Courage and Fear (Anne Lamott)

I am a fan fan fan of Anne Lamott's. She is using Facebook a lot these days, for her musings, and as such I cannot post a link directly to a particular entry that I like. I am taking the liberty of quoting at length from her, but you can find her FB action here and her regular website action here.

Thursday, December 27, she said this, as part of her FB entry:

"Beside my FB community, which was huge technical help, I also remembered something Carolyn Myss said years ago--that we are elegant spirits, and so to ACT like like one. I wrote ES on my wrist to remind myself that I am an elegant spirit even when it comes to chairlifts, and show-offy little 4 year olds zipping past my adorable and elegant Nana self on little Roadrunners on skateboards.

 Another thing that helped was to be constantly in Help Thanks Wow. Help me get up! Thanks for the sweet young men at both ends of the chairlifts, who fell in love with me because of my courage and joy, and affirmed me in my efforts. Wow, look on the light on the mountains. And look at me, mostly upright. Wow! Thanks.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers

Also, I realized how much skiing is like writing--no one is making you do it, and no one cares if you do it. So YOU have to. You show off, like Woody Allen used to say before I turned on him--that 80% of life is showing up. You do it badly at first, shitty first drafts, but you get better. You make short assignments, and constantly remember that expectations are resentments under construction--you only write as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame; and on a tough slope that is maybe EVER so slightly above your pay grade, you only go from one side of the bank to the other, slowly, bravely, somehow both ineptly and majestically. Plus, with skiing and writing, you get to ask for a lot of help--and people want and love to help others.

I think my parents accidentally forgot to mention this to me when I was growing up--I grew up believing that you should always be doing things that were too hard, with feelings of metallic isolation; and figure it out by yourself, But again, "figure it out" is a bad slogan, and thankyouthankyouthankyou, the long form of thanks ."

The part that resonates for me is the idea of each of us being an elegant spirit. I also like the idea that we need to remind ourselves daily to act like one. I've been thinking of getting a line of poetry tattooed on my wrist, but maybe just ES would do it. In a elegant spirit kind of font.

I also love the idea that there was information we needed that our parents accidentally forgot to mention to us. My parents were wonderful in so many ways, but dangit, I have had to learn an awful lot on my own. I wonder what my children will still have to learn after I've stopped grousing at (I mean teaching) them. So I concede that it is endless, the learning.

Anne Lamott's book Help, Thanks, Wow is a sweet little book. It's a little small to be as filled with her funky talk as it is; I wanted every morsel to be tight and brilliant and dear with wisdom. But that's my stuff, isn't it, as my therapist would say.