by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Schwipp schwipp schwipp schwipp schwipp bang!
That seems to be all I hear in the early mornings anymore. Either that or talk about solving times, brands of cubes, or Max Park’s new 3x3x3 record of 3.13 seconds.
I have a son who is currently obsessed with Rubik’s cubes and becoming a speed cuber.
He’s had a lot of obsessions over the years, some that stuck around, some that didn’t. He’s a talented kid. His biggest challenge will probably be deciding which thing to focus on, instead of all the things.
I’ve been thinking about him a lot—not just because he’s usually already sitting at the kitchen table solving Rubik’s cubes when I get back from my morning runs (and he’s a teenager; aren’t teenagers supposed to sleep the days away during the summer?). But also because I sometimes find myself thinking, If he spent as much time studying and practicing music and acting—which he says he wants to do as a career—as he does on Rubik’s cubes, he’d pull way ahead of the rest.
But that’s not my decision. I’m not him. I’m just a parent. Who am I to say whether the direction he’s heading is the right one or the wrong one?
And this obsession with Rubik’s cubes is teaching him something valuable—that it takes time to get where you want to be.
Most of us want to get somewhere fast. We have our dreams and we have our plans and we want them to be in our hands already!
But the world has its own timetable.
There are few careers better at proving this than a writing career.
It’s a career of slow. A career of waiting. We become professional waiters—and not the kind who get tips.
Everything about it takes such a long time. Finishing the first draft of a book. Finishing the eighth or twelfth or the nineteen other drafts of that same book before I let it out of my hands. Finding an agent. Finding an editor. Actually publishing a book.
So…slow.
I often find myself thinking, I need something to happen. I need this contract to come through, this character to tell me what in the world she has in mind, someone to return my email.
As Mo Willems once titled one of my favorite Elephant & Piggie books: “Waiting Is Not Easy.”
There’s a well known piece of advice in the running world: Run slow to run fast. It reminds me of something I recently read from Simon Sinek, a British American writer and speaker: “It’s better to go slow in the right direction than go fast in the wrong direction.”
Sinek doesn’t say anything about it being easier to go slow in the right direction, only that it’s better. (Did you notice that, too?)
And on my good days, I believe it is.
Because if I run fast every single day I go out for a run, my body will exist in depletion mode. My energy levels will fall to practically nonexistent. I will burn out as quickly as a firework. And I’ll risk injury, too.
What going slow does is it allows us time and opportunity to prepare ourselves for what’s waiting for us farther along that journey. When I run slow to run fast, I’m building the proper muscles and lung capacity and cadence to run my race. So when I stand at the starting line and the gun goes off, I’m ready to give it my all.
We have to put in the work. And we definitely have to move in the right direction, not the wrong direction—however slow our progress may be.
Now, I know some people have fast passes to the top. And they do just fine. And we may look at that and think it’s not fair. And it’s not. But it’s also not our journey. It may never be our journey. We may never make it to the top—whatever the top may be (because it’s never a literal top, at least not for me. It’s more like, bestseller, awards, beloved by all…).
“What will you do if you never make a bestseller list?” my husband asks me. “Or you never win the Newbery award?” (That’s been my dream since I was 11 and I read every Newbery winner since the award was established. Someday I’ll write one of these books, I said to myself.)
He wasn’t done. “What if you never get any more well known than you are today?”
I cringe just writing those questions down. Because my first thought is, I’ll keep trying, then. And my second thought is, Will I?
If ten years pass and nothing changes, will I?
If twenty years pass and nothing changes, will I?
If thirty years…will I?
Go slow in the right direction…
But how slow are we talking about?
Preparation, I remind myself. It’s all preparation. And without preparation, we won’t last very long in the game. We may not be completely ready. We might be thrown into something completely unknown.
I’m not saying preparation can protect us from every unknown. Of course not. Life is hardly ever predictable. But preparation can help us plan for some unknowns. A second pair of shoes on race day, in case the first ones randomly split. An extra journal tucked into a travel bag because you just never know how this event will affect you, and journaling helps you decompress. An absorbing book to read while you’re sitting on a plane, because your anxiety really likes playing Worst Case Scenarios on planes, and usually your partner’s here to distract you but today you’re flying solo.
So I suppose the question could become: Do we want to be a blip on the timeline? Forgotten faster than we rose to the top? Here today, gone tomorrow? Or do we want to be around as long as we possibly can be?
