“[We choose to do these things] not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” -John F. Kennedy
                “Never forget that the first syllable of convenience is con.” -Bill Bryson, I’m A Stranger Here Myself

                The con, of course, is that my life will be better when my car locks itself automatically, my pens never leak, my clothes never wrinkle, and every dinner takes no more than a minute in the microwave. The con is that making communication easier and easier (facebook; texting; snapchat) helps us to connect. The con is that my life’s better when all my shopping ‘needs’ are met by one big mall, or better still, by Amazon where I can shop without wearing any pants. I’ve fallen for it: most of my slacks are made from that fabric that’s not supposed to wrinkle, and a bit ago I bought stamps online.
                Convenience is from Latin: the root’s the same as “convene,” which comes from com- (“together”) and venire (“to come”). “To come together:” to choose a place, and meet there. In the late 1600s we get the transition to “conveniences,” the material possessions that make our lives more comfortable. There’s another con: “comfort,” from conforten, “to cheer up,” which is itself from the Latin com- (an intensive prefix; like an early “hella”) and fort (“strength”).
All good cons are lies based on truths. I do want something near here: but I think, more than the ease of instant communication, I want the effort of meeting together, a standing here and sharing. I do want comfort, but I want the kind that means to make strong–not to make easy. Not to make thoughtless, simple, or quick. To truly comfort is to help roots in growing, branches in reaching, the tree in standing tall.
                I carefully arrange my errands geographically so I can take the quickest, most convenient path. I don’t look forward to them. But the truth is, when I finally get out the door, I usually enjoy them. I like seeing people. I like talking with someone about which radishes to buy, I like holding the door open, I like sharing a smile. I like all the little things that say, there are other people here, living their lives. I have my wrinkle-free clothes. My roommate irons his instead. His always look a bit better, and whenever I see him ironing, he seems to honestly enjoy the careful attention, the play of heat and water, the smoothness of the fabric.
                The con is that we can go back to being babies, with everything done for us; and that, if we could live that way now that we’re grown, we would like it. The con is that worth comes from ease, not work. Like all great cons, it catches us because we choose it. It plays on what we want–or what we think we want, and then we’re left with less: less messiness, less work to do, less life. And like all great cons, it’s built upon some truth: the truth of coming together, of being here with you. The truth of growing stronger in mind and body, not so we can do less, but so we can dance with the wind.
                We choose to do these things, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

                “Shall I find genius only among Geniuses?”
                                -Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

                Sometimes I’m in danger of being a snob. I go to the library, and I only want to read Good Books: Impressive Books: Books of Genius. Whenever that habit puts on its fedora and tries to lead me around, I think back to a poetry reading with Richard Wilbur. At least, Wilbur was in the room, sitting in the second row: another poet, far less famous, was reading. Afterward, I heard someone behind me: “history will forget him.” Perhaps they were right. This other poet’s lines didn’t seem to soar like Wilbur’s do. They didn’t land on the windowsill, tap the glass, and set off flying, inviting me to join them. At least, they didn’t seem to, not to me–and then Wilbur spoke up with a careful question, and I realized that, of all of us, he had been listening the most attentively. In Wilbur’s hands, these other poems that could, perhaps, have been lesser, weren’t lesser at all. There was genius in them, and Richard Wilbur found it.
                When I’m in danger of reading only Good Books, I think back to that night. That’s led to a little habit at the library: whenever I go to pick up the volumes I want, I also take something, almost at random, off the shelf.  Sometimes that’s led me down a rabbit hole that, frankly, seemed to dead end in the dirt, and I came out muddy and not much else. But sometimes that’s opened up a world where I didn’t know there was one.
                Genius, I think, is a good thing. Or at least it was, before it stepped to the start of the sentence: because while genius is promising, the idea of Genius, yawning open with that capital G, hurts us. It hurts us when we think that good ideas, balanced solutions, and perfectly baked cakes can only come from the Noble Few. (For one thing, we don’t bake as many cakes). It’s dangerous if we think we’re a Genius, because that means putting ourselves over others; it’s dangerous if we think we’re not, because that means discounting our talents. So I don’t want Geniuses. I want to find genius wherever it lives, growing with the mushrooms, dancing in the games of children, changing in the steam of a boiling pot.

                “I hope she’ll be a fool–that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

                For years and years, I didn’t like The Great Gatsby. I think I prided myself on not liking The Great Gatsby: first off, there can be something fun in saying “huh!” about the treasure an English teacher offers you (that’s why I try to avoid saying “I love this book” to my classes; although I love lots of books, so I usually mess that up), and secondly, I didn’t think I felt Gatsby’s aching need for money, fame, and a ‘perfect life.’ He wanted the parties that leave a mountain of pulped oranges: he wanted a wife who turned everyone’s jealous head, and then went home with him in a whisper of innocence to a bed of open desire. And (I said; I lied) there wasn’t a part of me that wanted that.
                Today I was talking with a student, and she snuck up on me: she didn’t talk about Gatsby, but about his “love” Daisy, who wishes once that her daughter would grow up to be a “beautiful little fool.” Thinking about that, my student said, “I can understand the wish. It would make things so much easier, at least for a little while.” A few minutes later she added, “Oh, I hate Daisy.” Listening to her, I felt her courage: the courage to include herself in the story. The courage to see a shortcoming and, instead of distancing herself with the simple “That’s bad,” admit out loud the more honest, “That’s me. That’s a part of me.”
                Without that courage, I was safe–or seemed so. Without that courage I saw Gatsby’s failings, and judged him–perhaps pitied him–before turning away. Without that courage I didn’t learn much from him. In order to change things, we need to understand where we are, who we are. The truth is, there’s part of me that responds to the myth of Daisy, as horrible as it is. There’s a part of me that wants what Gatsby wants, even though it destroys him. Until I realize that, any plan I have is based upon a lie (the lie of my own perfection), and it will crumble.
                I still have my problems with The Great Gatsby, but I feel something in it now. It is a book full of people who are almost great: people who should be wonderful, who should be kind, who should build so much. And instead, misguided, lost, hurt, competitive, afraid, alone, they build empty castles that fall apart. Perhaps what I’m really learning as I go back to the book is compassion for all those breaking people. It feels nice to admit that I am one of them. And perhaps, as with mosaics and stained glass, we can start making something wonderful with the pieces.

                “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.