I need to figure them. I don’t think I need to add them up. They’re there–here. I could work to feel a connection with them, but I feel that already, if only I look up and say hello.

“Reasons For Attendance”
                Philip Larkin

The trumpet’s voice, loud and authoritative,
Draws me a moment to the lighted glass
To watch the dancers – all under twenty-five –
Solemnly on the beat of happiness.

– Or so I fancy, sensing the smoke and sweat,
The wonderful feel of girls. Why be out here?
But then, why be in there? Sex, yes, but what
Is sex? Surely to think the lion’s share
Of happiness is found by couples – sheer

Inaccuracy, as far as I’m concerned.
What calls me is that lifted, rough-tongued bell
(Art, if you like) whose individual sound
Insists I too am individual.
It speaks; I hear; others may hear as well,

But not for me, nor I for them; and so
With happiness. Therefor I stay outside,
Believing this, and they maul to and fro,
Believing that; and both are satisfied,
If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.

                Larkin tells the story of walking past a nightclub and hearing the music from inside. I’ve always imagined it as jazz. He looks in, and sees people dancing. For a moment he wonders why he’s out here on the street, instead of in there on the dance floor. (Larkin was famously single for most of his life). The most common reason (he suggests) is sex: the license to touch another warm body, press close, move together. The promise of pairing up into couples. In Larkin’s mind, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the star toward which he grows. There are other lights above us. Trees have only one sun, and they grow toward it all their lives; we get to choose our own. Larkin chooses art: “the individual sound” that “insists I too am individual.” He chooses the experience of mind made into music, made a particular: he wants the ripples and waves of a moment in time made solid as a stone and thrown into the water of the world. This moment, now, singing. That’s what he loves. That’s the star he grows toward.
                When we ask why, why, why in our lives–why do you want to study hard…why do you want to get into a good college…why do you want to marry her–we’re asking for one of the stars we’ve chosen as a guiding point of our growth. If we asked Larkin, he might come back to this: one basic why for him is the pursuit of art. He could choose something else: religion, or sex, or family, or money. We can choose whatever we want, and in pursuing it, perhaps, we’ll be “satisfied”–so long as we choose something that makes room for all our branches, for the depth of our roots. So long as we choose a star that shines on soil where we can truly grow.  Sometimes we misjudge that star: we pick something that seems to shine but will twist us up inside. Sometimes, in trying to imitate another’s life, or scared that we don’t know, we lie. When we do that, our leaves find shadows, our roots find stones.
                I hope we can support each other as we find our own soil. I hope we can help hold the space for those we love to grow. And, having listened to others, having been guided just a bit by their wisdom and their love, I hope we each on our own remember to choose what star we believe is our sun.

                “It’s a lie that matches his desire.” -Naomi Novik, Uprooted

                Near the end of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, we get one of the most frightening moments I’ve ever come across in a story. Seeing himself as the righteous flame of God, Judge Danforth has condemned people to death in the Salem witch trials. Now a few townsfolk have banded together, trying to convince Danforth that the devil isn’t alive on these streets. It’s human folly, these others say, that sows death among them:  greed, jealousy, revenge, hate. So Danforth must make his choice: either he believes that he is the hand of God, or he believes that he’s killed innocents in his jealous fury. Depending on the actor, Danforth can seem to balance for a moment on the edge of that choice. Depending on the actor, you can see him decide.
                And how would you decide? Wouldn’t you want to be the hero, not the villain? Wouldn’t you want to be clear-eyed, not confused? Wouldn’t you rather be the fire of God than the lost fool who’s looked into others eyes, misjudged them, and watched them die? Danforth would. He does, and because he’s so frightened of being wrong, more lives are taken. For his pride, for the story of his own glory, he makes others into monsters and goes to kill them.
                Uprooted is full of enemies who never needed to be enemies–or perhaps, better, of confused people who end up killing each other because the moment moves quickly, and they don’t see what else to do. I won’t spoil the plot (it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year: alight with the song of music, and you should read it), but time and time again we see how much kinder the world could be if a king could admit his confusion, if a wizard knew that he didn’t always know; if I, sometimes, could let go of being the hero, and be a confused villager ready to ask questions instead.
                Look: the world is not as I thought. The truth is not so cold that I need my lies to warm me. Beyond my desire that seemed so overwhelming, my desire for the world to be this way, there’s another path that I could walk. Perhaps we could walk together.

