10 things I know for sure

In posting this, I noticed that’s been almost two months since I last published a blog post. Oops. Well, not really. I’ve doing what (I hope) most of us have been doing: staying home, staying cool, figuring out life in a pandemic. Anyway, here are some new words for you to read!

I recently read a book by Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office): The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith and Idiocy, and the final chapter is titled “10 Things I Know For Sure.” Wilson challenged readers to come up with their own list, so I’ve been mulling the subject for weeks.

Here’s my attempt, then. I’m sure there are more than 10 things, and maybe I’m not 100 percent sure about these, but here they are anyway.

Ten Things I Know For Sure
(in no particular order of importance)

1. There’s always room for ice cream.

I’ve been eating A LOT of ice cream during the pandemic. Almost every night. I don’t recommend this as a sustainable health practice, but it’s a little something to look forward to at the end of a day that feels like every other day. I blame my grandparents for my deep and abiding love for ice cream. They managed the local Dairy Queen when I was an impressionable age (elementary school), and my brother and I spent countless after-school days and weekends while our parents worked in the back room of the local DQ, “helping” (what child labor laws?) by crushing Oreos for blizzards or layering Buster Bar cups. Everything was made in-house and by hand back then. Nothing tastes better than a Buster Bar straight out of the freezer with the paper cup still sticking to it. In college, my best friend’s dad worked for Baskin Robbins in the quality control division. Her college freezer was always stocked with 31 flavors of ice cream. Most summers, we try out the local ice cream shops to find interesting flavors. (We’re not doing that this summer, even though we could “take out” ice cream. That’s not as much fun as eating it on the actual farm where it’s made.) We are keeping our freezer stocked with flavors from Weis, Turkey Hill, Wegman’s and Target. (Target brand ice cream is surprisingly good.) One week we splurged on Ben and Jerry’s pints. No matter how full I think I am, I almost always have room for ice cream. I can only think of a couple of times when I turned down ice cream.

There’s always room for ice cream. (Sherbet, however, is another thing entirely. I could live all of my days and never eat sherbet.)

2. Kindness takes practice.

I like to think of myself as a nice person, but being nice and being kind aren’t really the same thing. You can “be nice” and to me that’s just not being an a-hole to other people. Being kind takes more intention. And I don’t always want to do it, especially when I don’t think people deserve it. Kindness takes a deep breath before dismissing a person or their beliefs. It tries to understand where the other person is coming from. It offers them a reaction they might not deserve. When I think of kindness, I think of the Jesus I read about in the Gospels. He wasn’t always nice (“You brood of vipers!”), but he was kind (“Does no one condemn you? Then neither do I.”). Whenever I wonder if I’m showing kindness, I think about my gut reaction to a situation and then I try to do the opposite.

3. Life is unpredictable and shit happens.

I don’t like this. I want to know what’s coming. Sometimes. Especially if it’s good and peaceful and light. (I don’t think I would have wanted to know the pandemic was coming, say, a year ago.) I used to think that if I did everything right, like I was “supposed to” then I could somehow avoid the bad things of life. Take, for example, when a tree limb fell on our car last year. I blamed myself for parking the car in that part of the driveway. I thought that if I had just parked it farther back in the driveway, then it wouldn’t have happened. But shit happens, people. We can try to avoid it, but sometimes it’s just our turn. I hope that doesn’t sound fatalistic. I think of it like running through a nearby park that is full of ducks and geese. The paths are scattered with goose poop. I could try to avoid every instance of goose poop, but I’d have to change my course entirely. I still try not to step in the obvious piles, but if I want to enjoy a run through the park, I have to accept that I might get a little bit of shit on my shoes.

4. Therapy is worth every penny. And more. 

If you’d spend your last dime (and go into medical debt) to fight cancer or some other disease physically ravaging your body, then give the same consideration to your mental health. Getting your shit together mentally and emotionally is as valuable as taking care of your body physically. It’s not cheap nor should it be, and it’s the single best thing I’ve ever done for myself. (By “single best” I mean it was three years of bimonthly or monthly appointments that I sometimes left in tears. Not fun. Or easy. But good.)

