Readiness

My eldest turned 20 last week. It was the first time she wasn't been home for her birthday, her first year of living in another part of the country, on her own.

Back when she left for college, two weeks after turning 16, people plied me with questions about whether or not I thought she was ready. "Ready in what way?" I replied drily, "There are grown men who still aren't ready for college."

I don't thing there's such a thing as ready, at least in the blanket sense. There are always ways in which we're not ready, even when we think we are: those are called blind spots. And there are ways in which we're ready, even when we think we're not: that's fear.

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I was kind of proud of myself this week. I transitioned a print newsletter to an email campaign. This is something I knew I could do, but for a while I found myself balking. Then I realized, "Oh -- I'm afraid because I've never done it before." Having named the fear, I could nod at it and drive on by. 

It's unspoken, unidentified anxieties that have the ability to steer me off course. One of my kids has this Mental Floss t-shirt:

When I can name what is behind a vague sense of unease, I'm more than halfway to pulling out of it. I suspect that being ready to face our fears may be the closest we will ever come to being blanket-level ready.

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The whole idea of being ready for something is kind of odd, if you stop to think about it. It carries with it the assumption that we have (or should have) a choice about when things happen. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't. 

When we say, "I'm not ready", we often mean:

• I'm afraid I won't succeed; or
• I seriously don't like this and don't wanna go through it; or
• This will be way too much work to be comfortable; or
• I'm not good enough at this to avoid looking (or feeling) inept.

It could also mean, "I genuinely need additional time to develop the skills to do this," but I suspect that's not usually the case. 

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I wasn't ready for Eldest to move halfway across the country, in the sense that I was surprised at how hard it was to adapt to the idea that I couldn't hop on a bus and be at her doorstep $25 and five hours later. I'm slowly getting used to it. 

And is Eldest ready to hold down a job, live on her own, and be independent? I daresay she is far more ready than she thought she would be. She likes her job, likes her apartment, likes her town. There are things she is learning -- some because she wants to, and some because she has to -- and that's good. 

Sometimes we're ready. Sometimes we're willing. Sometimes we're able. I'm not convinced that we need all three at the same time to move forward. What we really need is an honest assessment of what's holding us back. Often it's simply fear. 

The positives of negative space

In the late 80s and early 90s I worked in marketing, mostly in the money management sector. It was a time when there were few women in that field, and young professionals were continually told to find a mentor. I found this difficult. You see, there were very few people I wanted to emulate. Mostly what I did was look around and note the characteristics I did not want to have. I knew who I didn't want to be long before I had an inkling of who I aspired to become.

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I spent many weekends at the Metropolitan Museum of Art a decade later, with my children. The Met has a superb drop-in education program; it's free with admission.

One week the program was in the Greek galleries. In addition to learning about red-figure and black- figure vases, we spent a while in front of a gorgeous funerary statue of a young man, a kouros. The instructor had us walk around the statue, noticing what we liked about it. She then talked about how a sculpture is defined by what's there and what's not. The space between the legs, for example, has its own beauty. The stone which was removed was as significant as what remained.

This idea of negative space enchanted me. We are, in part, defined by who we are not.  We do not get any say in what kind of raw material we begin with, but I can choose to carve away cynicism (or not), to excise self-centeredness (or not), to shave off fear (or not), to chisel out desires for fame, fortune or success (or not).

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And yet there are limits. Some negative space is formed simply by getting knocked around. What could have -- perhaps should have -- been there gets broken off, eroded, cracked, damaged. We don't get to sculpt everything. Though life may not be what it could have been, there is still immense beauty in it. 

When we look at a gorgeous statue that has lost a nose or an arm, what do we fixate on: What is missing, or what is there? 

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I daresay that much of what we think of as sacrifice, isn't. Most of what we give up for the sake of our children/spouse/friends/strangers is stuff we can easily do without. Often we are actually better off for the lack, since thinking of others ahead of thinking of ourselves tends to smooth out certain bulgy spots in our souls. I think the negative space that is formed from thoughtfulness is more like the silken, clean line delineating the arm or leg of that kouros than like a missing nose.