Dancing for our Lives

Odd Company -- June 2, 2025

Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —

Welcome to June, the best month of the year, in my humble opinion. It’s warm, but not too hot yet. There’s still plenty of water. This year’s big wildfires haven’t happened yet, and maybe they never will, who knows? In a couple of weeks, we’ll hit the longest day of the year, and our yard will hit peak beauty — a profusion of Mexican sage, lavender, day lilies, and other flowers. Even the lawn is a mass of clover blossoms. Out in the vegetable garden, we’re harvesting cabbages, radishes, and very soon, artichokes. At night, the crickets murmur in the warm darkness. I heard there was a big solar storm yesterday, so I was hoping for my first glimpse of the Northern Lights. But if there were any, they got swallowed up by the glow of San Francisco north of us. I will persist. Sometimes anticipation is as much fun as the real deal anyway.

The topics I write about in Odd Company often present themselves in unexpected ways — not too surprising, as most things in life are unexpected to one degree or another. This time of year, I sometimes have occasion to chat with young people who have recently graduated from college or are about to. Often, they are full of plans. But in fact, they stand on the edge of a vast, unexplored land filled with adventures they have not imagined fully, or have not imagined at all. After all, nobody’s future rolls out according to plan. The other thing is, if we always knew how the story was going to turn out, wouldn’t that be kind of boring?

Some days ago, a friend forwarded me a copy of “The Imperfectionist,” an email newsletter by one Oliver Burkeman, who for some years wrote a weekly psychology column for The Guardian, and has since published a couple of well-received books. He describes “The Imperfectionist” as “an email on productivity, mortality, the power of limits, and building a meaningful life in an age of bewilderment.” Age of bewilderment. He’s definitely got that right!

The email impressed and interested me, so I looked up some of Burkeman’s books. Which led me to Meditations for Mortals, which I highly recommend. This book has a long subtitle which is catchy and no doubt good for sales, but in no way captures its essence. Meditations for Mortals is about how to lead a more satisfying life. It is composed of 28 short essays, one for each day of the month. Each essay takes on a different common obstacle that keeps modern humans from fully engaging in life. My favorite is “Day 19,” which is about the deeply unpredictable nature of the world.

One of my favorite authors, Anne Patchett, wrote a slim book entitled What Now, based on a commencement address she gave at her alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College. It contains many quotable quotes, but this one is particularly delicious: “Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.”

Which is most excellent, given that we can’t possibly know exactly where we’re going. It’s perfectly natural for us as humans in a perilous world to wish for more stability and a clearer lens through which to see the future. But because the world is in a constant state of flux, and human beings have to live their lives one moment at a time, stability and safety are short-lived, if they ever pop up at all.

The thing is, this weird instability is, as Burkeman puts it, “mysteriously central to what makes life worth living.”

When I think back to the most memorable and satisfying moments of my life, nearly all of them involved the unexpected (and/or a failure of plans). There was the European honeymoon John and I undertook, packs on our backs, Eurail passes in hand, $500 in our pockets meant to last two months. What could go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways. There was the dreadful seasickness I developed on a month-long voyage on an icebreaker in Antarctic seas that almost necessitated a diversion to McMurdo Station. There was the enormous case of burn-out I got that led me to start my own business. There was the terrifying moment when my husband asked me if I’d be up for the job of Provost’s Wife, which was totally not what I thought I’d be doing when I married a philosophy professor. The equally terrifying discovery that a writer has to do more than write. A writer has to talk. Sometimes in front of large crowds.

I’m sure you all have similar stories about things that looked like a derailment but turned out to be a stroke of luck or the beginning of a new path. Control over every situation is something we instinctively long for. But life is a dance with a lot of improvised moves. Definitely more of a tango than a waltz. That’s what keeps it interesting.

As Burkeman puts it, in life you either get a good time, or you get a good story about a not-so-good time. :-)

I believe, dear readers, that I have bent your ears long enough for tonight. So I will close now with a wonderful piece of music about people who are not at all sure where they’re going. The song is “Oh California” written and performed by the folk duo, Basset (Sam Clark and Yasmine Shelton), coming to us from Toronto. This young couple has a special place in my heart, as Sam is our godson. John and I feel lucky to have a connection with these two remarkable musicians.

One last note. You might like some of Donald Trump’s policies. But if you object to his methods, you have an opportunity to make your opinion known at the nationwide NO KINGS protest on June 14. Till next time…keep dancing.