                “Childhood is a branch of cartography.”
                -Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs (which sets my thoughts arcing off in all directions, and which I fully, happily recommend)

                Our world is overwhelming. Looking at etymonline.com, that word goes back to the Middle English whelmen, “to turn upside down,” perhaps with the imagery of a boat “washed over, and overset, by a big wave.” The world does that to us: it sweeps over the craft of our mind in a great roll of blue hues and thundered sounds, leaving us capsized, swamped, stunned by the vigor and strength and reality of what’s touched us.
                To help ourselves sail in this wide sea, we each create a map of the world. In Chabon’s childhood, that was a map of the angry dogs, the openings where you could slip through a fence, and the houses where you could get a popsicle. As we get older, we add the routes we take to and from work, the mechanic we trust, and the quickest path to a first cup of coffee.
                I can see my niece, eleven months old, making her map. When she wants to nurse and doesn’t see her mom, she’ll crawl off to bang on the door of her parents’ room. Her map doesn’t seem to extend beyond the house: when I take her for a walk, each streetlamp and each tree (we stop to say hello) seems new in her eyes: I can see her watching, learning. (Rough tall big thing, for now, but soon she’ll have more words:  here there’s a tree good for climbing). When she starts to get upset in the house, I can do the same thing: present her with a red hat or a bit of yellow wrapping paper, and she’ll lose her fuss in the curiosity of this. What is this? It crinkles. Wonder of wonders, it tears in pieces with a little crrrsshh of a sound.
                Watching my niece, I’m reminded that a line isn’t a river. My map is a representation, and like all representations, it can be wrong. No matter how good we are as cartographers, we’ll sometimes write “here there be dragons” when we could have written “come here, and learn to fly.” The cure for that, I think, is to go and look again.
                Chabon reminds me that, fallible as they are, we need our maps. My niece can walk in overwhelming wonder because I’m carrying her, feeding her, making sure she doesn’t stay in the sun too long. It is good to be awash in wonder, but the water of our world can still be overwhelming. We make our map for the same reason people have always made charts of the sky and the earth and the currents: to know where we are, have a sense of what’s out there, and so choose our direction.
                Lastly, Chabon tells me that each child needs the space to make her own map, to envision the geographic, emotional, and societal landmarks of her life as a whole that she can navigate. We can’t give children our maps: that would be a representation of a representation, with important facts lost each time, and mistakes perpetuated through the copies. As children–as people–as cartographers–we all go out into a world too wide to fully imagine. Born on spinning currents and protected by others’ love, we make a map, and so begin to turn our boat’s nose into the storm’s waves, or run with the wind.
                Here, We write. Here I’ll live.

                “When you are old, anything that does not disturb you is a comfort. Cold and darkness and boredom long ago lost their sharp edges for us, but warmth, singing, spring–no, they would all be disturbances.”
                -a lost knight in the mad king’s castle; Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

                Beagle says we can get there when we’re old, but I think I’ve struggled with this my whole life. Apathy, boredom, disconnection, unhappiness, stagnation–all of these can be comfortable. There’s an old image of evolving life inching its way out of the primordial soup and onto dry land. I often find myself going the other way: back into that lukewarm glump to vegetate. In my senior year of college, a friend called and asked if I was “okay.” I opened my mouth to say, “of course I am, but thanks,” and then paused to look around. I was sitting alone in a room, watching the fourth season of Stargate SG-1. I’d been doing more or less the same thing, with bouts of studying, for three days. I wasn’t okay. But I was comfortable.
                This all came rushing back to me a few days ago. I’ve been at my mother’s house in California, and whenever I’m here, my ten year old brother asks if I’ll sleep in his room. Whenever I do, it turns into a wonderful little sleepover: I’ll read to him (or, lately, maybe, he’ll read to me), and then I’ll sing a bit, and then we’ll chat in that hazy, on-the-edge-of-sleep space for a little while. Looking back, I know this will be a moment I treasure: a magic of being brothers. And this whole summer, until last week, I hadn’t slept in his room. Not once. I hadn’t, because I was comfortable. Because it was easier to stay in another room. Because he goes to sleep so much earlier. I hadn’t for all the endless, practical reasons that carry some weight in the moment, and yet, looking back, are grains of sand compared to the planet of my chance to have a younger brother.
                In Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon writes that we throw away almost all of the beautiful moments life offers. There are so many of them: like the tide of cherry blossoms that, if we were in Japan, a stiff May wind might bring us. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to catch all of those blossoms, but I’m going to read to my brother tonight, and sing to him, and then lie there chatting. It will disturb my routine. It won’t be as comfortable as staying downstairs. But it will be so much more of the life I want to live.
                The wind blows, sometimes making my eyes water: I can look down, sheltering in the lull, or I can look up and reach for the blowing blossoms.

