Content or Complacent?

I often ask myself if I’m content or complacent. As a perfectionist with a general fear of commitment, I interpret most comfortable lulls in life as complacency. It’s therefore difficult for me to relax; I could always be doing more, or be doing better. When I finally do allow myself to relax, I often end up feeling more anxious than I did before. I think of all the things I could have done, and feel a remorse and anger at myself for the loss of time.

Imagine that time is literally money, and like the finite amount of time you have on this planet, you are given a finite amount of money to last you the rest of your life. Given one million dollars, you would probably spend it sparingly, treasuring each and every dollar. You wouldn’t just toss $35 out the window one day*. That’s what I feel like I’m doing when I relax.

I have two comfortable states-of-mind: productive and fun. Productive is work, school, creative projects. Fun is going out with friends, snowboarding, dancing, creative projects. Relaxation is not a natural state of mind for me.

I realized that this goes far beyond the physical state of relaxation and has crept into my psyche. Staying at one job, in one place, or with one person for too long to the point where I am “relaxed” becomes complacency to me. I feel lazy, unchallenged, unfocused.

I’ve realized recently that this is unfair; just because I’m relaxed doesn’t mean I’m complacent. It may instead mean that I am content. I must, however, allow myself to be happy to truly feel it. Feeling content is a decision that you make when you haven’t “settled,” (in the negative sense) yet you feel settled (positive). The hardest part is deciphering the difference between the two, and then willing yourself to make a change or to be happy.

*The average person lives about 28,815 days in their life (1/28,815 = 35/1,000,000)

Finding Time

I wrote this poem for my oldest childhood friend, Alyson for her wedding zine (a compilation of creative submissions from wedding guests). Alyson and I were best friends all through elementary and middle school, and then grew apart in high school. We then had little to no contact for 10+ years. During that time we both went to college, held various jobs, travelled the world, loved and lost, and loved again and then ended up back in San Francisco. I never forgot about Alyson throughout - you never truly forget your first real friend. Alyson was the first person to inspire me to be creative, and something about that always lingered with me. While this poem is about romantic love, it was initially inspired by my recent reconnection with Alyson after all this “lost” time. When we started hanging out again, it was as if we hadn’t lost any time at all.

Every person on this planet

Is looking for this "time"

How is it that we take for granted

Something we can't find?

Is he really that elusive?

A master of hide-and-seek

Or is he just reclusive?

A hermit on a mountain's peak

People claim he slips away

Discreet, and quiet like a snake

As if you could seize the day

From the moment you awake

They say time stops

When you've met the one

He gives you props

And says "I'm done!"

And all that time

You couldn't find

On this tough climb

Slows to a grind

You've reached that peak

In clouds above

That time you seek

Is found in love

When Andy Met Jeanne

Jeanne hoisted her strappy, heeled foot firmly onto the chair, leaving her leg partially exposed through the slit in her black cocktail dress. She smiled subtly in his direction, took a deep breath, and then belted out the first line of the Marseillaise.

Apparently it was at that cocktail party in Manhattan that my grandpa decided to leave his fiancé in Quebec for my grandma. My grandma, Jeanne, was an aspiring writer for Time Magazine, and my grandpa, Andy, was a PHD candidate at New York University. He was unassumingly handsome, and awkward, with a big French nose, and a passion for fishing and physics. She was an ingénue, who left her suburban life in Youngstown, Ohio to pursue her dream of being a career woman in New York City.

“From the moment I met your grandpa, I knew it was over,” my grandma sighed. “I thought: that looks like the man I will marry. I should stay away from him.”

The idea that a woman could “have it all” was not a concept at the time. This man, who captured her attention, would lead to the end of her blossoming career. Yet, she could not help but put every effort into capturing his heart.

I sat at my grandparent’s kitchen table, coffee in hand, as my grandma recounted the night. She is a captivating storyteller, able to take the most mundane event and leave you at the edge of your seat. This, however, was not a mundane event; this was a night that led to the lives of 8 children, and 20 grandchildren.

“I put everything into that song,” She sighed. “I sang with such gravitas! With such heart! That’s what won him over.” She smiled triumphantly.

“No, you sang it all sexy,” my grandpa interjected for the first time during the story.

“Andy!” She scolded, glancing at me apprehensively.

My grandpa is a man of few words, and since he’d started losing his memory, those words have become fewer and fewer. His whole life, he prided himself in his intellect. Now, his fading memory humbled him into the background. But he listened intently to my grandma tell this story, not missing a beat.

I too, was listening intently, as I came to the realization that these two people, who I’ve always known to be grandparents, had a youth so similar to my own. This party had been hosted by a mutual friend, one whom Jeanne had grown fond of romantically. He lived in a flat in Manhattan with his roommate, and hung out frequently with Jeanne. She’d come to assume that the frequency of their encounters implied a certain mutual admiration. However, one night, when she went in for a kiss, he explained to her that his roommate, Jon, was more than a roommate. He let her down easy, by adding that while he might not be the man for her, he knows this guy who is totally her type: his name is Andy and he’s a graduate student at NYU. He’d set up an event where they could meet each other, he promised.

He held true to his promise, and as the party approached, he called and apologized. “He has a fiancé in Quebec,” He said. “I had no idea.”

Apparently, being a bachelor at 29 was not acceptable in my grandpa’s family. They called him an “odd one” and gossiped that perhaps he preferred men. The only solution, it seemed, was to arrange a marriage. Louise was a sweet woman, with long brunette locks, and a knack for all things homemaking. The night that Andy met Jeanne, Louise was spending a weekend with Andy’s family learning how to cook, and to do all the things that are expected of a good wife. Louise rolled dough with her engagement ring-clad hand, while Andy stared, captivated, at my grandma’s ruby-red lips quivering in language she did not speak or understand.

I could feel my grandma’s hesitation around telling me the rest of the story, but my grandpa had suddenly become more engaged.

“You attacked me in the cab,” he said.

“Oh Andy!” my grandma exclaimed. “Well, he’d been telling me that his water heater was in the kitchen, and I just had to see it with my own eyes!”

I wasn’t at all surprised that my grandpa would decide to talk to my grandma about the location of his water heater. I like to imagine how the conversation went: how he decided to talk about household utilities, and how my grandma so smoothly turned it into an invitation.

After that night, Andy called his family in Quebec to break off the engagement. “She married someone else shortly after, and had five kids,” my grandma explained. But I could tell there was some lingering guilt there. “Andy didn’t have the money to buy me a ring at the time,” she added, “since Louise kept hers.”

Before that fateful night, my grandpa had intended to go back to Quebec after graduate school, and my grandma had dreams of being a “big time” writer in New York, and had no intention of ever marrying.

We went through some old pictures of the wedding. My grandma looked like Audrey Hepburn with her midnight-black hair in a stylish pixie cut. In most of the pictures, she’s beaming at the camera, smiling ear-to-ear, and my grandpa is looking at her with clear adoration.