1

There’s a terrible commercial Amazon Prime is inflicting on me every time I watch my current binge fave — Bones, based on the books of Kathy Reichs, not unproblematic but decent brain candy for tired evenings — and the result of that commercial is that I will ever ever use Skip the Dishes, so, commercial AND commercial saturation fail.

Have you seen it? It’s the one where an extremely annoying man tells strangers that they “shoulda skipped it.” I think it’s meant to be funny… all I see is a someone being rude and sanctimonious to strangers. Hello, person carrying heavy bag of dog food, person in long grocery line, family in a car full of hungry, exhausted adults and kids  — your life decisions suck, let me mock you for them.

There was a different way of telling that story, selling that product than having an obnoxious dude mansplain my life choices to me.

Badly done, Skip the Dishes.

2

I did recently tell a stranger that he was making terrible life decisions. Yelled, actually. I was in a park on an awkward first date. We were eating ice cream and doing the awkward first date questions (“So what do you like to do for fun?” “Do you have any siblings?” Can I be perfectly honest? I don’t care if you have any siblings until, like, after we’ve know each other for a year and there’s a chance I might meet them. Can we talk about the books we’re reading instead or weird ass conspiracy theories we’ve… oh, you don’t read. Ok. Help.) while in the background a father was verbally abusing his son.

I guess he thought he was educating him. Disciplining him.

Maybe you’d think it was nagging, I don’t know.

I was hearing a barrage of undisciplined, emotionally disregulated, psychologically unsound comments on an eleven year’s old pretty normal, age appropriate — if annoying — behaviour.

I try really hard not to judge people’s parenting. Because parenting is really hard.

And when you see a mom (it’s usually a mom; because, statistics) lose her shit at a playground over some small thing — you don’t know what’s happened before. You don’t know how many times she’s had to redirect, distract, remind. How little sleep she’s had. You don’t know.

So I was trying very hard to not judge the man. And failing.

Because what I was hearing, watching wasn’t someone maybe having a hard day.

It was someone systematically destroying their child’s self.

Out of habit.

And I was just watching.

Until…

“You’re a lost cause!” The man screamed at his son. (His son’s crime was saying he did not want to play at the basketball court, because he did not like the kids who were playing there.)

I did not think.

“Hey, dude. Do you think that’s an okay thing to say to your son?” I yelled. And then I turned to the kid. “I think you’re pretty awesome, kid. I’m picky about who I play with too.”

The man did not acknowledge me. He stalked off. It’s probably just as well: if he had yelled something back, I probably would have lost it more. And hands would have been thrown (and I would have won and ended up in jail). But, let’s be honest: cowards who enjoy destroying children don’t know how to respond to a strong adult’s challenge to their bullying.

The kid looked at me, though. I don’t know what he thought. But I hope he heard me.

Funny thing—I’m not sure I did the right thing.

But it was the only thing I could have done.

Silver lining: my date thought I did the right thing.

Me? I’m not so sure.

3

I’m never sure I’m doing the right thing these days. It’s horrible and I hate it. Most of my life has been very black and white. Clear yes, clear no. Kick-ass executive function. Right, wrong. Act now. No moral ambiguity.

Today, everything is grey — and I can’t even use that metaphor, because a book I dislike ruined it for me. (Yeah, that one. Have you read it? Then you probably understand…)

4

The poet John Keats coined the very uncomfortable but beautiful phrase “negative capability” when he was just 23. (Lucky for us; he was dead at 25.) He defined it as “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

I recently found out that he had a hard time living in negative capability himself. In a letter to a friend, he wrote:

I am continually running away from the subject — sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind — one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits — who would exist partly on sensation partly on thought.

I guess this should reassure me? Maybe? But in my current state, it’s just depressing.

Still. One can strive. He did.

5

But suppose one wants to take a break from striving? And just be?

6

My youngest son is steamrolling through a five-week summer course of grade 11 English. I sit down with him to talk through outlines on Brave New World, Macbeth, then proof his essays and explain all the things teachers apparently no longer teach. Subject-verb-object sentences. Paragraph structure. Building an argument. Why phrasing a sentence like this makes it more powerful — why, if you get lost in your own thoughts and sentences, the simplest hack is to chunk them. Make them short. Use that sweet period. Knowing how to use it is the ultimate writer’s hack.

I’m in awe of how far his writing has come, this kid who didn’t really read until 11, 12 and struggled with writing well into his teens. Now, he can analyze Huxley and Shakespeare. He doesn’t enjoy doing it, mind you. I don’t think he’ll ever come back to these texts after high school. But he can do it. And he’s so proud of his achievements.

As he should be.

As am I.

7

Existing in uncertainty without negative capability makes you really, really resent people who are… sure of themselves, their position, their opinion, their path.

So I feel like maybe I owe a big apology to all the people I encountered during my black and white days. Man, I must have been insufferable. Sorry.

Really, really sorry.

8

Keats’ epitaph on his tombstone reads, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” 

He died before he knew he was immortal. 

In another letter, to his fiancee, he writes,

If I should die… I have left no immortal words behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had the time I would have made myself remembered.

When I die, I will have left behind children who, I hope, know that they were loved. Beyond anything.

I hope.

But also… I would like to leave behind some words.

And not the kind I yell at a stranger at a playground.

9

Have you ever noticed that I like to write these posts in beats of 5,  7 and ideally 10?

Three is the most powerful writing number, but those additional three work very well for longer pieces.

Sometimes, though, the love of structure requires some slightly awkward creative gymnastics.

10

Hungry, I don’t skip it. I look in my refrigerator and scavenge, create a meal out of odds and ends. I eat it while watching Bones, reading Keats and trying to embrace uncertainty. Don’t fight the current. Let it take me… where? I don’t know. I hate it, can’t relax into it.

But I try.

In the end, that must be enough.

xoxo

“Jane”