Worth Reading: City of Girls

 

I stayed up way too late finishing Elizabeth Gilbert's City of Girls before I went to sleep last night.

Mulling it over as I climbed the stairs to bed, I realized I found most of the characters and much of the plot completely improbable. Why then did I stay up so late to finish it?

To begin with, because it contains an assortment of wise and insightful passages like this one:

"When we are young, Angela, we may fall victim to the misconception that time will heal all wounds and that eventually everything will shake itself out. But as we get older, we learn this sad truth: some things can never be fixed. Some mistakes can never be put right -- not by the passage of time, and not by our most fervent wishes, either.

In my experience, this is the hardest lesson of them all.

After a certain age, we are all walking around this world in bodies made of secrets and shame and sorrow and old, unhealed injuries. Our hearts grow sore and misshapen around all this pain -- yet somehow, still, we carry on."

And this:

"This is what I've found about life, as I've gotten older: you start to lose people, Angela. It's not that there is ever a shortage of people -- oh, heavens, no. It is merely that -- as the years pass -- there comes to be a terrible shortage of your people. The ones you loved. The ones who knew the people that you both loved. The ones who know your whole history."

And I couldn't help but fall in love with the main characters, who, despite their many flaws -- or perhaps because of them -- radiated love and compassion for those around them. It seemed to me the story was one long lesson in the giving and receiving of grace - something the world could surely use more of.

Of course, since it's a Liz Gilbert book, all the earnest stuff is packaged in a rollicking good story, set in a intriguing time and place, lyrically told, which makes it perfect reading for a long winter's night by the fire, or lazy day on the beach. Highly recommended.

Happy New Year - 2020!

I haven't blogged much in the past year, despite the fact I'm retired now and should have more time for writing. I'd like to think 2020 will be different but, honestly, I'm doubtful it will.

Still, I've decided to try writing something to kick the year off. After all, I used to enjoy blogging and it's a good way to exercise my writing muscles.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I've been up to since I retired the end of January. In some ways, retirement's exactly what I expected. My retired friends told me I'd feel a bit lost and confused for a few months at least, and that's certainly been true.

It's also true that I've been far busier than I expected. I've picked up a larger share of household tasks, spent more time with the dog, completed a couple of short consulting gigs, tackled some long-postponed projects (such as sorting photos and other memorabilia, started a couple of new ones (including the Nanny Project), joined a local choir and a photography club, began swimming again, read a bunch of books, and volunteered time to work on environmental justice projects - all things I hoped to do when I retired from working full-time.

But there are a few things I really wanted to do that just haven't happened - for example, running and blogging regularly, editing the novels I drafted a few years back, playing my guitar, knitting, quilting and getting back in shape.

Running has been a challenge because my body got really cranky last winter and it's taken awhile to figure out what it needed to feel better. I haven't figured it out totally yet but regular chiropractic treatments, gentle yoga, and closer attention to my diet seems to help, so I'm hoping I'll feel up to running more regularly in the year ahead.

When I stopped to think about why I haven't written much, I was surprised to realize it wasn't that I had too little to write about, but rather that I had too much! I think about writing nearly every day and compose countless stories and articles in my head, but somehow I never get round to writing them down - mostly because I have no idea where to start.

There's another issue around writing for me these days, which is that many of the topics that interest me are damned depressing. I desperately want to participate in ongoing conversations about climate change, political populism, democracy, and inter-generational tensions, for example, but I'm only rarely able to summon the necessary emotional and psychological energy to do so. 

So, then... where to go from here?

I'm not starting this new year feeling especially optimistic or upbeat. It's hard to feel good about the future with so much bad news coming out of Australia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

That said, I don't see much point in despair. It won't get us to be where we need to be to overcome the environmental and other challenges we face. As George Monbiot noted in a recent piece published in the Guardian, those already dealing with the impacts of climate change haven't the luxury of despair and soon we won't either. The same is true of cynicism.

Given all that, I've decided to adopt "lift" as my word for 2020. Lift as in "raise up", "brighten", "improve", "move to a higher/better place". My intention is to try lifting my own spirits and those of others so that we feel more hopeful about the future.

I'm still figuring out what I mean by that but I think it includes sharing good news about efforts underway to tackle climate change, being patient and supportive with those who are - consciously or unconsciously - dealing with their own environmental grief, finding things to celebrate amidst the deluge of bad news, taking and inspiring action, and filling my own cup so that I don't run out of energy before the job is done.

Here's a little doodle I made while meditating on the word "lift".  I don't think it's finished yet, but it highlights many of the activities, interests and attitudes I intend to make a bigger part of my life in the coming year.

What about you, dear readers? What are your intentions for 2020? How are you coping with environmental grief? Have you adopted a "word of the year"? If so, what is it? Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.