Going slow in the right direction instead of fast in the wrong means we have a choice to make. Sure, the dream may be slow coming to us, but does that mean we should turn our backs on it? Do something else? Go in another direction that promises a faster return?
I’ve never loved doing anything as much as I enjoy writing. So my answer is no. I hold fast to the dream. And it may not ever come, but I know I’ve been walking in the right direction.
No regrets, no matter how slow. I’ll give it my best. I won’t throw away my shot (why, yes, I did just see Hamilton on the stage)!
I hope we can all say the same.
Have a glorious month of moving slow in the right direction.
Here are some of my favorite things to do while I’m going slow in the right direction (and waiting):
1. Study and learn
I’ve always loved learning, so one of my favorite things to do while in a waiting (or just a slow-moving period)—besides getting started on the next thing—is to study and learn. Sometimes that’s studying and learning more about writing, focusing on some of the places that feel more challenging for me so I can develop my skills. Sometimes it’s learning more about something I’m interested in—like environmentalism or feminism. I read everything I can get my hands on. For pleasure and for study.
2. Grow
Practicing consistently helps us use our skills both newly learned and ones we’ve cultivated for ages. Putting in the work is one of the best things we can do while we’re going slow in the right direction.
But you know what? So is resting. We grow both by practicing and by taking time off and resting. We take time off, and we grow. It’s biologically proven. Kids grow in their sleep. My body repairs itself from my long runs while I sleep. Our minds repair themselves with rest.
Do crafts. Take walks. Watch TV shows or unplug with a book. Do what makes you feel joyful and alive.
3. Invest in others
Going slow also allows us ample time to invest in others, whether that’s our own children or our partners or coworkers or people we barely know but who would love to be where we are. We can be generous with our time or our knowledge or our support. And giving back is yet another way to go slow in the right direction. Investing in the next generation will have profound impacts, and I want to be part of that. Don’t you?
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
On my journey to becoming a novelist, I spent a large chunk of time writing humor essays on parenting for online publications like Huff Post, Yahoo Parenting, and Babble. I loved writing those essays and continued doing so even after Babble disappeared, Yahoo Parenting lost its appeal, and Huff Post morphed into something a little different.
Part of the reason my parenting experiences drew me to humor was that my day-to-day life as a mom of six young kids was ridiculous and overwhelming and sometimes I wasn’t sure I’d make it through the day—whatever “making it” even meant. I was so dangerously close to tears that I wrote my reality into something hilarious.
From the outside looking in, it was hilarious.
Those humor essays, I believe, saved me during that time in my life. They saved me from being completely overcome by the overwhelm. They saved me from curling up in my bed and staying there. They saved me from giving in to the undertow of postpartum depression and paranoia.
That’s the magic of humor for me.
I remember surviving a forty-day stomach plague with a newborn, a one-year-old, and a three-year-old and thinking, One day I’ll laugh about this. How can I laugh now? When I walked into my toddler twins’ bedroom to get them up from their supposed-to-be-sleeping nap and I found they’d painted the walls with what was in their diapers—for the second week in a row!!!—I thought, One day I’ll laugh about this; how can I laugh about it now? When one of my sons took a Sharpie to every shirt he owned while I was organizing his brother’s closet, I reminded myself that one day I would laugh about it—so how could I laugh about it now?
I still do this today.
Humor does something magical to the brain. I don’t have any scientific proof for you today (although it does exist), but I know what it’s done in my own life. It brightens a world-weary day. It strengthens resolve and fortitude in some unexplainable way. It lifts moods and grows hope.
It also eases conflict. One of the fastest ways to diffuse the tension in an argument is to introduce some humor. Marriage counselors suggest that couples use a code word—the funnier, the better—when they’re arguing and emotions are flying a little too hot. (My husband’s and my code word is “crapulous,” an old retired gem that means feeling sick after eating or drinking too much—which is also how you can feel in the middle of an argument.)
When my sons are locked in a disagreement about something outrageously important—like who got more strawberries on their plate for lunch—all someone has to do is fart to blast through the tension. (Juvenile, I know, but it’s effective!)
I don’t write as many humor essays as I used to, because my sons have opinions about whether or not they appear in those essays—even if I’m mostly making fun of myself. But I have started embracing more humor in my fiction.
I have no idea why I waited so long to do it. It’s so much fun.
