I am thinking about the bright expanse of the New Year stretched out in all directions like a snowy, trackless space. What do I hope for? What would I change? What kind of trail will I carve into this blank powder?
This is the time of year for bold pronouncements and good intentions. I plan to write every morning for twenty minutes. Right after I jump down off the elliptical machine. All the candy and cookies are going to the radio station for the volunteers to eat. I am going to cook only low-fat food for the rest of the winter. I will start the book. My intentions are always pointed towards better health and fitness and more creativity.
Then Life happens. I make inroads towards my resolutions, but eventually the intentions are all that are left, glimmering in the distance, and guilt follows me instead. I end up on the couch eating rum balls and watching bad television, but I do not enjoy it, suffering from the lethal combination of slothful habits and the remnants of New England guilt left over from childhood.
It is a good thing to point towards improvement. My friend Dawn is a priest and she says, “God loves you just the way you are, and He loves you too much to let you stay that way.” Funny how we often feel that way about the people we love..and about ourselves especially at the beginning of a new year.
I think about my community, and how people are slowly changed by living in such close proximity. There is not really a concerted effort to change people and sometimes too often I hear “Oh, that is just how she/he is…” when I think maybe some change is in order. There is something about island communities that gives eccentrics a lot of room to flourish. This can border on co-dependence. I remember hearing a exasperated counselor say “This town is just one big DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY”.
That might be true. Equally true is the fact that you end up accountable for your behavior when you live in a town where everyone knows you. That accountability can be a smoothing force, like erosion that sands the edges off some personalities, to allow them to fit more smoothly next to the other pebbles in the pool.
If you flip someone off for a driving mistake in Petersburg you are going to run into them again at the bank, the post office and the grocery store, where everyone else would have already heard about your bad mood. If you push people around in your job or in a position of power, you are going to get pushback. It may be subtle, and come from an unexpected corner when you least expect it, but it will be pushback all the same.That’s a good thing. That’s how we learn. In fact, I don’t think people live very well outside of community without any kind of pushback. When I visit places where anonymity overshadows accountability, I am often horrified by people’s behavior.
This is not to say that every one living in my small town is perfect, or even well behaved, but accountability and kindness make this a more pleasant place to live.
I also think people are kinder here because they have the Back Story. Yes, partly due to the “Holy Use of Gossip” as a friend of mine calls it. Certainly, gossip can simply be cruel fabrication, but other times it lets us know when someone is deeply in the weeds, and suffering. It helps to know if someone’s marriage is dissolving or they live with chronic pain so maybe you don’t hold them to such a high standard of accountability. I mean to say, gossip sometimes gives us enough information to gently let each other off the hook.Then kindness takes over, and makes a place at the table for even the most flawed among us. It is an interesting balance between tolerance and accountability that shapes us slowly into who we are in a small town.
Maybe slow change is best. Rather than starting out the new year “walking on my knees for a hundred miles repenting” as Mary Oliver puts it, I will just try to be accountable to my body for what I do and eat, strive to find time and space for creativity and have some tolerance for when I stray off the path. So far so good. Almost 24 hours now without a rumball. Good luck on your resolutions. Let’s just take them a day at a time..
Julie Hursey's Weblog 