What If Down is Up?

Virginia June, 18 months (photo by Maggie Carey)

Last month author, speaker, journalist, and artist Suleika Jaouad appeared on athlete-author Rich Roll’s podcast, and as Jaouad usually does, she gave me some meaningful things to think about. I’ve been following Suleika for a while, on social media and now via her Substack newsletter, The Isolation Journals. I admire her so much for her beautiful openness and creativity, and for how courageously she faces head-on the medical issues related to the leukemia she was diagnosed with at age 22 (her book Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted is a deeply moving read), and for which she has received two bone marrow transplants a decade apart (the second was in March of 2022). Also, if you haven’t watched the Oscar-nominated documentary, American Symphony, about her and her husband Jon Batiste, you should put it on your list. Powerful and gorgeous and deeply moving.

Anyway…one of the things Suleika said during the podcast conversation was in response to the adage to live each day as if it’s your last. In fact she says, “it’s terrible advice, because if we were all to live as if every day were our last we’d be robbing banks and eating ungodly amounts of ice cream, and so instead as I navigate this new level of uncertainty, I’ve shifted to a place of trying to live every day as if it’s my first, and rather than seeking out these huge important life moments, seeking out moments of play and tiny little joys. I feel like I’m moving through this uncertainty in a way that doesn’t put me in panic but places me in a state of wonder.”

I love that for so many reasons. I’m completely prone to panic and anxiety. Pretty sure that runs in my family, and pretty sure it’s about control, or rather all things we can’t control, with is most everything. (Gah. I might need to lie down for a minute.) But what lovely “human-ing” from Suleika, to face profound uncertainty with wonder and curiosity. It flips the script entirely.

I love a flipped script. For me, that’s so often when I’m surprised in my own life, in the midst of hard or challenging stuff, by healing and even joy. I remember after my baby boy, Cooper, died in 1982, an irrational but very real feeling persisted for months, that I couldn’t move ahead, that to leave him behind would be devastatingly wrong. Again, not at all rational, but grief is like its own country, with its own set of rules and processing and language. It didn’t make sense, but I think I imagined myself lingering enough so that I could still reach him somehow, living in two worlds, the one with my 2 1/2 year-old-son son, Liam, and my then-husband, and the other world where Cooper still needed me to be his mom. It was literally a physical, backward tug. Hard to explain, still very real.

But one day, a year or so later — I don’t remember if it was after a conversation with a counselor or a friend, or if I was reading something that struck me, or if it was a gift from on high that landed on me at the exact right moment — the script flipped. I realized another possibility.

“Oh. Gosh. What if, instead of leaving Cooper behind, he is already in the road up ahead, waiting?” And that shifted everything. I no longer felt that backward pull. I felt at peace, as if I’d been unshackled and I could relax and move ahead, with anticipation and even joy. Viewed in this new way, it was okay to go on, to have a family life without him.

This flipping the script thing is probably why Luke is my favorite of the four gospels, because reversal is totally Luke’s jam. The surprise of the rich being sent away empty-handed while the poor have their fill, the powerful waking up to the astonishing news they’re no longer in charge and that the formerly powerless are now at the steering wheel driving the bus, and by the way, maybe y’all might want to sit down and buckle up — now, that is quite something.

(Full disclosure: I’m convinced surprise is woven into the heart of the Biblical story, and I fully admit that my perspective is a lens that informs the “theologizing” (the yada yada yada about God stuff) I’m doing over in The Treehouse.)

Suleika Jaouad’s philosophy makes me think of my 18-month-old grand-daughter, June. Without lots of preconceived notions, June looks at the whole world as something full of magical new things to be surprised by. In my down days when I struggle with the need to control what can’t be controlled (there have been more than a few of those lately), I’m going to think on Jaouad’s “tiny little joys” and seek those out. I’ll consider the possibility I’ve been seeing things upside-down. Flip my perspective. Savor a little creative chaos.

And I’ll channel June, taking my sweet time to look at a leaf, or a seashell. Or a small stick. And then just try to be open to what happens next.

Suleika and June. Today, my two favorite teachers.

Never forget. Wonder is everywhere. The world is magical. (photo by Maggie Carey)