Pet peeves. We all have them. Some people hate when walkers or drivers are proceeding slowly or stopping in front of them. Some people get visibly infuriated if you accidentally bound in somewhere others are coming out of like a subway car or an elevator. Some people leave dishes in the sink to “soak.” Some people don’t like exposed feet.
I have a few. And they’re coming to my attention and they don’t seem healthy. I am not honestly recording my best self here. I am however, honestly recording. And that right now feels right, and fun, so as my youngest would say, “trus.”
But like when someone repeats… I mean look, I’m a teacher. Repetition is everything to a teacher. I get it. I live it. And maybe that’s part of it. What peeves me about it is when I got it, and I know you know I got it. Because repetition is important in teaching, but it can also be a kind of filler. It’s like clearing your throat to give yourself time to think while gripping the mic with both hands.
We use repetition in teaching to reinforce, comfort, support, ease… to give each other space to get comfortable. It’s the settling in before the real push of rigor and challenge. I used to have a problem with this (I still do!) My administrators would sometimes criticize my clarity and ask for teaching points to be spelled out. But I like newness. I like surprise. I actually long a little for spontaneity. Life has enough repetition to my mind. Still, I have learned that not everyone is always paying attention (indeed hardly anyone in any given moment really is!) and repetition is necessary to call back, remind, lay foundations, and realistically manage expectations.
My oldest has autism. Earlier today we leaned a little on this to navigate a little bit of that. Actually feels a little meant to be all things considered. I was driving home from work today when I thought of an old friend. It is with real gratitude that can convey the speed with which this thought lent itself to a phone call, which connected us within minutes - more than just our voices! My friend happened to be about a minute behind me on the very highway I was taking home. This is despite the 3-4 hours or 150 miles regularly between us, and 5 months or so since we’d even last spoken. He and his family were coincidentally traveling down to see his parents who happened to live on the other side of Long Island from me. But he and I hadn’t even met on Long Island. We met up near the Canadian border decades ago at school. We’d stayed in touch, yes, thanks to modern technology. But I had never even yet met his 6 year old daughter!
The coincidence of my thinking of him, honoring that intuitive hit, minutes before his passing so geographically close was felt by so many more people than just us for so many other reasons. I’d literally been texting another friend minutes before expressing a longing for a real coincidence to share. I mean I like coincidences, and I have begun to really feel an ease through life managing gratitude with transparency. But burdens and stresses seemed to release as a result of this one story. We actually all joined for dinner this evening almost out of respect for just how coincidental this was. Now my friend believes that it’s arrogant to believe some god or the universe cares whether we met or where we eat dinner, and perhaps he’s right. And my kids always think I’m hippy dippy… But there’s a truth and a process that really mattered here. I think it is a GPS.
So my kid - the one with autism - had this day uniquely free. It’s been months for him of daily school toils, test preps, Tae Kwon Doh events, proms and Bat Mitzvahs. He’s had responsibilities to attend to every single day throughout this last term of his junior year. It has been a lot but he’s handled it all. Emerging with his nearly perfect GPA, honors and art shows, most never even see his real struggles and triumphs.
However, he’s a grounded, funny, but routine oriented kid so that when I mentioned this story and my friend and brought up a possible spontaneous dinner plan, I could see my son was rattled. I tried to head it off by suggesting a place nearby that he likes. I gave him the “out” even though he knew I wanted him to come and meet my friend and his family. I helped him manage his anxieties and conveyed my expectations. We discussed all of this on the way to the restaurant beforehand.
What followed was a beautiful dinner, a lively conversation, a memory, and a tasty meal shared with new connections. Practiced honesty, honored intuition, a coincidence that felt like a conversation with divinity, and happy, boisterously shared meal. We all have pet peeves when we think we want to be somewhere we haven’t gotten to yet. Or when we’re made to feel discomfort. But what if we embrace exactly where we are exactly while we’re here as riddled as we are with imperfections as we all always are at any given moment? What might we find and who might this afford us opportunities to share ourselves with?
In other words…
…another pet peeve. Some of my best people lean on this one and its power over me likely drives my insanity, but when someone drops this little phrase it pings my ADHD like a doozy. I start spiraling with this cyclical internal dialogue that goes something like ‘in other words? Did I ask for other words? Were you not satisfied with the first words you chose? When someone uses this I feel they are again gripping the mic which… I guess is exactly what I’m doing here.
So, here I am looking for space to speak, to exist, to express. Maybe to hope that someday someone will listen, (or at least read) this blog. I could do this in a journal but the Net offers just a little more transparency somehow. I explain this away on the basis that I was orphaned, like every Disney story worth its weight and indeed Disney himself. But I know this because people write books and movies about Disney. Nobody’s writing about me but me! LOL
But what if the reason I’m not interested in other words is telling. What if I really need to assess my investment in the first words? Or what if you do? Maybe I ought to stop looking in this direction habitually and turn to see if there are other things to let in? There are lots of changes I’ve made recently and I’ve noticed others around me making daily. There are stresses I’ve felt responsible to attend to, but maybe thats just the old illusion of control? Maybe I really need to put my money where my mouth is, and trus that whatever I care about but let go of, will be ok.
But anything worth preserving should grow from honesty - for better or worse. It should weave from the personal and stretch to the universal. We are, after all, universally struggling with imperfection, and perceived separateness. If there is a God, we might be a part of Them or if we are gods then we might remember why, but in the end it’s connection that redeems us all. And that connection requires fallibility, vulnerability, forgiveness and support. It requires all these things, over and over. In other words, look, live, laugh, love, trus. Then rinse. Then learn. Then repeat.