Category: beautiful life (Page 3 of 35)

Why We Mourn Jack

February 6, 2018 / Michele Minehart

I’ve given more than 24 hours, so spoilers are fair game. The video montages are making their rounds on Facebook, tempting tears at odd hours of the day by walking back through Jack’s relationship with Rebecca and the kids. The writers and creators of this show deserve a standing ovation, not just for making us fall in love with this man (and family), but for doing so in a way that doesn’t provoke us to ask why? We don’t even question why do we love him, or why are our hearts broken over an imaginary fire caused by the safest product on earth?

Jack is a wrong-side-of-the-tracks, hard-childhood kid that didn’t let the pain harden him, so of course, we cheer for him. We’re thrilled he took a turn away from the patterns set before him. And he fell in love with Rebecca – who doesn’t love a love story? He worked hard, saved his pennies, swallowed his pride and even asked for money when he needed it, so we celebrate his fastidiousness.

But if you ask me – and if you’re still reading, then you’re asking – we don’t love Jack because of those things. The turning point in the story, for me, was the episode where he revealed to Rebecca his drinking problem. We saw a side of Jack that revealed imperfections; even ugliness.

Jack was no longer the perfect guy, the perfect husband, the perfect father. But when perfection shattered, we still loved his goodness. He loved his family with all of his imperfect self, which is all we can ever ask. We will search the world over looking for perfect love, only to come up disappointed. The promise was never perfection, only goodness.

In the episode which shows us how he died, Rebecca remarks to Kevin how “your dad never had to try.” Jack was able to give his family love and patience and grace seemingly without effort. Kate and Kevin, in their adulthood of grief, have spent years trying to become someone who would make their father proud, unable to do so because of a deep sense of shame around how he died. They’re tumbled by their imperfection, as if they’re shocked and immobilized by it.

But then we watch Randell and the way he doesn’t numb away Superbowl Sunday. He doesn’t pretend like it’s normal yet he doesn’t allow himself to become dissolved by it. And in his interaction with his daughter, we get a peek at the story behind the story: he tells her how she’s his “#1” and before she was born he was overcome by fear and worry that he wouldn’t be the father that he needed or wanted to be. Our previous knowledge gives us a glimpse at his anxiety, his breakdowns, his interaction with perfection.

He tells his daughter, “when I met you, it was like I didn’t even have to try.”

Cue all the tears.

We know Randell, like his father (both fathers!), isn’t perfect. Randell has struggled with his own demon. That struggle, that fight, left him well aware of his imperfection. From there the struggle goes one of several ways: either covering it up, letting it beat him up, or living with it in the back seat.

Jack and Randell stopped trying to conjure a perfect life into existence by their own perfect doing. Instead, they loved their children and their wives and their families from a deeper source. The cracks in their veneer are what lets the light through, as St. Anne Lamott often quotes.

Those cracks, chips and gashes can become a source of inner contempt as it becomes obvious the image is no longer in perfect condition. Or those broken places are exactly how love flows out more freely.

We don’t love and mourn Jack because he was perfect, but because he was good. And the reason that This Is Us is causing Kleenax to have such a good year is because after we turn off the DVR, millions of women* are climbing into bed with their own version of a person who doesn’t live up to perfection. Loving Jack despite his shortcomings, offering him forgiveness and cheering him on, celebrating the way he loves his family – these all become practice rounds for us to do it in our own homes, if we choose to see all of what is unfolding. It provokes in us the desire to love from a deeper source rather than spending our energy creating a cover of perfection. We’re free to let the love seep through our own broken edges. And we free our loved ones to do the same.

As Steinback famously wrote: And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. And may it be so.

*and men, but let’s be honest about target demographics

winter nap — Image via CC by spoilt.exile

A Good Winter’s Sleep

January 12, 2018 / Michele Minehart

Because the winter’s temperatures rose above 2° around here – nay, they rose to the 50s! – I resumed the morning walk habit for two days in a row. Yesterday the spring-like conditions drew my attention to the melting snow and wet grounds. Thankfully the earth is equipped with the capillaries to direct the water where it needs to go, even as a few deeper ditches kept hold of their dirty piles of ice and snow.

I find it fascinating that the earth – at least here in Ohio – comes equipped with this season where it hardens up and lets everything remain on top. It doesn’t let stuff sink in during the winter. It just sits under blankets of snow, doing nothing, creating nothing, though a wealth of energy still circulates through its inner body. This freezing, though appears as idleness, serves an essential role to the entire seasonal process.

When I was younger, my grandpa Bud – one of those farm men who knew how to do about anything (except drive a zero-turn lawnmower, but that’s another story) decided to grow an apricot tree from the pit of another apricot. He showed me the process: he took the seed, wrapped it in a wet paper towel, and stuck it in the freezer. He explained that the pit needed the coldness to learn how to break open and begin to grow.