                “For Tree Mother talks with the Forest People while they are asleep more often than when they are awake. They do not remember the words in the morning, but they remember the meaning.”
                -Ethel Cook Eliot, The House Above the Trees

                The House Above the Trees is a heartfelt tale of childhood and growing up, of finding that we can see, realizing that we are loved, and choosing that we will love others. When my niece is older I’ll take her out beneath a tree (or climb her up into one) and read it to her.
                In the book, Tree Mother cares for the Forest People who live “past the edge of the light.” I love that she usually speaks to them in dreams. (In The Apology, Socrates describes his conscience as a voice that sometimes tells him, “No.” It does not tell him what to do: but when he is about to step wrongly, it urges him against it. I’m not sure I agree–I think I do feel a positive push, a push to help–but the idea of an almost-silent guide, never explaining but sometimes pointing, sticks with me). Words are difficult. Words get me wrapped up and tangled, because I want to believe something that sounds good. But beneath the words there is a quiet push, a meaning, whispered in our dreams.
                I don’t think this dream-whisper always leads where we should walk. I sometimes wake up with a quiet meaning that pushes towards anger, or selfishness, or greed. There is an ache in my heart that wants desperately to be set above others, to be better. But I also wake up with a quiet meaning that pushes towards kindness, curiosity, and effort for us all. When we can feel all of these dream-whispers, deeply feel them, and balance them in our hearts, I think they guide us true. We need both selfishness and selflessness: if we didn’t care for ourselves, we wouldn’t be able to care for anyone for very long. A bear defends her cub with her love for him, but also with her anger for whatever would hurt him. When the balance between them seems impossible, we need to start deeper: we need to return to the dream-whisper and remember what it said more clearly. When I do that, I think the push to set myself above others was really the push to be loved, the push of greed was really the push to reach into the world and find it rich, and the push to hurt others was the push to find a safe place–for myself, and for us all.
                “Remember” comes from the Latin re- (“again”) and memorari (“be mindful of,” itself from memor “mindful,” which reminds me of Memir, the Norse giant who guards the Well of Wisdom and knows all). These dream-meanings are the seeds of my life’s garden. Uncared for they can grow unbalanced. Unthinking, I stumble out into them, clutching at the thorns not the flowers, tasting the branches not the fruit. But if we let our hearts still like water in the creek’s pool, if we are again mindful, then we’ll know how to water these dreams. We’ll know which parts are thorns for our protection (good in their place, though ready to cut us if we try to eat them), and which are fresh fruit.
                In the silence after sleeping, before the rush of argument and opinion, we can hear the meaning if not the words.

                “…the Kid was a living legend, and the only person in his home country who did not tremble at the Kid’s step was Jenny Simms–or if she did, it was in another sense.” Louis L’Amour, Long Ride Home

                Writing can help us examine what we want (or think we want), so that we can decide which direction to walk in. That’s the kind of writing Krakauer does when he describes staking his whole life on climbing a mountain, climbing it, and coming back down to realize that nothing has changed. The salvation he sought wasn’t where he thought it would be. That happens to a lot of us, so there’s a lot of writing about reaching your goals and finding that the diamonds you lusted for are cold and hard to the touch.
                There’s another kind of writing: L’Amour’s writing, which takes my most immature, unexamined wants and offers them back to me. That’s the world where I’m a living legend, because everyone is afraid of me (except for Jenny Simms, who trembles in a different way). That’s the kind of writing where I get relationships without compromises, achievements without work, and looks so mysteriously, ruggedly handsome that everyone pretty much just stops and stares. It’s no accident that L’Amour’s hero is called the Kid: this is the kind of story that finds its power by promising us eternal youth, instead of by helping us come to grips with growing old.
                Don’t get me wrong: I’m enjoying L’Amour’s book. It’s easy to enjoy: it’s fun to imagine being so powerful that everyone else is scared (but, somehow, still respectful, still kind, and still amused by me). It’s fun to imagine riding out of town whenever I want, and still having what must of course be the most beautiful woman in the world loving me when I get back. It’s fun to walk tall into the trap, and face the guns, and gun them down instead.
                Although I wouldn’t want that blood on my hands.
                I think there’s probably a place on the shelf for this kind of story. There are certainly lots of these stories around: listen to your TV characters talk, or watch a movie, or pick up a newspaper to read about some celebrity, and you’ll find one. I’m going to ride with L’Amour’s impossible heroes till the end of the book, but I think it’s important to stop and realize which heroes are frightened egos beating their chests at the dark, and which heroes actually make the world deeper.
                It reminds me of a night some weeks ago, when students and I were sitting at a campfire in Colorado. The fire became our metaphor for self-respect. It’s easy to want other people admiring us, praising us; that’s the fire. It’s close, and it’s warm, and it goes out quickly unless you keep adding wood. When you step away from the brightness of the fire, and look up, you see the stars: honesty and integrity, good work and passion and kindness. They don’t seem as bright. They don’t seem as warm. During the cold moments, it’s harder to feel their glow (and during the coldest moments, perhaps you really need that fire), but the stars burn steady for all our lives. It’s easy to want the fire. I want to learn to look at the stars.

