This week, I am in the green mountains of Vermont’s
northeast kingdom where the nights are so cold I have to shut all the windows
and sleep in my long PJs. This is very
different from Boston’s humidity where the noise in my head mixes with the road-rage
and reggae of drivers in the street below my window. There, my summer is a
shroud of shoulds. I should be writing a
new song; I should be practicing, promoting, or at least on a day hike.
Here, away from the hectic city sounds, I can hear the clamor
in my head, and the miracle is that I can remember how to turn it off. Well,
not necessarily how to turn it off,
but that there exists somewhere a possibility to turn it off.
This all makes me think about how busy I am, how busy we all
are, all the time. Is it because we have to be? As The ‘Busy’ Trap, a recent New York Times article, says, “Notice it isn’t
generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus
to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people
are is not busy but tired. Exhausted.” Unlike these people (and like
so many others), I practice self-imposed busyness because it makes me feel
worthwhile and important. I’m terrified
of the constantly nagging emptiness that will emerge if I let down my guard for
one tiny second, so I perpetually scan my mind for what needs to be done, what
I should be worrying about, the things that need fixing.
To keep vigil this way is strenuous and useless. What
happens if I just sit here and enjoy the sounds of my mother playing jazz
standards at the grand piano? I am trying to make the very difficult shift from
I Should Learn That One to Isn’t That Beautiful? There is something
transformative about those last three words. When the voices of competition and ego and
anxiety come to tell me that I am not accomplishing enough, I am going to drown
them out by listening to the low thrum of the hummingbirds as they flit around
the feeder. When my chest tightens because I remember I haven’t written any
usable new material for our fall tours, I will watch the pink sun as it falls
towards the lake or, back home, I will notice the particular shades of city
blue as I bike home from the grocery store.
Mostly, this is just a little something that I would like to
try. A soft reminder, each day, that self-imposed chaos is both a privilege and
a curse, that the gaping chasm I try to outrun will no doubt one day catch up
with me. Perhaps I’d better make peace
with it sooner than later. Perhaps I
should confront it — this wide emptiness — befriend it even, adorn it with rows of colorful flowers,
strings of popcorn, moss and candlelight, so I can step back, pause, breathe,
and say, Isn’t That Beautiful?