My latest book, The First Magnificent Summer (which released Tuesday!), is one of those humorous books. It’s not all humorous. It has substance and a hard story at its core, because humor, in my opinion, is best utilized in a story that means something. The hard places are made more digestible with humor. And we remember them, because they make us feel so many different emotions—joy, sorrow, delight, dread, satisfaction.
The difficult emotions coexist with the easy and enjoyable ones. We remember stories that make us feel—especially when there’s laughter involved.
Laughter connects us. Some of my favorite experiences with my family include watching a movie together and hearing our voices joined in laughter. Telling stories that elicit collective laughter around our dinner table. Making each other collapse into giggles because of silly acts or outrageous reactions.
Humor has an important place in our lives. I often tell my children, “If I can teach you to laugh at yourself, you’ll be well prepared for what the world and universe have in store for you.”
There’s no sense in taking ourselves (or the world) so seriously all the time. That’s not to say the world shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. There’s a big difference between at all and all the time. Some things are so ridiculous and unexplainable that all we can do is laugh. Some experiences are so ridiculous and unexplainable all we can do is laugh in response to them.
The old adage “laughter is the best medicine”? It turns out laughter is a kind of medicine. It heals hearts and opens minds, too. It connects us and bolsters us. It can even make us brave.
We could do with a little more laughter in our world.
I hope you have a month filled with giggles, snorts, and laugh-until-you-cry moments.
Here are my best tips for finding more laughter in your life:
1. Embrace the silly.
Especially if you have kids in your life, embracing the silly can increase the laughter in your home. Sometimes it’s as simple as breaking out in a silly dance. Sometimes it’s changing the lyrics to a song to more hilarious alternatives. When my kids pick rhyming picture books for our reading time, my husband likes making up his own word that doesn’t rhyme the stanza but is a synonym for the rhyming word. We get so many laughs out of this I’ve written a rhyming picture book that doesn’t rhyme!
2. Consume funny things.
It could be funny movies or TV shows or it could be humorous books (shared humorous audiobooks are the best). Look for comedy shows in your area, or play funny board games with family and friends. I’ve laughed until I’ve cried playing games like Kids Against Maturity and Poetry for Neanderthals with my kids and husband. Read a joke book or write your own and share it with all the people in your home. Even if they’re Dad-joke quality, kids will still shake their heads and laugh. Even the 16-year-old.
3. Try to turn one experience a week into a funny story.
Whether you write it down or you just tell it to someone, pick an experience from the last week that was annoying or frustrating or maybe even disheartening or mortifying. Try spinning the story in a humorous way. Then challenge yourself to do it again next week. And the week after that. Make it a habit, and see how your outlook shifts.
4. Observe the world.
People (especially kids) are hilarious, and sometimes they aren’t even trying. I visited a school recently, and one of the first questions for the Q&A time was, “How much do you bench press.” Uh…what does that have to do with writing? Nothing! But he was a seventh grade kid who was curious. So I got to tell him that I haven’t bench pressed anything since I was in college, and back then I’d bench pressed 140 pounds before my arms gave out and the guy at the next bench press station had to save me from Death by Benchpress Fail. Wasn’t funny at the time. But it’s funny now (according to every seventh grader in the room—because they love stories that prove adults are fools).
Try your own observations and see what you end up with.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Be your magnificent self.
That’s the tagline I chose for my newest middle grade book, The First Magnificent Summer, which releases this month.
Be your magnificent self.
It’s a great message, isn’t it? Especially for kids. I hope every kid in the universe knows they’re magnificent. Just because they’re themselves.
But I know not every kid does.
I’m one of them.
That’s not a typo. I didn’t mean to say I was one of them. I still am one of them. I know I’m not a kid. But the kid who failed to believe she was magnificent, who filtered most of her life through the lens of “I’m not good enough, I will never be good enough,” still lives in me. She’s a big part of me. I’ve only just begun the work of assuring her she was always magnificent. Assurance and deep-down belief are miles away from each other, and it is hard work crossing the chasm.
In a recent therapy session, I told my therapist that I’m tired of feeling like no matter what I do or achieve in my life, it’s still not enough. I told her it made me uncomfortable to have a reporter come into my home and ask me questions and write a story because it left me so exposed and known. And I told her when I’m exposed and known my anxiety and depression and OCD explode into action.
“Why do you think that is?” She said.
“Because I know if people get too close to me, they’ll see my darkest parts,” I said.
“And what happens then?” she said.
“They’ll leave me.”
And there it was: the crux of the problem.
