An Adventure in Generosity
As those of you who receiving these dispatches know, I require, as Little Edie Beale’s father once declared about his delightfully loopy daughter, “a strong hand.” Left to my own devices, I am petty, jealous, foot-stamping with impatience, a toddler after a birthday party, as giving of my resources as a survivalist in her bunker awaiting the apocalypse. The id is my shepherd, I SHALL want!
This grabby streak calls for an overcorrection. Last year circa now I designed an experiment that, I hoped, would serve as the antidote: I’d attempt to be as generous as possible. Now, this could’ve been an adventure in any number of virtues I sorely lack: patience, moderation, chastity (lol), but generosity felt the most urgent, necessary, and liberating.
And friendos, was it ever! You can read the whole thing on Longreads (and share it around, won’t you?! Embrace it as an opportunity to be GENEROUS!). Thumbnail: I’m a scared and greedy a-hole and I endeavored to work toward the (elusive, ghostly) better angels of my nature to give all—dinero, time, compliments, attention, the benefit of a doubt, etc, etc. I struggled, I failed, and at times, I thrived.
This week, I recommend designing your very own adventure in whatever aspirational quality you lack naturally. Today I, share with you some exclusive, behind-the-scenes episodes from the cutting room floor…
Prior to Launch, or, Beta Testing
I told lots of people about my scheme, in order to be held accountable by public shaming if I failed. Over brunch with my friend Matt, who is also my financial advisor (his advice: “Can you find more work?”) said, “You can afford to be generous in every way, except financially.” Poo poo, I’ll show him! Though on many occasions, I’d see a perfect opening to begin flexing my generosity muscles—taking the crap seat at a restaurant, a panhandler launching into his spiel on the subway—only to demur. “I’ll be doing this shit for a whole month,” I reasoned. “Why start now?” It was like going on a coke binge before a cleanse. I wanted my last hurrah of selfishness.
In Which I Decide to Be Really, Truly Generous to Myself
I think I am often too generous to myself. At least in the “treat yoself” manifestation: I will reward myself for fifteen minutes of writing with a 45-minute plunge into YouTube videos of local news bloopers; I get pedicures once a fortnight even in winter; I knock off to go to the beach or the movies because, well, I can. These little treats release an instant flood of dopamine but the longer-term effect is that of having eaten a dozen donuts: it was hedonically brilliant in the moment and sends me running for the vomitorium in the end. But what would true generosity to myself look like?
Today I give it a whirl.
At my morning boot camp class, I typically zone out and go over my to-do list and beat myself up for being here in the first place instead of back at the salt mines of a blank word document. Samantha-- the brilliant trainer who wields her power through being so freaking awesome you only want to please her-- will explain the next tortuous circuit while my inner monologue is doling out lashes for all I’ve done wrong. Since I didn’t listen to Sam’s explanation I’ll end up mangling the exercise and she’ll have to come over and untangle me from the TRX machine and explain yet again what to do, thus making her do her job twice. Today I just listen. I heave my body hither and tither, and sweat. Ironically, the workout is easier, in the sense that I’m dedicating my brain to just one punishment, the corporeal, instead of the mental, too.
I wear the good underwear I am always saving for a special occasion. For what? Getting hit by a bus?
I work. I make cold calls to potential interview subjects. Not to all of the names on my list, but many. When the crepuscular darkness sets in I start getting the treat yoself hankering to online shop or faceplant into a brownie. Instead, I haul myself to the grocery store and buy ingredients for a Thai coconut curry soup that I love. One of the other ways I punish myself is by setting arbitrary and often impossible benchmarks for my daily schedule—“I’ll do the shopping in 15 minutes and by 6 I will have eaten and be done!” It’s like a mini-death wish, a race to the finish to….what, exactly? The end of the day? A mortality in miniature. I leave my phone at home wander the aisles of the overpriced brownstone Brooklyn mart.
When I return I have received a terse voicemail from Saul, my slum lord and a villain of real estate, about renewing my lease. My blood pressure flares. I am again bombarded by thoughts about how I screwed this up, that my roommate is probably mad at me, that I can’t even handle the simplest of tasks. Normally, I would rush to assuage the situation, advancing a campaign of action in the name of action itself to feel as if I have gotten something done. But I figure the way I can be generous is in catching my breath. In unloading the groceries. In calling tomorrow. It feels odd, this relinquishing the death grip of control. But then I feel uncoiled. Every fifteen minutes or so my heart sinks with the memory that I will have to endure with Saul’s abuse, but then I just try to go back to the task at hand. I don’t check my email. I decide the office is closed for the day. It costs no money at all but the price comes in the decision, and sticking to it.
There’s something about the right now, the present, that is deeply uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar. Fretting and telling deranged stories about the meaning of things? I know what that’s about. But putting a little space around the situation at hand, not reacting immediately from panic, in chopping the vegetables for dinner and listening, really listening, to a podcast? Oddly, these are the little actions that I go through on autopilot. I don’t know what they are about. I’m trying to learn.
That Time I Tried to Instigate a Roundtable of Ideas on Facebook
I sit down to open a word document and fifteen seconds later I find myself in a fugue state on Facebook. I write a post reflecting on a quote I’d seen at the SF MOMA that I’d been chewing on. Perhaps I could offer this thought and engender some lively discussion:
“hopper is simply a bad painter, but if he were a better one, he would probably not be such
a great artist.” –clement greenberg
been thinking a lot about this quote since I saw it accompanying hopper’s “intermission” at sf moma last week, and if/how it applies to writing, or other mediums. music seems the most obvi to me, like neil young’s drunken off-key vocals making “mellow my mind” so magical. would love to hear your thoughts.
I post. I sit back and wait. Three minutes later I see several paragraphs of corrective text posted by a former colleague, a man who would routinely lambast me with his erudition.
Then, from a guy I once sat next to on a trans-Atlantic flight:
Sounds like a great soundbite, but a poorly constructed critique tbh......does he say why Hopper is a “bad” painter? Conflating technique with meaning is trite. Obvs I’m a bad guitar player too but a great artist......
From a man I met once at a party:
He’s dead wrong.
From a college friend:
#1 clearly the first responders to this are writers. No one else drops a damn Iliad into a FB comment
So, not quite the salon of ideas I was hoping for. But perhaps I gave several mansplainers a platform for their opinions? Thank god!
********
Do you find yourself interested in choosing your own adventure in generosity, or equally intimidating virtue? I say go for it. I had a blast and learned a ton. LMK how it goes!
In other nooz….
I wrote about the incredible organization GirlTrek and the less than incredible Grammy Awards in Glamour.
And about generosity, duh, I just can’t quit GIVING!
And where my Bay Area peoples! I’ll be doing my little soft shoe routine at my ALMA MATER on Tuesday April 10! Is Monday night still dollar drinks at El Rio?! Cash me there!
And I’ll be teaching a six-week nonfiction writing workshop at the Catapult beginning April 18! TELL your wife, TELL your kids!