THE SUMMER BEFORE MY JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL . . .
I drove with my mom over the border from Kentucky to Indiana. I was spending a week in the life of a college student at Earlham College, and I hadn't spent a night away from home in years. I was embarrassed of my homesickness, and determined to shake it out of my being - by force, if necessary.
Staring out the window at the landscape, I found myself repeating the word 'tree' in my mind. I'm a visual thinker, and often, out of boredom, look at a word in my head and break down its constituent parts: syllables, vowels, consonants. Sometimes I find an interesting symmetry, or my mind rests for a moment, amid the chaos of unconscious thinking, on the realization that some words are mostly vowels, or mostly consonants.
But that day, as I heard the word 'tree' in my head over and over again, what happened in that quiet darkness, where I was seeking respite from the stress and fear I was desperately trying to suppress in my heart and gut, is that I completely lost the sense of meaning and familiarity of a foundational word. It went from an exercise in boredom to a strange reframing of the world, everything exactly the same except the word 'tree' didn't sound like anything I'd heard before, and had become inexplicably detached from the trees I was staring at along the fields and roadside.
It's a funny thing that never happened again. I probably remember it because my mind was sharpened by the intensity of feeling at that moment in my life, and by the newness of everything I was about to experience. But I was reminded of it this week because a similar phenomenon is occurring for me lately around the word 'gift.'
This time it's less an obsession with the word itself, and more that I keep encountering the concept of a gift and wondering, what exactly is it?
Something shifted for me in the process of living through the latest United States presidential election, with all its daily energy grabs for our attention, while I was also aware that many people's daily life centers only on survival. It's not a new juxtaposition, but I did feel it more deeply this year than ever.
And I dreaded the anticipation of the election news cycle segueing into holiday shopping. I simply was not - am not - ready to blow past the National Day of Mourning / Thanksgiving week. I am not ready to bypass the complexity of gathering for respite and a feast on a national holiday that erases the genocide of people indigenous to this land. I want that rest, that warmth, that connection, that nourishment for everyone - yet my mind returns continually to how our government funds genocide so we can maintain an idea of comfort and freedom.
Everywhere I go it seems like another tree is up in a storefront, another light show is up on someone's lawn, luring me to push past the pain of this truth in favor of something shinier.
Trust me: the lights are beautiful. But did you ever notice that the stars only shine brightly with the help of the darkness? Embracing the hard truth does not diminish the experience - in fact, the ability to honor sadness, pain, darkness, and discomfort only amplify the capacity for genuine connection, gratitude, laughter, and joy.
As I take in each day's incremental shift in leaf coverage, the occasional sudden dip in temperature bringing different kitchen cravings and different levels of warm clothing, I also keep thinking...what is a gift? And how does the definition I take for granted, the assumed meaning that is continually packaged in a narrow box and splashed across television, become something different?
I know I said it wasn't about the word, but who can resist looking something up in the dictionary (not me!), only to find something new to think about among the explanations I take for granted. Something like this delightful aspect of the Merriam Webster definition: "a notable capacity." (Doesn't it sound like the title of a Henry James novel?)
A gift is a notable capacity to shift your attention to the tiniest of things.
A gift is a notable capacity to do something differently than you did yesterday, or last year.
A gift is a notable capacity to listen.
A gift is a notable capacity to apologize.
A gift is a notable capacity to ask for help.
A gift is a notable capacity to call a friend.
A gift is a notable capacity to do less.
A gift is a notable capacity to say yes (or no).
A gift is a notable capacity to practice boundaries.
A gift is a notable capacity to say what's on your mind.
A gift is also twenty years of friendship, a place to go when you need a reminder that you're not alone, a difficult conversation that doesn't kill anyone, and the 24 hours that we have in each day. What if those 24 hours are all we have? What is a gift, to you?
In solidarity,
Dor + Tay
photo by Christine Han
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