Zoey, Joni, and Me
Zoey's entire face was surrounded by the teacup she held with both of her diminutive hands. Zoey has been a reality TV star on her adoptive parents show The Little Couple almost all of her life, but she was dividing none of her intensity with an awareness of her audience. This was a tea party. In the UK. She was all in.
Zoey's mom, neonatologist Dr. Jennifer Arnold, saw more than kitchenware and ritual. Zoey started life in an orphanage in India. When she arrived in an American home, Dr. Arnold said she didn't play with toys. She didn't know how. Perhaps plates and cups were what she used to fire her imagination at the orphanage. Maybe the same props and prompts kindle the same reaction as she grows.
Adults could learn from Zoey's connectedness and intensity. Aware of a wider world, we often lose something of her capacity for gratefully engaging the earthiness of the here and now. Just because our roles are serious, as is my primary one as suddenly unemployed, middle-aged job applicant, we are inert to Zoey's genuine excitement in response to the game of life. If tea cups and saucers can dance in her mind as she plays the sipping princess, we can bring new life to props and routines that grow too familiar. This isn't just a computer in front of me, the one I faced yesterday and the day before that. It is a window on the world I will reenter and haven't entirely left in five weeks of unemployment. These aren't just cover letters and resumes I'm glumly drilling to make them dance to the tune a prospective employer plays. They are opportunities for this writer to audition a new life for the proper fit, to pray, to send, and to repeat.
Apart from such forced adjustments as mid-career unemployment presents, we may actually overlearn Zoey's lesson. We may grow a little too accustomed to scripting our deepest joy from the usual props in the usual places. For a six-year-old, such a foundation of repetition, security, and certainty is the launching pad for bigger dreams. As we age, though, if we are able, we may settle for a perpetually stalled countdown. Measuring up a banker so established in his profession that from his office he is able to see his usual table at a posh eatery and wait for the other person's arrival before he moves, Ron Suskind admits in Confidence Men, "People tend not to change much in their productive middle-age."
Zoey's mom, neonatologist Dr. Jennifer Arnold, saw more than kitchenware and ritual. Zoey started life in an orphanage in India. When she arrived in an American home, Dr. Arnold said she didn't play with toys. She didn't know how. Perhaps plates and cups were what she used to fire her imagination at the orphanage. Maybe the same props and prompts kindle the same reaction as she grows.
Adults could learn from Zoey's connectedness and intensity. Aware of a wider world, we often lose something of her capacity for gratefully engaging the earthiness of the here and now. Just because our roles are serious, as is my primary one as suddenly unemployed, middle-aged job applicant, we are inert to Zoey's genuine excitement in response to the game of life. If tea cups and saucers can dance in her mind as she plays the sipping princess, we can bring new life to props and routines that grow too familiar. This isn't just a computer in front of me, the one I faced yesterday and the day before that. It is a window on the world I will reenter and haven't entirely left in five weeks of unemployment. These aren't just cover letters and resumes I'm glumly drilling to make them dance to the tune a prospective employer plays. They are opportunities for this writer to audition a new life for the proper fit, to pray, to send, and to repeat.
Apart from such forced adjustments as mid-career unemployment presents, we may actually overlearn Zoey's lesson. We may grow a little too accustomed to scripting our deepest joy from the usual props in the usual places. For a six-year-old, such a foundation of repetition, security, and certainty is the launching pad for bigger dreams. As we age, though, if we are able, we may settle for a perpetually stalled countdown. Measuring up a banker so established in his profession that from his office he is able to see his usual table at a posh eatery and wait for the other person's arrival before he moves, Ron Suskind admits in Confidence Men, "People tend not to change much in their productive middle-age."
We need not stereotype the banker and his professional kindred as the only drones subject to stultification. Even the archetypal artistic free spirit, songbird Joni Mitchell admits in "A Case of You", "I'm a lonely painter. I live in a box of paint." Across the spectrum of temperaments and talents, we learn to find satisfaction in this stuff and routines around us, and then we learn to restrict ourselves to that register, and those associations.
Blessedly, life interrupts. The banker who could overlook the same table and anticipate the same types of conversations had to reappraise after the financial upheaval of 2009. Conversely, Joni Mitchell sings in "A Case of You" as someone who is glad real life, with all its unpredictability, has intruded on the box of paint in which she lives. The collective results of real people's behavior, as with the banker, may force us to scrap our routine. Real people's individual quirks and enticements, as in the song, may gladden us in the exchange of the predictable for the unpredictable. Unfiltered life, like Joni Mitchell, I've had a case of you over the last five weeks, and I'm still standing.
Blessedly, life interrupts. The banker who could overlook the same table and anticipate the same types of conversations had to reappraise after the financial upheaval of 2009. Conversely, Joni Mitchell sings in "A Case of You" as someone who is glad real life, with all its unpredictability, has intruded on the box of paint in which she lives. The collective results of real people's behavior, as with the banker, may force us to scrap our routine. Real people's individual quirks and enticements, as in the song, may gladden us in the exchange of the predictable for the unpredictable. Unfiltered life, like Joni Mitchell, I've had a case of you over the last five weeks, and I'm still standing.
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