On Saving Up: A Gypsy Heart and Blue Hydrangeas

Saturday morning at the grocery store, as I was meandering to the checkout lane, I lingered at the rows and rows of gorgeous flower bouquets. I love flowers and have so many fond memories associated with them.  Growing up, my mom and I took walks when the weather was warm and the trees had blossomed.  She always picked a bloom, brought it right up to her nose, closed her eyes, and drank in the aroma.  In the springtime, she called me Petunia. She taught me how to break apart the tightly packed flats before planting them in the soil.

Flowers make me feel safe, loved, and beautiful.

When I saw these vibrant bouquets at the grocery store, I wanted so badly to buy some for my apartment – but I kept hesitating.  I was waiting for something.

I’m 24 years old and, to the outside observer, my life seems a bit….  Well…. Unsettled. 

This fall, I will begin graduate school in voice performance to earn a degree that provides very little job security.  I am single – no boyfriends, lovers, or fiancés to speak of.  I’m certainly not living the life I had planned or expected – though I have tried to embrace its funny messiness.  

In college, I loved the idea of a “nomadic” existence.  This blog’s namesake is an allusion to Tennyson’s "Ulysses."  When I read this poem at age twenty, my heart sang a similar tune: an insatiable hunger for wild and wonderful adventure.

            “Come, my friends,

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die…

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I related perfectly to Ulysses – his curiosity and thirst for life.  I understood his unquenchable thirst for experience, knowledge, and purpose.  I wanted nothing more than to dance through life carefree and unattached.

But something happened last year.  I began to see that my gypsy heart desired more than endless adventure and movement.  What I really wanted was a Place to plant roots, a Place with People, a Place to invest. A Place to call Mine.

I took inventory of my surroundings.  I didn’t see a husband or a prestigious career or a house with a picket fence, baby blue shutters, and a bright red Kitchen Aid Mixer. 

But what I did see was this:

I saw my rock star aunt who is having her final chemotherapy treatment next week.  I saw my roommate, who lost her car keys in our neighbor’s bathroom Sunday night at 11:00PM.  I saw my parents sitting across from me at the dinner table, listening, lecturing, glowing.  I saw a group of beautiful women, who have been Jesus to me these past three months.  I saw mentors, musicians, bosses, coworkers, and students.  I saw a life.

I realized at the grocery store, in front of the sweetest bunch of blue hydrangeas, that I had been waiting to start my “real” life.  I had been saving up my ideas, music, words, recipes, love, time, dreams, and flowers for when I would arrive at some tangible, settled place called “real life.” In the throws of my twenty-somethings, I had forgotten that my real life is happening. Right now.

It might not be what I expected, but it is every bit as real.

At the grocery store that morning, I felt like maybe God gifted me with this assurance:

This is it, baby girl! This is my Plan A for you. This is the life I’ve given you right now. Now go and live it!

 And so I bought the blue hydrangeas.

On Striving: Tupperware Lids and Jaw Tension

On Thursday evening, I stared myself down in the practice room mirror.  Nearly at my wits’ end, I was at an impasse between my brain and my body; between the way I wanted to sing and the sound that I was producing.

For the past several years, nearly every voice teacher, peer, or adjudicator has offered some variant of this piece of advice:

           

Don’t try so hard.

Like so many singers, evidence of strain has manifested in my jaw, tongue, and shoulders.  My abdomen is sometimes so locked that my diaphragm feels more like concrete than a buoyant water balloon.  Hulk veins in my neck pop out when I sing difficult passages above the staff.  

It has taken me two years to undo just a few of those bad tension habits.  And now, in a practice room that felt more like a sanatorium, I laughed inwardly at this most recent irony:

           

I am now trying really hard to not try so hard.

And boy, have I tried everything:  Prayer. Yoga. The Alexander Technique. Personal exploration. Mental exercises. Stretches. You name it.  Still, the tension remains, like a stubborn Tupperware lid that refuses to shut properly: after succeeding in pushing one corner down, the opposite end pops right back up to mock you.

My teacher in college recommended a book that I have found so helpful: The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey.  Gallwey describes what actually occurs in athletes when they are playing “in the zone.”  He explains how, in our mind, we have two selves: Self 1 (the judging self) and Self 2 (the non-judging self). Players are at their peak when they completely let go of Self 1, the Ego.  By releasing judgments and control, Self 2 (our body) is allowed to work the way it is designed without the interference of our egos providing self-instruction or critique. When that inner voice is silenced and we are allowed to simply be, we can truly focus on the present. Gallwey quotes D.T. Suzuki regarding this state of peak performance:

“As soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought interferes…. Calculation, which is miscalculation, sets in…. Man is a thinking reed but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored….”

Nevertheless, shutting down the tendency to control and demand proves to be the most challenging task for me, not just in the practice room but in everyday life as well.

Why is this?

I believe what Gallwey submits to us is that we strive because we want the glory for our success.  We want to be responsible for getting things right, so our ego interferes with our natural selves.

The same is true with God I think. In life, there are so many times that I sense myself striving – striving to love people well, striving to serve, striving to be kind, striving to be perfect, etc.  All of those things are good, right? We are called to “make every effort to add to [our] faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). 

But if I’m honest with myself, how often do I try on these attributes so that I can be perceived as “good” or “spiritual” or “kind?” When that becomes my motivation, when satisfying a need for approval or attention or glory drives me to perform, those attributes that I'm striving for won’t last: I will  always come to the end of my rope; I will resent those that take too much from me.  My well of love, kindness, or mercy will eventually run dry, because I can only offer a feeble, human supply. When I try to do this with any kind of strength or striving on my own, the result is always resentment, frustration, or exhaustion. 

It is only when I open myself up to receive the Spirit – when I invite Him to work through me – that I can love or serve in any kind of steadfast, sacrificial way.

If I really believe that I am dust, I ought to know that I can do nothing good apart from Him. After all, we were designed to be dependent beings.  Just like God provided the Israelites with just enough manna for that day, God will provide us with exactly what we need.  He promises us this.  Then, when we receive His provision, we can recognize Him as the Giver - not any striving or manipulating of our own.  He receives the glory, attention, honor, and praise.

“I will not boast in anything,

No gifts, no power, no wisdom,

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection.”

- "How Deep the Father’s Love for Us" by Stuart Townsend