When I was eleven years old, my parents divorced. My dad left entirely. From what I remember, we had only spotty contact for the first two years, a couple of summers when he took us to Ohio, and then he dropped off the face of the planet. He didn’t come to my high school graduation, where I delivered my valedictorian speech; or my college graduation, where I walked with honor cords around my neck; or my wedding or the births of my children.
Nearly my whole life was spent under the shadow of his leaving, looking through the lens of “I must have done something to drive him away. To keep him away.”
Who knows you better than your parents, when you’re a kid?
Be your magnificent self? My “magnificent self” had driven away one of the most important people in my life. My “magnificent self” was too much—too emotional, too anxious, too extra, too everything, too whiny, too sarcastic, too loud, too silent, too in love with writing. I needed to be someone different.
I wrote about this in The First Magnificent Summer. I wrote about the small hurts and the big ones. I wrote about the breaking in two. I wrote about disappointments and dreams and everything between the two.
I wrote a better ending.
And thought I was done.
“Be your magnificent self,” I wrote in the author’s note. “You deserve to be loved just because you’re you.”
And still I couldn’t fully believe it, as evidenced by the discomfort and terror of attention.
“You wrote all your hopes into the book,” my therapist said. “And now you need to absorb them as your truth, like you hope the kids who read it do.”
They’re wise words.
So the first thing I say to the 12-year-old girl in me every morning is “You are magnificent.”
Because she has to believe that first.
Recently I came across something the Indian scholar and activist Manabi Bandyopadhyay said: “Be yourself, the world will adjust.”
But the truth is, the world doesn’t always adjust. Dads don’t always come back home or say they’re sorry. Friends don’t always admit they were vicious and jealous and it had nothing to do with you (and also everything to do with you). The people in our lives don’t always accept our neurodiversities or quirks.
But if the whole world doesn’t adjust, that doesn’t mean we have to. It just means we may have to adjust our expectations—and maybe stop looking for our worth and acceptance in other people.
I believe 12-year-old Rachel was magnificent. I wish she had believed it all those years ago.
But I think we’re getting somewhere now.
I know this was a hugely personal email. But I hope you’ve found some value in it and that it helps you remember that we are all deserving of love (it deserves repeating) just because we’re us.
Have a magnificent month of being your magnificent self.
Strategies to help you believe in your magnificent self:
1. Draw a scale
Whenever I talk about how I feel like a bad mom, my therapist encourages me to create a scale from “best mom” to “worst mom ever.” On the top is the mom who never yells or gets frustrated or wishes she could have a break from her kids (I’m not her). On the bottom is the most neglectful, spiteful, unkind mother I can imagine (which I’m also not). I fall somewhere in the middle, which instead of labeling “enough” I’ve named “magnificent.” Do the same for whatever you’re struggling with—parent, friend, employee, human being. My guess is you’ll fall somewhere in the middle, too, which is magnificent.
2. The word cloud
Grab a piece of paper. Write your name in the middle and circle it. Now create a word cloud for all the things that make you you. (Mine would have things like, loves to write, finds life in reading, hates clutter, needs space, doesn’t like loud noises, enjoys sarcasm, dislikes talking about Minecraft endlessly, prefers staying home, etc.) At the bottom of the page, write the sentence, “I am magnificent, because…” and finish the sentence. Hang the paper where you can see it or put it in a safe place where you can refer to it easily.
3. Seek therapy
Sometimes it takes a licensed therapist to peel away layers of misbeliefs we’ve had since we were kids. I know we’re pressed for time and money (and honestly I think mental health care should be free for all), but this is important work. And we never regret the important work of healing.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
When I was a kid, I enjoyed being a leader.
What that meant at the time was that teachers looked to me to be an example for other students. Friends came to me for advice, because they (mistakenly) believed I had some inner wisdom they didn’t have (I had strong opinions and read a lot, which made me an expert in my own and apparently my peers’ eyes). I kept my brother and sister out of trouble (or tried to) while my mom worked multiple jobs to put food on the table.
In college, I ran the university newspaper as editor in chief, acted as the leader of a band, and organized multiple social groups. But into adulthood, those leadership roles began to slip away.
It seemed much easier to be a leader when I was younger.
I don’t consider myself a natural leader. Even when I was younger, I stepped into roles only because there were great, gaping holes that seemed important to fill. I stepped into them because no one else would.
