Howdy.

How has the week been? How has the world been feeling?

This morning I felt like the universe was on my side. I was walking into my Spanish class when I ran into my teacher in the stairwell. Now, mind you, this happens at a freakishly frequent rate. Whenever we have a break, I seem to run into him. Which is pretty awkward to be honest, considering I never really know if I’m supposed to speak Spanish or English in these moments. I opted for English this morning to save us both. He asked if I felt ready for the quiz and I told him that I’ve been studying like crazy and trying incredibly hard and that I think I’m picking it up pretty well but that the last time I took Spanish was still about six years ago. The whole spiel. And he was really sweet about it. He figured I was freshly out of 101 and apologized for the system, saying that he doesn’t think it’s fair that I have to take an intermediate level course and all that. And I could tell he meant it when he said that he felt really bad about the whole thing.

When I turned in my quiz, which went quite well actually, he smiled reassuringly as he glanced at it and told me that it looked really good. I could have failed and that would still be the sweetest, most human thing ever. I think opening up to people tends to catalyze sweet little moments like that.

SWEET & SOUR MOMENTS

Speaking of sweet, human things.

I had this customer the other day who was a literal ray of light. He was calm and content and looked me right in the eye. Because of this, I delivered his macchiato to his table instead of calling it out at the bar as per usual. When I gave it to him, he smiled and told me that he appreciated me. And not in a quick, scripted way. It was authentic. He had so much love that it was dancing in his eyes. Which made me think.

It was so clear that this was a human who was content. He was not hurting in the kind of way that makes people lash out at strangers or forget all manners whatsoever. He wasn’t preoccupied, he wasn’t elsewhere, he was totally present. It was obvious. He had light and I was simply basking in it for a few moments. I knew that it had nothing to do with me and that made it beautiful. I think we understand that.

Yet when people are rude, when they say something under their breath or snap at us for whatever reason, we take it a bit personally. At least at first. Or, on a more complex level, how about when someone doesn’t love you. You may be able to separate yourself from a stranger’s outburst, but when someone knows you and doesn’t love you, that is bound to feel personal every time. It’s human nature. Aristotle thought that the earth was the center of the universe for a reason.

For example, there was another customer that same day who made me remake her drink because I had poured just a little too much cream in it. She called me sweetie, not in an endearing way, and even though we were clearly slammed, walked me through exactly how I should remake this drink. In the end she was happy and it was fine, but I took some of her comments personally for a second. My cheeks flushed. I felt like it was about me somehow.

But it obviously wasn’t. (have you watched Beef?!) Neither the kindness nor the rudeness had anything to do with me at all. The earth is not the center of the universe, even if it is all bound up and interconnected with everything within it. Which is to say, yes, we are all interconnected. We are inextricably bound to the earth and to the stars and to everything in between. That’s my religion. Joanna Macy puts it best here in her epic love letter to the world. But it doesn’t mean that we are the loom on which this world is woven.

LOVE IS NOT A GOLD STAR

On a similar note, the other day I heard someone on the internet (Elyse Myers <3) say it is not your job to make people love you. And even though this seems obvious, it went viral for a reason. We hold this idea that it is somehow up to us to show everyone how great and lovable we are. We want to be liked, but we really want to be loved. It’s easily the central thesis of the human existence. Love. Just love. So when someone doesn’t love us, when they deny us that cosmic sense of warmth, we flush and take it personally just like I did with that customer. Yeah, the drink wasn’t exactly how she liked it, but maybe on a different day that wouldn’t have mattered. Something was going on for her that predated her interaction with me. I knew that.

So to extrapolate a bit, I’ve learned to accept, in order to survive really, that when people don’t love us or treat us well, it usually has nothing to do with us. I’ve been broken up with and I’ve broken up with. In the former, I felt everything. It felt like it was my fault, like I did this too much or that not enough. I racked my brain for longer than I should have over what I could have done differently, over how else it could have gone. I was a teenager and the concept of love was wet clay in my hands. I was only just beginning. But in the latter, when I was the one walking away, I understood that it really had nothing to do with the person I was leaving. They were great. They bought me flowers and kissed my forehead and told me their secrets and loved me. They did everything right.

But it wasn’t enough. And it was never, ever, going to be because we weren’t right. That was all. That was it. And all that I could say when I was telling him this was that it was nothing he did or didn’t do, because I know that that was all I could think about all of those years before when I was in his place. More than anything, I wanted him to know that whatever he did or didn’t do wasn’t up for evaluation because it was never his job to make me love him. I don’t think he heard that, maybe none of us ever quite do in those moments, but it’s a gentle and true thing none the less.

Once I realized that, I could breathe. I felt free. It was suddenly enough to just exist, authentically. I deleted Instagram. I started writing more and more. I stopped editing how I showed up in the world. Now I live for small, beautiful moments that no one has to know about. I don’t feel the need to present myself to everyone like a sales pitch because I know that authentic connections, the ones worth everything, just happen. That kind of love is not the product of a formula. You can’t follow instructions or fit a description to receive it.

It’s our job to do a lot of things. But not that.

all my love, -m.

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