By Susan Yelavich
These days there’s a lot of talk about what we’re against, whether it’s high prices or, well, high prices. I won’t enumerate my political pet peeves here as this isn’t the forum. Better, I think, to focus on what we are for.
To start with, warmth. After a Winter when it snowed from Thanksgiving to the end of March with barely a pause, warmth would be nice. For one thing, the heating bill will go down, for another, brown and gray hills of leafless trees will soon be tinged with the most delicate of greens. (I’m writing this on April 7th when there is still snow on the ground in Bovina.)
Kindness. It can be hard to be kind mid-battle; and embattled we seem to be as a nation. The antidote is curiosity. It lowers defenses and raises the possibility of feeling kindly to those we’d usually avoid.
That said, respect is handy when it seems impossible to feel kindly. Who doesn’t want respect? Respect for agreeing to disagree. That said, respect can’t cause submission if we respect ourselves. It is more a way of talking, looking, and listening.
Less abstractly, we are for things that make us feel good. This may seem too obvious to point out, but I suspect most of us have mementos, favorite cups, photographs, and/or clothing that can lift our spirits. If you say you’re not a materialist, think of life in a bare cell and ask again. The source of your pleasure may not be visual, it could be a fragrance, an activity like cooking or gardening, or watching a favorite TV series. In the midst of times when we don’t feel “good,” for whatever reason, the companionship of things, material and otherwise, shouldn’t be underestimated.
We are for trust. This is perhaps the hardest of all. No one wants to be tricked, but who to trust? Every child is taught not to trust strangers and that’s sensible because a child doesn’t have enough experience to assess risks and possibilities. Adults, however, do. Our brains are developed enough to both trust our instincts and to question those instincts. Otherwise, decision-making would be governed by first impressions. Sometimes they prove accurate, but in my experience, they can and do change. Take food, for instance. My instinct was not to trust anything that had a whiff of licorice or aniseed. But when someone served me fennel, which is a member of the same family as anise, namely, the carrot, I politely tried it. I realized it would have been a shame to miss it for lack of trust or, better, a willingness to try to trust that it might taste good. I still don’t like licorice candy, but now I can try a whole array of dishes I wouldn’t have touched before.
“Try” being the operative word. At a certain point, we think we know ourselves and we know the world, so we don’t have to alter our world views. They’re settled, right? No more pain of what I think of as the psychic stretching we had to do when we were younger, say, in adapting to a new school or a new place. But as a friend once told me, when I asked her why she cared so much about her clothes—after all she was teaching in a sleepy college town, “settling is a slippery slope.” It’s not one I’m ready to slide down. Although I fully expect to fall down. Not physically (again) but mentally, as these claims that “we” want things like warmth, respect, and trust are tested every day.~