We Who Are Your Closest Friends

I ran across a poem yesterday that I'd forgotten about that I thought I'd share with you.  It's by a guy named Phillip Lopate and I found it in a book called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.  I've read the book a number of times, and I started reading it again because I think it'll help me have a more constructive attitude toward what I spend my time on here doing.  

I love Anne Lamott's stuff because it reminds me that faith and life and writing are all one big, messy enterprise that don't have really clear divisions between them.  You tend to write about what you live and what you live is rooted in what you believe, and so on.  I was reminded of a similar idea yesterday in a conversation with a friend: that what I believe and what I do are essentially the same thing; that choosing to act as though something is true is, by definition, faith itself.  It's a difficult idea for me to grasp because I keep orienting my faith around an emotional experience, that is, I believe something to be true only if I feel it to be true.  

And this is a lie.

Stepping out in faith is, in a certain sense, anything but an emotional experience.  It often requires acting against one's own feelings and trusting something beyond the individual level.  I struggle very deeply with this and I worry that my life may suffer many unforeseen and undesirable consequences as a result of it.  I struggle with this because I don't trust people.  I don't trust anything.  I don't even trust myself.  I assume from the outset that things are always going to fall apart so that I'm never disappointed and I don't end up feeling hurt or betrayed.  I don't act on promises made or rely on other people to hold up their end of the bargain.  I basically just ask myself if I'm willing to accept the risk of them not following through and if I'm able to still move forward and be okay if they don't.

But there are two problems and, I suppose, a third that come out of this.  The first is that the decision to start thinking this way is rooted in painful experiences with specific people in my past, and those experiences don't go away or correct themselves by writing-off everybody else in my life and lowering my expectations for them.  The second is that, if I'm honest, I really don't want to write everybody off.  I want to be able to trust people in my life and have healthy relationships and positive experiences with them.  Which is kinda where the third part comes in: if my goal from the outset was to stop the pain and spare myself any future injury, then I've done nothing but change the source of it.  Instead of being stabbed in the heart, I'm now diseased and suffocating.  

I don't have "real" relationships because I don't want to be hurt.  I don't want to know that I've lost esteem in your eyes and I don't want you to get weirded out or be disgusted with me and walk away.  I can't think of a single person in my life right now from whom I haven't withheld some level of the truth. And yet, I still want people to love me and validate me and convince me that I'm a good person who's worth something.  It would be bad enough if the true crime were that I expected to get all this without giving anything up or taking on any risk, but the reality is that I'm expecting other people to do something that they were never designed to do.  You are not here to prop me up any more than I am for you.  We were not meant to be that for each other.  Our individual worths are, indeed, derivative, but not from each other.

Which is where the poem comes in.  When you read it, I think you'll understand why.  Regardless, here it is.  

Enjoy.

We who are

your closest friends

feel the time

has come to tell you

that every Thursday

we have been meeting,

as a group,

to devise way

to keep you

in perpetual uncertainty

frustration

discontent and

torture

by neither loving you

as much as you want

nor cutting you adrift.

Your analyst is

in on it,

plus your boyfriend

and your ex-husband;

and we have pledged

to disappoint you

as long as you need us.

In announcing our

association

we realize we have

placed in your hands

a possible antidote

against uncertainty

indeed against ourselves.

But since our Thursday nights

have brought us

to a community

of purpose

rare in itself

with you as

the natural center,

we feel hopeful you

will continue to make

unreasonable

demands for affection

if not as a consequence

of your disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective.