Country meets…me
While I don’t want to admit it very often, I spend a lot of energy wondering whether I’m enough. Is this just a human thing? Are there folks out there who don’t spend energy this way?
I keep thinking to myself that the moment all of us just know that we’re fine is the moment gazillion tons of energy will be freed up for far more life-giving things.
There’s a radio station in our area that I used to listen to while driving. One day last month its rag-tag mix of 80s, 90s and current music got replaced with country. And not just country, but no-commercials-at-all country. When all the other stations are droning with hours of business jingles, this one is playing actual music. So nearly in spite of myself, I have been listening to country.
What has struck me more than anything in this new endeavor, beyond the worldview that’s felt more entrenched in traditional gender roles than most I currently observe, is the enoughness that permeates so much of it. People are singing about simple things, often very basic things, things that have little to do with money or education and a lot to do with friends. With love. With faith. And they’re belting it all out like it’d never occur to them that there are people who would be embarrassed to admit liking these things. That there are people who would never in a million years admit that their greatest dream is not to be famous or well-respected in fast-track circles or to be rich and beautiful or to travel the world on every holiday, but rather to live in a humble home, not even near a big city, to drive an old car, and to be rich only with food enough to eat and people to love and laugh and be neighborly with. To be rich with smelling earth smells, with growing things, with seeing the sun rise and set over mountains, rather than row upon row of buildings.
I live in the Silicon Valley, where money and multi-million dollar homes and ingenious intellectual and business pursuits are as common as air. I live where “enough” feels like a word from another planet, or if not that, spoken only to waiters about pepper or parmesan cheese.
So it has been with delight and a small sense of subversion that I have kept my radio tuned to the same station it’s always been, feeling my afraid-I’m-not-enough soul being nourished and healed in this most unlikely way. I come home from writing and from errands fretting less about what I don’t have or haven’t yet accomplished, content a lot more with what I actually *have* done and *do* have. The latter being foremost food, shelter, and wonderful people to love.
“Hell yeah, you’re enough!” I hear this music say. Or in Alan Jackson’s words,
“…it’s alright to be little bitty
Little hometown or a big ol’ city
Might as well share, might as well smile
life goes on for a little bitty while”
March 28th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
what amazes me about you, kristin, is that even when you are not “writing”, you are writing down these beautiful, perfectly worded thoughts. i love the line about the waiter/pepper/parmesan cheese. i will BUY any book that puts words together so smoothly like that! and with so much integrity to boot! (no pun on the country theme)
March 29th, 2007 at 7:52 am
How insightful of you to comment on our seeming inability to say “enough” when it comes to clothes or cars or relationships - that this is enough. That all is well - even when it’s imperfect. Country music does have a unique way of bringing the heart and mind back home to where children and loved ones roam, where hearts break, but love endures. Where food, laughter, hugs, and this (whatever “this” is) is enough. Thanks for noticing that and sharing it with us. And thanks for giving me one less reason to be ashamed of my love of country music. Yup, this black woman with dreadlocs who grew up in Brooklyn, NY. loves those old-fashioned ballads and songs of lost love and found friends. Kenny Rogers will always be one of my favorite singers!
March 29th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
hee hee…thanks atticus. gail, what a hoot! i love it! i would have never pictured you with dreds, but now i have another reason to think you’re wonderful.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:16 am
this post and the comments remind me of an interfaith seminar I was at this week (sorry for turning your post about life in general back to religion again).
I learned something I never knew before - according to a couple Muslims I met, in Islam the state of the world as it is perceived by them is alright, ‘the way it should be’. God created humankind and Adam went astray, repented, asked forgiveness, and God forgave and gave him guidance. That’s it. Humans are not free from fault - we fail to obey God as we should - but it does not mess up God’s plan for human beings or our relationship with him. Speaking as a Christian interpreting some of this, it seems that in some way a Muslim sees human frailty and imperfection as indeed enough - enough according to what God seems to expect or even have designed - assuming we recognise and repent when we go astray like Adam. Any Muslim out there can feel free to correct me - I am no expert in this.
It makes me wonder: do we feel ALL feel like we are not enough (Muslims too?)? WHY do we feel that way? Is it because we recognise somehow we should be more or perfect according to some standard that is really divine (the only perfect)? Why would we expect divinity of humanity anyways?
Certainly my Christian faith life has been fraught with feeling sinful, impure, and certainly far from enough. I wonder if it is just Christianity or a ‘western’ thing (since so much of the western world is from a Christian heritage)? For example, when I was briefly in Africa, I thought people were a lot more happy in general than people I know in North American and Europe). I don’t know if they feel they are enough, but they did seem, in some ways, more content. Maybe it is because they get so much more sunshine than I do!
March 30th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I love the post! And interesting comments. I wonder if much of our “feeling not enough” is by design (i.e., perpetrated by people who want to influence us). It does seem like a powerful tool. If marketers can make us feel that we’re not enough, we’ll be more likely to buy whatever it is they’re selling. If religious leaders can make us feel that we’re not enough, we’ll be more likely to buy their teachings and doctrines in order to address our innate limitations. I have certainly fallen prey to these influences but I don’t buy into them at an intellectual level. The flowers and rocks and trees are “enough.” The monkeys and dung beetles are “enough.” Why would we be any different?
March 30th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Nate, it occurs to me, in relation to your comment, that unplugging from television could be one of the most self-esteem-building actions a person could take. Unplugging from commercials alone would be a great start. This wouldn’t distance one from the influence of such things completely, since nearly everyone else would still be plugged in, but it seems like a start. Lack of constant media bombardment would be an interesting hypothesis to explore to answer some of your questions, too, Julianne.
March 30th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Having lived for three years with my wife and four kids in a remote part of Africa where we didn’t have TV or malls or radio or even electricity, I can affirm that life offers “enough” without those influences. One day is enough to celebrate Christmas, for example. Simple gifts are as exciting as complicated expensive ones. Letters from friends and family are great tresasures. One of my favorite meals now that I am living where we have supermarkets and restaurants and ads for all kinds of luscious foods is rice and beans, which is what satisfied us every day in Africa. Long family conversations around the dinner table seem to me to have been great pleasures. But all those things are not enough living here for some reason.
March 31st, 2007 at 1:03 am
thank you all for your thoughts on this. Kristin, I begin to realise what you mean by not enoughness when you mention tv. We have never had a tv - so that’s the past 10 years or so - and the radio we listen to is only online. I didn’t even recognise the element of being not enough in the world’s eyes. For the most part, I don’t struggle with this. I do think it helps to limit what is coming into your radar. I get my input from people I know (friends, family, and colleagues, in person and in email) and books (my husband and I read books aloud daily, usually in the morning over breakfast and in the evening when the other person is cooking or cleaning up). we have been very purposeful about choosing to live life this way.
March 31st, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Beautiful writing here. When I read these comments, I am struck by how simple it can be to live well. Turn off the television. Read to one another. Eat simple and healthy food. Examine one’s faith and figure out how much comes from whatever media source is in the pulpit or on the screen or at the Torah or Qu’ran. Be discerning. We are frail, physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. Why not be more gentle with one another and with ourselves: accept, hug, laugh, fail, fall, and then get up, hug again, laugh again, and embrace one another as we traverse this life path together. Be. Enough. Being is enough.
I recently read a book entitled “Eat to Live” which talks about the tremendous health benefits of raw fruits and vegetables. Clearer skin, weight loss, less stuffy nose problems, more energy, and easier digestive tract movement are all benefits that I have reaped in simply 8 weeks of following the plan. My daughter has embraced it whole-heartedly as we scarf down huge salads with flavored vinegars and fresh fruit every day. I highly recommend the book - I got it at the library. Along the way, we have drastically reduced our “recreational shopping habit” - we simply don’t need anything - and learned the joy of sitting on the deck reading and drinking ice water on hot afternoons.
Anyway, here’s a question I struggle with: what does one do when one’s partner loves television and commercials and shopping and McDonald’s and more, more, more of all of the above? And what if one child is wholeheartedly following that path?
Perhaps it’s a larger question than that: what if one is at odds in some fundamental ways with one’s life partner?
March 31st, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Country does have a way of getting down to basics. It’s in my later years that I’ve acquired a taste for it. For so long I felt “less than,” but so much of that has fallen by the way in my later years. I guarantee it will be that way for you, too.
Silicon Valley is a lot like Palos Verdes where I work, but we slowly learn that “things” don’t fill up the hole in the soul. Your hubbie and baby do, however.
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Julianne, your home habits sound just the right pace for me. And like a great alternative to the influences that affect so much of the world right now (i.e. tv and radio on constantly). While I take in very little television and radio, it sounds like there’s nevertheless a different nuance to the enoughness issues that you and I deal with. That maybe yours relate with God, and mine relate with…hmmm…I think they relate to a nebulous standard of accomplishment that I carry around inside. A sense that I should have already done so much more than I’ve done by now.
Gail, your final questions are really tough ones. It seems like the conversation is really different depending on the attitude of each partner. If both are “in” - are really wanting to work at things together, to try to understand the differences and find common ground - then the conversation looks one way. But if both *aren’t” in, it seems totally different. I’m not sure what situation you’re in, but it sounds like you’ve been partnered for a long time. If you have wisdom you’d like to share, I’m sure we’re all ears.
Fran, this is hopeful news. I have a hunch that you’re exactly right about the number time can do on enoughness issues. And yes, meaningful relationships are directly correlated with my sense that life is good. Seasons where these are fewer are so much darker, and seasons where they’re plentiful are golden.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:20 am
We have been partnered for over 20 years. We are still working to understand our differences and find common ground. But this area of television/media/ consumerism is a place where we disagree profoundly.
Wisdom? I don’t know. But I will say this: I am committed to giving my children a steady dose of my thoughts and beliefs in this area, to keeping television strictly monitored and limited when they are under my watchful care, and to being an example of reducing our consumption in as many ways as we can. I read aloud to them as often as part of our homeschooling and sometimes before bedtime. We go for walks together, play games, and when we do watch television together, I am the commentator in the corner critiquing commercials, pointing out the way that both men and women are portrayed and how those portrayals don’t do men or women true justice, and pointing out the sexist, racist, violent attitudes that pervade the media.
When they begin to ask for more stuff, I remind them of all the stuff we already have, of all that we thought we wanted and never made full use of, and that we are enough as we are - without any of the stuff that we are being sold. It’s a tough sell at times, but I have not and will not give up the fight. Not with them and not with my husband either.
There are many areas in which my husband and I are united, and those are far more numerous than those in which we are at odds. In the end, our marriage partnership and the children we are raising deserve the best efforts and wisdom we have. And in those areas where we disagree, we give each other and our children an opportunity to hear at least two opinions and figure out our own individual thoughts on any given topic.
Twenty years and we are still figuring out who we are as a couple and what we are as a family unit. I suspect that the work will never end.
April 5th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Gail, your partnership sounds really remarkable. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems much more common for people to live and parent and partner with much less thought or intention. I can imagine, though, how hard this particular difference must be to navigate - without kids for sure, but particularly with them. Differences like these seem like they can push any two people toward more extreme ends of a spectrum than they’d otherwise inhabit, in efforts to balance each other out…which makes it all the more difficult for either person to move toward the other and also maintain dignity. I wish you and all of us the best as we try to figure these kinds of challenges out.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Ok, I just have a non-profound question: where on the radio dial have you found country music?
April 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Robin - 95.7 :)