                “Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.” -John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

                Sometimes I tend to think of thoughts (stories, perspectives; plans, projects) as rivers, running ahead of me: if I don’t follow them now, if I don’t stay close, I’ll lose the current forever. It will pass away, and that thought will never come. It will blink out, with less than a blackened wick to show where it might have been. Looking at that, now, I do not believe it.
                I believe that thought, existence, is like a soaking rain: it comes down everywhere, it comes down overflowing, it comes down to drum against the earth. Thinking is like cupping your hand and holding it out from the edge of your tent. (Your tent, because it’s possible to hide from this moment’s thoughts: to shelter from them, so that they never touch your face). That water, that water right then, you could have only held right then; but there is more water, always. There is more rain. It will be different tomorrow, but there will be something tomorrow. You can follow your thoughts now. You can follow them later. You can’t follow the rain: it moves faster than you, it dances past you–it touches you. It soaks the ground, feeding unseen roots, and when you stop and look up and open your mouth, it will kiss your thirst.
                If I didn’t write down these lines–these lines, right now, before I fall asleep–then they would slip away. I would forget them while I dreamed. But all the lines I write are only approximations, are only the patter of the falling rain; and the rain will still be falling tomorrow. The drops will drum a new rhythm with the same old beat. Life, thought, and loving–all these go on.
                When I saw thoughts as rivers to be chased, I got confused about why I write these. I started seeing Uproar as a way to make myself think at least once a week–or, even worse, as a way to prove I have thoughts. That’s silly. I do. We all do. We think like grass growing, and for the same reason: it’s who we are. There’s nothing to prove–just soil to dig into, and water to drink. People to learn from, and moments to share. Why Uproar? Because I care for the people around me. Because it is raining. Because I want to walk into the rain. How wonderful it is that we can walk together.

                While looking at fish in a current: “He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided.” -Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

                I’ve wondered about this (and struggled with this) for a long time, so it’s nice to hear Pratchett come out and say it. Staying in place often takes a lot of swimming. That’s obvious with our bodies: we don’t eat and think, “I’ll never have to do that again.” We don’t drink and say, “Well, now I’ve dealt with thirst.” We expect the work to return, day after day. Perhaps we should expect the same thing in our emotional lives.
                I used to want joy to be a kind of trophy, a possession, a mythic beast I could hunt with a pokey stick and put on my wall. I think I killed a fair amount of joy that way. Luckily joy is a magic thing: sooner or later I woke up and found that the joy I’d caught wasn’t on the smoking wrack anymore. The magic beast had come back to life and run back into the forest where it belongs. Joy, self-worth, purpose–these aren’t things to obtain. They run. Our choice is to run with them.
                Always swimming could sound tiring. It certainly takes effort, and sometimes I end up feeling like a frantic goldfish. Still, there are different ways to swim. A few weeks ago, I was kicking and hurrying and struggling to stay away from the shallow coral while I watched sea turtles. They were in the same swells: but their swimming was a fluid thing, a part-of-it-all thing. With a few careful turns of their flippers they let the wave carry them back and forth over the coral. Mid swing they bent down to take a bite of algae. They rested, and worked, and ate: and all of that was swimming. The movement of the oceans was part of them–perhaps because they’d accepted that they were only a little part of it.
                Effort’s a funny thing. I often feel like I don’t want to spare any of it, or that I’m asked for too much. But if you look at the etymology, “effort” comes from the Latin ex- (“out”) and fortis (“strong, steadfast, spirited”). So effort is the upwelling of our spirit; it is the water we pour into the world from the well of our strength. If that’s true, constant effort doesn’t sound like something to fear. We will always swim to just stay here, but loving is part of that swim. Laughing is part of that swim. Washing dishes is also part of that swim, but whatever we think of the task, we can do it for the love of our family or for the laughter of the water on our hands.
                Perhaps the spring of our own spirit is the gift we’re given at birth; perhaps our effort, the water of that spring, is the gift we give back. And the water is there: there to sip, there to share, flowing from our spirit because we are alive.