catelin

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.—Alice Walker

I have been thinking a lot the last few days about expectations and the nature of desire. I have long struggled with both concepts and sitting here on the edge of one year looking to another seems a good time to shake a few things out of my head.

I have always lived, as I guess most others have, fueled by varying mixtures of cynicism and hope. Even as I made my peace with what I could not or would not have in my life, I still always kept some secret little seeds of hope to myself. I could never bring myself to truly expect nothing. I did the next best thing. I learned to expect, for myself, very little. Note that I say for myself, not from myself. From myself, I expected everything. From myself, I expected the super human. From myself, I expected to never fail or be afraid. From myself, I expected to never be weak or let anything hurt me. From myself, I expected to be everything that those I loved ever needed or wanted me to be, with seamless perfection. This was my nature, cultivated from being one of those little Lebowski overachievers, performing feats of daring-do and wonder so the people I loved would not stop loving me.

I found my peace in learning to expect next to nothing from anyone or anything. It freed me from the disappointment of being let down by people or circumstances that were not what I’d happily but blindly perceived them to be. I had to do this because I took on each of these disappointments as my fault—as proof that I hadn’t been smart enough, pretty enough, or whatever enough in some way. The dulling of my desire for things made my day-to-day life much easier. I did manage quite well to live frugally on surprise. In fact, I was the frugal gourmet of surprise. My life has been, in so many ways, a lovely banquet crafted from all sorts of unexpected delicacies.

Still, I never brought the secret seeds to the table. I never showed those tiny bits and pieces of desires I had for myself, the things that I felt selfish for even daring to want at all. The crumbs were what I’d done without, what I’d never complained of missing—each full of such terrible wanting and fierce hopefulness. After I met my man the secret seeds grew into all sorts of unruly blossoms and vines. They escaped the confines of my inner heart and sprouted out of my mouth, swirling around my head and being given voice. He built a garden for me, from his own heart, and let all the things that I’d never had much of a place for in myself grow. I began to think that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing…wanting. The first tentative steps I took toward believing that I could let myself desire something out loud transformed into joyful leaps and bounds of naming everything I wanted to have and do.

I’m sure the more experienced among you probably know what came next. While I was blissfully floating around giving voice to my desires, life intervened. People and circumstances turned out to be different than what I had blindly perceived them to be. I felt a little like Wiley E. Coyote hitting the bottom of the canyon. It hurt as much as I remember anything ever hurting. I cried and cried. I felt stupid. I told myself that I was such an idiot to ever think that I could have anything. I knew better than to expect anything. What could I have been thinking?

Everything that had taken root and bloomed in me over the last few months quickly began to wither. I prepared to collect the husks of my secret seeds so I could put them away again, probably for the last time. The keeper of the garden, however, held on to me. He refused to let me take my secret seeds back and he whispered to me at night to keep everything I’d grown alive. He whispered until I finally quit poisoning the garden and I began to contemplate the possibility that my hopes, even the most secret and delicate ones, might be able to survive outside of my own heart.

I am struggling to find a way to balance the things I have wanted for so long with the realities of the world. I am going to take small tentative steps again, and he’ll hold my hand as he has from the first time I knew I loved him, reminding me that I’m never far from my secret garden and he’ll be there to tend to things when I cannot.

I am going into a new year trying to be as brave as I’ve ever been. I will expect to be beloved and happy, I will expect to be disappointed and hurt, and I will expect to find my legs each and every time so I can brush myself off and move on to the next wondrous thing. I wish you all a brave new year and a crazy quilt garden grown from your own secret seeds.