5. Swearing is less offensive to me than racism, bigotry and hatred. 

Cursing used to feel taboo, and while I still wouldn’t drop a swear in my grandmother’s presence or in church (probably), I’m not afraid of using adult language when the situation calls for it. (And there are situations that call for it.) More offensive to me are injustices designed to hurt people made in the image of God (spoiler alert: that’s EVERYbody) and the kind of words used to degrade and dehumanize others. Drop some “F” bombs in my presence and I’ll hardly bat an eye. Say something in defense of slavery or derogatory about LGBTQ people or make a racist remark and you’re likely to see a side of me that isn’t particularly nice. 

6. There’s always room for one more. 

In high school, our lunch table had a reputation of overflowing its capacity. We were always squeezing together to make room for one more. (We were not the cool kids or anything, but we thought we were pretty fun to hang out with.) It was a round table and sometimes we bumped elbows while we tried to eat our sandwiches or burgers or whatever. I’ve never regretted making room for one more person at the table. When I was pregnant with my second child, I wondered if I would have enough love to go around since we already had one child. Turns out love is expansive and multiplies to fit the circumstances. I used to think I was at full capacity for friendships. I have trouble investing deeply in relationships if I feel overwhelmed by the number of them, so I used to think I didn’t need to make anymore friends. But as it turns out, there’s always room for a few more. When we moved to Pennsylvania, I thought I had enough friends from college and back home. Then I met people I now can’t live without. And when we moved again within Pennsylvania, I thought I didn’t need anymore friends. And then I met more people I can’t live without. Then I started working, and I thought I was full up on friendships. These people would just be my work people, nothing more. And I met people I can’t imagine not having in my life. Rather than feeling stretched too thin, I feel joyously full of relationships.

7. People are THE WORST. They’re also THE BEST. 

Humanity has such wide-range capacity for good and evil. Some days I’m overwhelmed by it. When I see the good we’re capable of, I’m inspired and hopeful and optimistic about our chances. When I see the evil we’re capable of, I’m jaded, despondent and pessimistic about our chances. In the midst of the pandemic, while we were on a hike and trying to stomp out Spotted Lanternfly nymphs, I said, “Maybe we should just let them have the planet.” (Obviously not one of my best days.) In both cases, my prayer is always, “On earth as it is in heaven.” It takes work, and there’s no one but us to do it. 

8. Travel is the second best investment I’ve made. (Mental healthcare is the first. See no. 4)

When I was a junior in college, I had the opportunity to study for a semester in England. Tuition was the same, but I had to pay all my own travel expenses. I applied for my first credit card and went into some debt to take trips to places like Ireland, Scotland, France and Italy while I was there. I regret nothing. (Except that my memory of those days is somewhat faded. Pictures help, but that was more than 20 years ago!) Every travel experience I’ve ever had, especially the international ones, have changed something about me or the way I see the world. Living in isolation gives us a limited view of the world. Our favorite quote as college students roaming around Europe was the first part of this gem by Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” (The entire quote is even more appropriate!)

I hate debt, but travel is worth it. 

9. The older I get, the younger everyone else gets.

What kind of magic is this? People in their 60s and 70s seem YOUNG to me now that I’m in my 40s, and anyone under the age of 30 looks like a child to me. (I didn’t say it was GOOD magic.) This, of course, doesn’t apply to my kids who keep growing up, and I couldn’t stop that even if I wanted to. As the sages of ’90s pop music Smash Mouth said, “The years start coming and they don’t stop coming.” (Sing it with me: “Hey now, you’re an All-Star …”)

10. I still have a lot to learn.

Many times in my life, I’ve thought I knew all there was to know. I’m still guilty of stubbornly holding on to my point of view, especially when I’m afraid. The truth is, the more I think I know, the less I actually know. I got mostly As in school and graduated from college with honors. Sometimes I think that means something important, but there are people with less education than me who know a whole lot more about things I can’t even comprehend. One of the things I loved about being a journalist was getting paid to ask questions. Even then, I sometimes thought I knew what the answer was going to be, but most of the time I was surprised to learn something new. I value curiosity, which means I want to keep my mind and heart open to new ideas and perspectives. 

What are some things you know for sure? Even if you don’t have 10, I’d love to hear from you!