But my life today is filled with amazing, competent leaders. And, I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired. I have a lot of kids. I live every day as a leader—a mom…and my kids’ lives aren’t getting any less complicated, and their problems aren’t getting any less challenging.
Maybe that’s enough for me, I told myself. To be a leader of this one, tiny world.
But it wasn’t. I could feel it down deep—that aching to make a difference, that longing to change the world that I’ve felt since I was a child.
After watching through Mrs. America, a Hulu original series that follows the women’s movement to push for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (highly recommended, if you haven’t seen it!), I spent months obsessed with learning more about Gloria Steinem, one of the movement’s leaders. I felt a strong connection with Steinem, who spoke up for women’s rights, wrote endlessly about their importance, and founded a pivotal magazine, Ms.
Her story—and the stories of all the other women leaders—were so inspiring. But I could never be them.
I believe in the ERA. But if I had lived back during that time, when women were fighting for it, would I have been a Gloria Steinem or a Betty Friedan or a Bella Abzug or a Pauli Murray or a Shirley Chisholm or a Gloria Watkins? Probably not. (Maybe I could have been an Audre Lorde.)
I’m not comfortable in the spotlight. Public speaking makes me uncomfortable, unless I’m talking to kids and teens. When I used to sing the national anthem for sporting events—in middle school, high school and college—I hid behind a curtain or up in an announcer’s booth so no one would look at me while I was singing (except for the college baseball games, which left me vulnerable at home plate…I only did three of those, because my anxiety couldn’t take it).
And then an episode of the show highlighted a group of women athletes who in 1977 organized a 2,612-mile relay from Seneca Falls, New York, where the first national women’s convention was held in 1848, to Houston, Texas, where the pivotal National Women’s Conference was happening, and I told my husband: That would have been me.
They didn’t say a word. They ran. And their voice was heard.
Here’s the thing. We often mistakenly believe that in order to make a difference in the world, we have to be a loud leader, in the spotlight often, with millions of followers. But some of us are quiet leaders. Some of us lead by example. Or we lead by arranging careful words on a page and occasionally (or often) sending them out into the world. Or we lead by expressing our creativity and our hearts in music or dance or film or sport or marketing or science or math or interior design or fashion or engineering or food service or the millions of other possibilities that exist.
We do what we can with what we have. Some of us have legs to run. Some of us have voices to speak. Some of us have a marvelous gift for creating communities. Some of us like to be alone.
We’re all leaders, whether loud or quiet. Whether large or small or young or old. Whether we want to be one or not. Someone somewhere is looking at us as a leader to follow.
So the question is not Will we be a leader but What kind of leader will we be?
A. Breeze Harper, an American critical race feminist and author, says, “No one is on the sidelines; by our actions or inactions, by our caring or indifference, we are either part of the problem or part of the solution.”
I want to be part of the solution. I want to act and speak up and make change—in my own way. I don’t want to be indifferent; I want to care. I want to help repair the broken places in the world.
I think, at the heart of us, we all do.
So now the question(s) becomes, How will you use your one, unique voice to make a difference? To lead the world into a better tomorrow? To repair hearts and minds and whole lives?
I can’t wait to see.
I hope you have a lovely month of surprising opportunities to lead.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
There comes this moment, before every big event in my life, where I have wondered, Am I ready for this? Is this the right thing?
It’s not a gentle wondering, either. It’s a loud, hot, cold, hot, cold, numb, hot hot hot kind of wondering. A spiral of wondering that tornadoes down to a funnel that drips into a bucket labeled “Probably Not.” (That may seen a tad melodramatic—but such is life with an anxiety disorder!) An endless wondering that darts in and out of moments for days or even weeks leading up to a life-changing event.
I remember it before my wedding almost twenty years ago. As I stretched out on my childhood bed and talked to my fiancé on the phone, I was blasted by the sudden thought: Am I doing the right thing? Am I ready to grow up? Do I even want to be married?
I remember it on the way to the hospital before the birth of my first child, and then the second, the third, the fourth and fifth together, the sixth: Are we crazy to think we could do this?
I remember it before every book has published.
We all experience this, in one way or another. Maybe not as dramatically as I do. But it’s a natural part of growing and stepping into something new and a little bit scary and entirely unpredictable, because there’s no guarantee it will work out.
Am I ready for this? we think.
Sometimes the answer is yes. I love those times, when I feel like I’ve prepared myself as much as I can, when I feel confident and in control, when I have a pretty good idea of the projected outcome. I think I’ve experienced that once in my life. Maybe twice.
