#63: When there are only questions.
Building our own understanding of life.
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“How do you feel about poetry, Connor?”
“I hate it,” was his matter-of-fact reply.
Wrapping up our Colorado Rockies holiday vacation, Connor was sprawled out on our condo’s rickety pull-out couch. I sat catty-corner on the unoffensive, bland, tan sectional as we watched NFL football on mute. Nintendo Switch in hand, he was multitasking over a Pokémon game while I underlined every freaking sentence in the new book in my lap: The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives by Jennifer Michael Hecht.
“What do you hate specifically about poetry?” I probed.
“I hate poetry because it's abstract. I like concrete. I like when you can actually understand what the heck they are saying.”
Dude, I feel you.
I grew up in rural western Pennsylvania. By rural, I mean our football stadium was a grassy expanse of turf surrounded by metal bleachers carved from an as-far-as-the-eye-can-see cornfield. Horticulture was a mandatory class. My favorite outfit was a pair of baby-blue, thin-wale corduroy overalls.
We were not exactly studying the great poets. In fact, I couldn’t have named even one. College and grad school had less corn fields but no more poetry. Somehow it didn’t come up in cost accounting or corporate finance. So I blissfully and blindly lived most of my existence on planet earth with poetry playing zero role.
Until there was a time in my life where ‘concrete’ failed me. ‘Abstract’ was all that remained.
If I was reading this post I’d be like, wtf… poetry?
Are you f*ing kidding me? No need to read further. I’ll pass. Poetry is for hippies in flowing dresses with feathers in their hair. I don’t even wear dresses. And feathers? Enough said. My pride and joy are my new Adidas Gazelle’s the kids got me for Christmas. People who wear Adidas do not read poetry. People whose mother tongue is spreadsheets and powerpoints, balance sheets and income statements do not read poetry. People who have to get shit done and raise two mourning pre-teens do not read freaking poetry.
But grief grabs your understanding of reality off your face, stomps on it, then throws it in a ditch. You’re blind as a bat, trying to make sense of the blurry colors and shifting shapes that once were so clear. That wouldn’t be so bad if you at least had your other mental faculties — memory, logic, deduction. But “facts” drift like dreams through your consciousness, refusing to be comprehended or remembered.
I recall a moment when, if I had not been so tired, I would have been terrified. I could barely read the children’s Tylenol directions. This is not an exaggeration. So the fragmentary nature of poetry — its borderline nonsensicality — made it welcoming. There was no way to get it wrong.
I still don’t understand half of the words of many of the poems I read. But the feeling I do.
Plus, poem’s are short! When your attention span is destroyed, you can take one in lickety split and let the words bubble around in your brain. Then get back to scheduling the tire rotation, fighting with the insurance company, trying to cancel your dead husband’s credit cards, and go to the grocery store.
Seven years later and twenty books of poetry deeper, I’m a convert. But not just for poetry. For things that:
Feed my brain differently
Explain the world in a unique way
Elucidate feelings rather than just explain facts
Speak to the intangible and mysterious aspects of life
Ask different questions, better questions, about what it means to be alive
For a long time I’ve heard Krista Tippet on the On Being podcast say she wanted to “live the questions.”
And I was like, “What the hell does that even mean??”
Then I saw the same theme in The Wonder Paradox. And finally I heard an internet dude say that he wanted to help people ask “better questions”.
Ask better questions. Not find better answers.
We cling to answers, to facts, out of fear. Having a fact in hand is like having our reality glasses on straight. We can see the situation clearly and therefore make a calculated decision about what to do next. But we put too much confidence in our vision. We don’t really know what’s around the bend, what the weather will be like on the way, or who’s going to have a heart attack mid-journey. We are not actually looking for answers, we are looking for a guarantee.
When Connor was born, he took his first breath and blew out the bottom of his lungs.
For better or worse, it happened to JFK’s son too, way back in 1963. But they didn’t have a cure for it then, so the baby boy died. The Kennedys then poured a fortune into researching “infant respiratory distress syndrome”. So my son lived. He left the NICU when so many babies do not. He became the ultimate-frisbee-playing, a-capella-singing 21 year old that I get to show off on my blog.
On the other hand, fourteen years later, Mike died. No warning. No symptoms. No nothing.
Those are the facts. But they answer none of the questions.
Hecht says in The Wonder Paradox, “The insight that we solve life’s questions by living, solved me.”
We’re looking for fast facts as answers, when we should be slowly building our own understanding of life. I can’t tell you why Connor survived or why Mike didn’t. But I can answer my why. Why do I go on?
Because life, while terrible and tragic, is also glorious and gorgeous. And since I’m already here, I am going to make the most of it.
It’s a cliche answer, worthy of a high-schooler’s first stab at poetry. But I mean it with all my heart.
Maybe that’s what poetry really gave me.
Permission to sometimes set aside the facts and instead focus on the feelings.
Feelings like the unbelievable pride that swells in my chest when I hear my son sing with those whole, healed lungs. And also the love-heartbreak-love I have for Mike, which is simultaneously trying to crush me and set me free.
How can I honor these feelings and the truth that they carry?
How do I become my own answer to all that I cannot fix or solve or figure out?
How do I unfold in response to, in the presence of, these endless mysteries?
In Leaves of Grass (um, nonsensical title, anyone?), Walt Whitman is questioning what the heck life is for, then he replies:
That you are here — that life exists, and identity.
That the powerful play goes on, and you might contribute a verse.
To contributing your own verse,
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This is AWESOME Mila! I am picturing you over in Spain wearing your adidas and holding your poetry book while I’m over here in Virginia doing the same! We are multi-faceted! And thank you for the encouragement on the TL front, it keeps me going in a thousand ways. ❤️
Wait I found it Sue!,
Stephen Baurhenn