I once had a friend named Lisa. She was a great woman, full of spunk and fire and humor. She would call me and say, “Toffolo”, and I would say “Echeverry”, it was a funny little thing we did, she’s the only person who ever did that last name thing with me. Then she would ask, “What are you doing?” I would respond, “My favorite thing - absolutely nothing.” I’ve always been a fan of doing absolutely nothing, it’s usually where great inspiration is found.
This exchange is one we would always repeat, it’s wasn’t just once, it was an ongoing joke, and she always knew what my answer would be. Then, having gone through the unchanging routine, we would laugh just because women are sometimes silly like that. It’s always good to laugh.
The funny thing about Lisa was her hair. She was beautiful, and her hair was a marvelous mess of curls and spikes and highlighting. I always wanted to have my hair look like that. Years later, I realized I could never do that because it would mean a loss of control. I don’t do well with loss of control. Maybe it’s rooted in my anxieties, maybe I have a little OCD. My kids would tell you that I do, and that’s probably true, at least to some degree.
So I do my hair in little curls. Curls I can control.
Loss of control is a misnomer. It implies we ever had control to begin with, and in many cases, we don’t. There are many things in my life I have no control over. I have no control over my children, or aging, or whether someone I love has a fatal illness. Thinking we can control a fatal illness can lead to a “Year of Magical Thinking”. Someone wrote a book about that once, although I never read it. Just sometimes I do it.
At the moment, one of the things I cannot control is what, if anything, will happen to my book. I hate to keep bringing up my book, lest someone start calling this, “The Saga of Getting a Book Published, a Sad but True Tale.” But it’s bigger than that, it’s just the vehicle in my life right now pointing things out to me.
Today I was sad after I submitted to yet another agent. Probably another fruitless seed in the wind, I thought, although this agent specializes in mentoring unpublished authors who might help people. That’s me, right? But it’s a seed in an endless wind. Trees send many seeds out into the wind, but only a few take root. All of creation is like that. Corals send seeds out into the vast ocean, never knowing what will happen to them. Even humans – men send out millions of sperm all working diligently to reach the end and get the prize, but 99.99999999% of them don't claim the prize.
Maybe I’m a petty person but I’m always a little frustrated by that. Creation stories let us know that no matter what, life will continue to thrive despite the odds. While that may be inspiring, and it may be a great testament to that ominous statement from Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way”, my mind is always, always saying, “Chances are the seed that doesn’t bear fruit is me.”
Then I think of some of the difficult circumstances I’ve been in that I could not control. I think of the horrible conditions we were living in on Emerson Street. I hated that tiny, dirty space, with me and my children stuck in it. It seemed unbearable at times. We bore it, we had no other choice given our financial circumstances. Circumstances I could not control.
Yet it was there that I wrote my book, and in fact, I don’t think I could have written that book any place else. I had to be in a place that I hated to stand up and say, “This is why, and this is how I survived it.” Writing the book was enormously transformative for me. Sometimes the adverse circumstances in life that we cannot control force us to that place of honesty, and in that honesty is empowerment.
So as I sat depressed today after sending out yet another seemingly fruitless seed, I started thinking about the things I can do, the things I can control, the things that are empowering. Then many plans came to me of ways to foster the seed. Thinking of the things I can do took my depression away.
My hair will never look like Lisa’s. Lack of control will never be a comfortable place for me. I’d like to achieve some spiritual pinnacle where this isn’t true, but I doubt that will ever happen. However, I can make choices. I can look for the next honest thing to do. I can find one more courageous thing to do. Even when I can’t control outcomes, I can find empowerment.
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