Most of the time, I reach these giant (for me) turning points in my life story, and I don’t feel prepared. I read more than twenty parenting books before we had our first kid, and when the doctor released me from the hospital with this tiny screaming infant, I still didn’t know what I was doing. I was unprepared, even though I’d prepared.
I feel unprepared a lot.
I’m coming to understand that’s not a bad thing.
It’s probably no surprise to you that I am change-averse. I’ve written before that I thrive on routine and predictability—and change is certainly not predictable (though my response to it is!). But change is also necessary in life. No one goes through life without experiencing change. The physical body is proof of that.
Change can be scary. Major life events can be, too. We hardly ever feel prepared. We’ll probably (like many of the characters in stories) wonder, for just a moment, if we can maintain the status quo, keep living the same life and still be happy. Hold off until we’re ready.
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega once said, “We cannot put off living until we’re ready.”
I agree.
Sometimes we’re thrown into something before we’re completely ready. But that’s the beauty of humanity—we grow. We adapt. We surprise ourselves with our ability to carry on. To really live. To thrive and continue becoming ourselves, one unprepared step at a time.
We’re like characters in a real-life story. The Major Life Event is our catalyst, before change begins. We get to walk through our own emotional journey and become different people on the other side. I am certainly a much different person than I was pre-marriage and pre-kids. I like this version a lot more, I must confess.
Next time you and I face one of these crossroads where we could continue on as is or step into a future for which we’re not completely prepared, I hope we say, Bring it on. I can’t wait to see who I am on the other side.
Have a happy March of growth and renewal.
Here are some of my best tips for embracing change:
1. Keep a journal
I know, this is my go-to tip for just about everything (I even talk about it at school visits). So if you’ve already heard my spiel, go ahead and listen again.
When we record these feelings of inadequacy and unpreparedness in journals, we not only get them off our chests, we also give ourselves a gift: the gift of hindsight. Memories aren’t always accurate, when they stay trapped in our minds. The next time we face another life event for which we feel inadequate and unprepared, we may not remember that we felt the exact same way about this other thing that turned out just fine (or not—that’s also useful information). But if we recorded it in a journal, we can look back and probably feel a little relief that we’ve been here before and we made it out alive.
2. Play a game called Change the Small Stuff
This is a little game I play with myself, to prove that change isn’t going to kill me.
I am such a creature of habit. I get up at the same time every morning, I do my morning routine in the same order, I write at the same time every day, I eat dinner at the same time every evening with my family. I even run the same routes through my city.
But one morning I changed my running route. I made my morning tea before I meditated. I wrote my daily poem after I edited another manuscript. And it was awful. All of it. But you know what? The next time I played the game with myself, it was one percent less awful, because I had grown one percent.
We can adapt to change, too (even if sometimes we have to repeat that as a mantra).
3. Talk to a therapist
You may get tired of me pointing, always, to therapy—but you must know that it’s only because I love you and I want you to live the best life you can and I know how valuable therapy can be for changing our mindsets and helping us grow. I think we can all benefit from therapy, no matter what we’ve been through in our lives.
And the truth is, not every instance of life throwing us into something for which we feel unprepared will be good. Some will be awful. And completely out of our control. And we have to make sure we take care of our hearts and minds. Talking with a licensed therapist or a psychologist or psychiatrist can help us come to terms with ourselves, our circumstances, and our future.
Get more writing like this by signing up for my newsletter at https://racheltoalson.podia.com/newsletter.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
The idea of karma is an ancient idea. Even when I was a kid, I was familiar with the saying, “What goes around comes around.” The saying served two purposes back then: first, to get me to think about what I was doing that might come back around to haunt me (which was hardly ever my first consideration), and second, to think about what others were doing to me that might come back to haunt them.
That was my preferred interpretation and consideration. It enabled me to construct revenge fantasies. Ann told me my nose was pointy—she would get hurt as much as that snippy comment hurt me. Tony called me a nerd in front of the whole bus—one day soon he would be humiliated, too. William snickered when I got emotional during the reading of Great Expectations? He’d give the world plenty to snicker about someday.
