Dear Friends --
About a month into my high and mighty trek, I was connected to a fellow hiker. We had all the important things in common: similar in age, stage IV colon cancer, we both have kiddos, one degree of separation with friends and a similar professional network.
My new friend was about 10 months ahead of me on the climb, and he was generous in helping me know all the potential possibilities as I was trying to make sense of my map. Lots of good insights on Foxy and Moxie (here's something interesting -- he started with Moxie), smart advice for how to think about eventual surgery, and all the granular details that fellow hikers share about how to organize backpacks, how to pause to savor views, the importance of clean socks.
As we concluded our first chat, my friend said this: "Well hang in there. You know cancer is such a hassle. Ok til next time!"
And I thought it was maybe the best thing I had heard since Dr V let me know there might be a map for my trek.
A hassle! Not the usual words that were swirling in my head at the time. Words like hopeless, pointless, pathetic, tragedy, horror show.
Instead, in one powerful pivot, my fellow hiker gave this whole chapter a new name. Even though the plot of my story hadn't changed at all, in an instant my vantage point shifted. Put another way, instead of only seeing brutal tragedy, the aperture began to widen, ever so slowly, to reveal new possibilities.
How can the same reality be both a horror show and a hassle? As it turns out, this trek is both. But the delicate balance between the the two truths can tilt toward the deeper truth of the chapter's plot, if we have the imagination to see as far as we possibly can. There is infinite power in what we name things.
This isn't a cute trick, or a way to minimize. It's far more mysterious and marvelous than that. What we name things reveals what we see, which is to say, our hearts.
It's easy to name the sweet chapters of our lives, isn't it? Falling in love is glorious. A work accomplishment is satisfying. A mastered recipe is delicious.
But what we choose to call the complicated chapters is a more intricate, and much more important, invitation.
Chemo can be called a poison. Or it can be called a medical miracle.
A relationship that breaks your heart is, in fact, a heartbreak. But it can also be a gateway to mercy.
A pandemic is devastating. And it can be known as the beginning of a new era of repair, medical breakthroughs, and shared compassion.
A friend of mine started an organization dedicated to the idea that students who are serving time in juvenile justice facilities have access to high quality school. When he first described this work, he simply said, "Some people see inmates. We see students."
And if you see a student -- a soul -- inside all that chaos of imprisonment, miracles can begin. I'm lucky enough to know one.
Dwayne is a dear friend who served time in prison as a teenager for an awful mistake. Once, while in solitary confinement, he was slipped a poetry book. Someone in that chapter of Dwayne's life saw him as more than an inmate. He was a soul deserving of the grandest stanzas.
Dwayne went on to get his undergraduate degree, then his law school degree from Yale. He's now a public defender, poet, New York Times writer, playwright. But most important of all: friend.
He is penning me poems during these Moxie rounds, and this post concludes with his latest. It's gift me for me, and for all of us.
Holy Week now beckons us forward. Perhaps the days of the year with the most consequential invitation to wrestle with what we'll call things. It has it all: a joyous entrance, intimate friendship, betrayal, politics, power, courage, sacrifice, uncertainty, death, triumph.
Also: Life.
xoxo
For All Our Numerous Loves
for Amy Low
A group of almost anything
Has a name, crows are a murder,
And flamingoes are a flamboyance.
Most of the others I don’t know.
A group of empty shot glasses is called
A disaster. Of empty rooms, a yesterday.
A collection of tomorrows,
Even if simply imagined, if desired,
If craved for like some small child wanting
One more story at bedtime, is called hope.
There were too many nights when all I
Had was hope. There is no real collective
Noun to hold all the people you love,
If we name it at all wouldn’t it be
abundance. I have an abundance of
Loves and even when I am lonely,
Especially then, they show up. Outside
It rains, and inside everyone I
Love is asleep. There is no word for
What it means to listen to them breathe,
But if there were, it would be the
Antithesis of murder. Crows always
Remember a face, is what I read once,
& so I’ve always thought memory
Is a kind of love, and what better word
For listening to all your loves breathe
At night than dreaming, what more
Could any of us ask of the night?
-- Dwayne Betts