#3 / Happy
Hi everyone,
Yesterday was my birthday! What is my age? Well, I am either old or young, depending on whom you ask.
I can’t go anywhere to celebrate, but that’s not my style anyway. No pressure to do anything crazy. It’s actually kind of fun having one of the first birthdays in the coronavirus era. It feels special and unusual.
What did I do, then. Listened to our new records. I wrote this, and rewarded myself by opening cards and presents. Then we ordered takeout from a Korean BBQ place down Clark Street and had a virtual dinner with friends. And most importantly, I moved onto Newmashers, our Animal Crossing island!
Friends have told me some cool stories of the first kids in their neighborhoods to have birthdays since shelter-in-place. One group of parents all got in their cars and drove past the kid’s house and honked and waved and cheered. Another group decorated their windows and wrote messages in sidewalk chalk. The birthday boy then went on a neighborhood tour, and later that day said it was the best birthday he’d ever had. “I didn’t know so many people cared about me.”
As for me? I already know.
Naming It
That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief
I’ve been much more relaxed this week, and this little interview is a big reason why. David Kessler has literally written the book on grief.
Over the years, my therapist has turned me onto writers like Robert Bly who believe that in the West, especially in America and especially among men, we don’t talk about grief enough. Naming grief is powerful. There are stages of grief, and progressing through them is natural and therapeutic — but how can you navigate a path you’ve never entered?
The stages aren’t linear, but they do lead toward acceptance, which is where you regain power and control. Also in this interview, Kessler offers good solutions for coping with the physical and mental effects of these feelings, like mindfulness, balance, compassion, and detachment.
There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. So many have told me in the past week, “I’m telling my coworkers I’m having a hard time,” or “I cried last night.” When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we’re not victims.
Mood
We watched the movie Frances Ha on Friday night, and while I had my issues with it, the soundtrack is fantastic, with this as the centerpiece. Especially in times like these, you can never have enough Bowie.
Thanks for reading. Please write back if you can!
(P.S. If you’re getting this and you didn’t sign up, it’s because I love you enough to risk spamming you.)