I spent a good part of my life wishing and hoping that the people in my life who’d hurt me in visible and invisible ways would get their comeuppance in the end. What goes around comes back around, I assured myself when my best friend in college spread untrue rumors about me in our circle of friends. What goes around comes back around, I told myself when a man I worked for denied me a raise because I was a mom of three kids and he said, “A woman loses her ability to work well when she has kids.” (Yes. This really happened.) What goes around comes back around, I whispered into the hurt places when a good friend from college said he hadn’t considered my husband and me friends for several years because he doesn’t associate with “aggressive feminists.”
What goes around comes back around.
It’s an uncharitable thought and hope and desperate wish. And the worst part is—I still find myself thinking and hoping and wishing it at times, even today.
This kind of thinking and wishing and hoping hinders progress. It keeps us stuck in a very small place. It keeps our hearts strangled and our minds—or at least part of them—in a kind of prison.
Relationships are tricky waters. And hurt can turn us into uncharitable people who imagine elaborate revenge fantasies of how what they did to us will eventually return to them—for better or worse (usually worse).
I don’t want to be an uncharitable person, even when I’m hurt. Or angry. Or disappointed. Or scared. I want to be a forgiving person. A person with boundaries, of course, but a person who doesn’t wish the worst on those who have done the worst to me. I want to flip the script.
Florence Scovel Shinn, an American artist, once said, “The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds, and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.” I love the way she puts this, because it makes me think there’s another way to consider “what goes around comes back around.”
Reframed, it becomes: What are you putting out into the world?
This question is a much healthier (and enjoyable) one to consider, because it focuses on ourselves, not on other people. One of the frequent refrains I repeat in my house (so many times!) is, “Mind yourself.” I use it when my kids are comparing what one got to do versus what another got to do. I use it when one kid got in trouble for something and immediately said, “Well, he did it, too.” I use it when I’ve instructed them to tidy up and one wanders around the living room telling his youngest brother to clean—when he’s not cleaning, either.
“Mind yourself,” I say. If we spent half as much time minding ourselves as we spend minding other people, I tell my children, we’d probably be so much better at everything. Tidying. Loving. Living.
It’s true for us too, isn’t it? If we just minded ourselves, we’d be so much happier and wiser and more fulfilled. Comparison—gone. Fair and unfair—gone. Revenge fantasies—(mostly) gone.
What are you putting out into the world?
I know what I want to put out into the world. Love. And peace. And hope. And truth. And beauty. And wonder. Did I mention love?
It’s not easy to put these things out into the world. It’s especially not easy when our eyes are so focused on how others have it so much better than we do. Or how much they hurt us or how unfair it is that they have this amazing thing and we only have this unimpressive thing. Or how they’re such a difficult person and they’re so successful anyway.
We need to change our focus.
What are you putting out into the world?
Every day we have the opportunity to make the world better in whatever small way we can—whether it’s through our work or in our families or with a stranger in a chance encounter. If we keep this question top of mind and think about how every encounter and activity and task is an opportunity to put peace and hope and love and truth and beauty and wonder into the world, and we do our best to put peace and hope and love and truth and beauty and wonder out into the world, it will come back to us. It’s a game of boomerangs.
What are you putting out into the world?
I hope it’s beautiful.
3 ways to put love and peace and hope and love and truth and beauty and wonder out into the world.
1. Thank yous
It’s such a simple thing, and yet a thank you goes a long way. We live in such a rush-rush world; oftentimes we live under the belief that people just know we’re thankful. And while that’s sometimes the case, it’s not always. A few words go a long way. Think of someone who deserves your appreciation today. Send them a note—email or text is fine, if you’re not the snail-mail type—but a real physical note is even better.
2. A “random” act of kindness.
It doesn’t have to be random, of course. But think of some ways you can be kind to someone in your life today. Can you compliment someone on a shirt that makes their eyes shine? Share some homemade cookies with a group of teenage boys who show up at your house unannounced? Invite a neighbor over for dinner and conversation? It doesn’t have to be anything big or expensive or inconvenient, even. Just like with thank you, a little goes a long way. Let the kids have a day off chores. Pick up dinner so your partner doesn’t have to cook. Fill up a water bottle for the kid who needs hydration.
3. Use less.
This one may seem a little out of nowhere, but hear me out. We live in abundance. But there are many, many people who don’t. And when we take more than our fair share—of food, water, electricity, resources, etc, we are taking those things from the people who don’t have enough. So a way we can put love into the world is to use less. Eat less food. Use less water and electricity. Drive less and walk more. Look for ways to take care of the earth and others. (For more on this concept, I highly recommend Hope Jahren’s The Story of More.)