We haven’t done a good job of taking cues from the earth and the apricot tree. We don’t make a season of being covered in blankets, allowing ourselves the sense of rest and dormancy that the natural world undertakes. Our culture of Go! Do! Accomplish! Win! beckons us to hurry out the door for another long day of achievement. Our internal systems have no opportunity to find dormiens, dormancy.

The body heals itself during sleep. When we’re not spending extra time on the couch or in bed, we’re generally out and about with other people, spreading germs, and wearing down our physical selves. Thus, H1N1 outbreaks. Even our holidays, days added to the calendar so that people could be free to cease from the strain of work, add so much activity to our lives that we require a recuperation from our celebrations.

We’re taught that idleness is of the devil, that doing nothing is a recipe for a failed life. While I agree that a life of meaning includes work, I think we missed the design for effective work. Processes exist to allow a cycle of production, not a never-ending output. My friend (the notorious KLR) owns chickens which lay eggs based on the cycles of light. Because my fridge took a winter’s hit, I told her I would buy them a nice warm light, but the chicken doesn’t benefit from endless egg-laying.

Our bodies, our minds, our very selves, are designed for a period of dormancy. Quietness. Days of being covered in blankets without the need to absorb and create and produce. It’s in this long winter’s nap that our internal energy recharges so we can greet spring with a new life and begin the creation process anew.

So here’s what I’m advocating for, in our house, during this next round of winter weather: Blankets. Books. Naps. Movies. Popcorn. Minimal-effort baking. Gentle movement. Warm beverages. More books and blankets. Fuzzy slippers. Mindless tasks, like crochet or knitting or coloring. Board and card games. We’ll emphasize less what we can accomplish – unless it’s finishing the current novel – and more how we can simply be.

And if you need a permission slip to do nothing today and tomorrow (pending your speaking engagements and classes are also cancelled), here you go. It’s your Hall Pass to stop being productive. Now, go cozy up with a steaming mug of coffee.

The Subversive Act of Gratitude

November 26, 2017 / Michele Minehart

For years I’ve been curious about Thanksgiving and the idea of gratitude. One of my earliest posts, Thankshaving, (which hilariously looks a lot like Thank-shaving instead of Thanks-having) attempted to parse through this. I’ve remained a student of this idea of gratitude for years. This year, I think I graduated to 8th grade in the subject, as I’ve begun to realize what a powerful act it can be to cultivate a sense of thankfulness in any situation.

Thanksgiving is the day we sit around the table and say what we’re thankful for, the stuff that we readily forget for the other 364 days of the year. Our homes, our families, and our jobs move high on the list because we often only complain about these things, but on Turkey Day, we are glad to have them and cannot imagine life without them.

On the 4th Thursday of the eleventh month, we corporately and individually declare what is right in our world. Hidden beneath our gratitude, we find a layer of acknowledgement that life isn’t perfect, and we still find space to be thankful for what is good. It’s our way of saying, what I have, and what I am, is enough. Maybe, even, (probably!) more than enough.

In our culture, one that tells us how we aren’t beautiful enough, or successful enough, or loving enough, this is a radical act. We’re led to believe that we’re constantly without enough time, money, friends, power, control, and love to be worthy of our existence, and yet, on a day full of White Carbs of Happiness, we have the power to look at the Black Friday ads and say, “liar.”

When you begin a month full of shopping from this posture, you hold all the trump cards, my friends. You can play the right and the left bower as you see fit. You are free to enjoy a month of giving and receiving because you get to do so as a response to – not a source of – gratitude.

No one really disputes the consumerism of our society, specifically in the month of December, yet it continues to progress. Some propose downplaying all the gifting, and taking a “minimalist” approach (which I appreciate and even integrate). But I’m not sure it actually gets to the root of it. It can slightly shift us from the financial burden and the overcrowding of our homes, but it doesn’t return us to center. Making enough holiday gifts can keep us in the same rat race of earning our worthiness as the old fashioned way of buying it. In fact, now it’s so trendy to reduce the holiday consumption that we’re adding more stress by needing to find that perfect amount to spend and give, so that it’s not too little or too much.

I’m really digging the idea that moving from gratitude will provide much more peace and joy to our Christmas season because we’re not trying to do it right. The perfect gift isn’t necessary, because we’re practiced in saying “it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.” We’re moving from a place of enough. We already are enough, and any gift we give is just gravy on the taters (and stuffing and turkey).

This year, as the children write their wish lists and I start my Amazon (and local!) purchasing, I’m finding a new kind of excitement about the season. I can’t wait to look for the things my kids enjoy, and not because I need to provide them perfect presents or risk ruining their childhood. All of heaven knows they don’t need anything. Gratitude reminded us: we are enough. We have enough. We’re simply celebrating our enoughness, and the result is joy.

Category: beautiful life (Page 3 of 35)

Why We Mourn Jack

A Good Winter’s Sleep

The Subversive Act of Gratitude

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