🫀 What happened when I stopped trying to optimize my life
A letter to my son about making space for The Beautiful to appear.
This month I’ve been digging into the idea of Beauty, supported by John O’Donohue’s book Beautiful: The Invisible Embrace. Usually I’d write to you about the book, but in this case I think John would rather I told you about an encounter with what he calls The Beautiful instead.
Yesterday there was sun and rain. We both woke up congested with scratchy throats from the pollen and I was so tired I thought maybe I’d come down with a cold. You could barely breathe through your nose but you didn’t seem to notice. You were just as sunny as you always are — or often are. Or maybe as I tend to see you, regardless of how you are. One of the gifts I received when I became your mother was a sort of second sight. Even when you’re driving me up the wall I can’t help but notice how glimmers of perfection poke out around your edges.
The day passed slowly at first — warm sun on the back patio and a short call with your grandparents. They miss us so much but the truth of being together keeps us apart. When we say I miss you we mean we miss how things would be if we were all just a little better than we are. A little more forgiving, a little more flexible, a little less stuck in our ways. Loving your family is standing hand in hand and saying I would love you perfectly if only I could. We are nostalgic for the wholeness of that kind of love even though we’ve rarely known it.
Except for yesterday. Some days are perfect.
The morning sun was replaced with wind and wet by noon and I let you play video games for too long because I was too tired to come up with something else for us to do. Weekends have steadily broken into awkward chunks by scheduled activities. With all the gearing up and snack packing and did-you-get-the-water-bottle for the 9AM soccer practice there is rarely a stretch of time long enough to lay flat and unfurl. All the going throws us together in a flapping, haphazard way — everyone rustling in different directions towards the next thing while counting the minutes until we can finally sit down and rest. When the day is over and I’m curled up with you at bedtime I sometimes realize I haven’t seen you at all.
Your father and I miss each other on these days too. Before you came along we’d let the clock wind down on weekend afternoons. Maybe a movie, maybe a meal out somewhere close by. Probably drinks to stir around the motionless day.
It’s wild to think of it now, but all that open time used to make me feel lost. In the decade between age 26 and 36 I soothed myself with high bars for achievement and accumulation. It worked for a while — if I focused on what I’d have next I could easily ignore the uncomfortable gap between the rushing high points. Empty space pressed down on me in those years. I was sure I could self-help my way out of the tugging, pitted fear of what it would mean if this truly was as good as it gets.
It got harder to shake off after you were born. All those big goals didn’t mean as much anymore and I kept trying to find my way back to the clear path of achievement I’d been on for 35 years. I’d walk the decorated Brooklyn streets trying to find a throw pillow or an artisan wooden spoon to spark the lilting promise of a more perfect future and come back empty handed. What’s left to do when you feel bored and flat in the most interesting place on earth?
Our yard is spotted with a sturdy yellow flower called lesser celandine1. Meaty clumps of thick stems and heart shaped leaves start popping up around the end of February, green and thriving when so much around them still looks spent. Their flowers appear in March – a child’s drawing of looping petals fan around a fluffy center, face up and swelling to the sun on a fat, pale stem. You like to pick them and bring them to me. I tuck them behind my ears or into my hair clip and forget they’re there until later that night when the wilted stems tangle my brush and I bend forward to shake them free.
I picked them that first year too — I loved their cheerful defiance of late snow and freezing nights. I’d planned to keep them until someone on the internet told me they would choke out everything else in my garden if they were left alone. The sweet little plants are actually a scourge.
For the next two years I threw myself into rooting them out — I would dig for hours, trying to keep their dozens of tiny, fig shaped corms from scattering back into the soil as soon as I pulled up the leaves. At the end of the season I would stand back and admire my work. I’d done it! I’d gotten rid of the little bastards. Of course come spring the plants would return, mocking the hours of work I’d put in the year before.
Last year I gave up. I gave up on removing the celandine and I gave up on sorting my life into piles of nearly perfect and needs improvement. It dawned on me that somewhere along the way, I’ve started to see any form of discomfort (or even rest) as an unwelcome intruder in a would-be-perfect life. So many years have been spent trying to optimize away inconvenience or pain — I’ve been so obsessed with improving my life that I’ve failed to experience how beautiful it already is.
“More often than not the style of gaze determines what we see. … Eventually the windows of the mind become blinded by an imperceptible film of dead thought and old feeling so that the air within becomes stale, life lessens and the outside world loses its invitation and challenge. When no fresh light can come into the mind, the the colour and beauty fade from life.”
— John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace2
Yesterday once the sun came out, we brought out the chalk and the beach towels and I sat down low in the patchy grass to read while you played. Your dad put on an album that drifted out the back patio door and when I looked up from my book I could see you through the stems of the early spring flowers. I could also see the celandine.
In the pink light of the late afternoon, the wide stems of the blossoms stand in contrast with the wispy new grass — each stem stretching its little yellow face to the sky. The low sun shines through the green blades, striping them with white, yellow and orange. I can see each individual stem of celandine leaning forward at a perfect 45º angle, like swimmers in formation. They stand together across the entire yard with such uniformity it’s as though they’d been carefully placed by some invisible hand. The sun sinks lower and I watch as they shift with it in unison, gradually closing their petals for the day.
It was remarkably perfect. You were remarkably perfect, lining up your cars along the chalk roads having forgotten me to whatever traffic jam had overtaken the stone path. I melted into the late spring, finally easy enough to see that beauty never needed my help — just my attention.
Strangely enough, William Wordsworth was obsessed with these little guys. He wrote three poems about them!
All of this. So incredibly resonant and beautifully written. Thank you!
My understanding is that your surrender to the celandines is backed by science! I can tell you more if you actually care, but I know most people don't feel the same way I do about misunderstood plants :)