Anne Lamott and the Gold Coins

 

 

I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief—and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.

This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity—cell phone, email, text, Twitter—steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success.

Needless to say, this is very distressing for my writing students. They start to explain that they have two kids at home, or five, a stable of horses or a hive of bees, and 40-hour workweeks. Or, on the other hand, sometimes they are climbing the walls with boredom, own nearly nothing, and are looking for work full-time, which is why they can’t make time now to pursue their hearts’ desires. ...They are absolutely sincere, and they are delusional.

I often remember the story from India of a beggar who sat outside a temple, begging for just enough every day to keep body and soul alive, until the temple elders convinced him to move across the street and sit under a tree. Years of begging and bare subsistence followed until he died. The temple elders decided to bury him beneath his cherished tree, where, after shoveling away a couple of feet of earth, they found a stash of gold coins that he had unknowingly sat on, all those hand-to-mouth years.

You already have the gold coins beneath you, of presence, creativity, intimacy, time for wonder, and nature, and life.

That's Anne Lamott writing in an April 2010 issue of Sunset; you can read the second half of her essay here. It is liberating to remember our capacity for choices, that time is more than a thing to be passed or filled up, that we can be intentional about how we trade it in. I might choose to trade an hour I spend on the internet each week and give it instead to reading poetry. I might barter another hour of the week that I now spend reading the news and give it instead to riding my bike. What's interesting is that I usually think of negotiations like this in terms of money: I'm basically self-employed, supporting myself on an irregular income, and working very seriously to get out of debt. Day-to-day, I think a lot about what I spend and how it will or will not go toward living the kind of life I want to have -- independent of debt and all its disguised obligations, full of books and music and good food and beautiful yarns, circled among creative and intelligent people who will laugh with me and share what is both hard and good in our lives. And I want to live this life in a world where places that do meaningful work -- from bookshops to public radio to climate change advocacy -- exist and thrive. If I go to a restaurant with a friend instead of adding an extra $15 to my student loan payment this month, does that move me closer to or away from the life I want to live? If I pay extra on my loan instead of donating to, say, Planned Parenthood, how does that reconcile with my best good life? Is it more important for me to pay for a dentist appointment or an eye appointment when I am due for both and can only afford one?

That's the narration that runs through my mind a lot. There are no clear resolutions. What I like about Lamott's piece is its push to translate how I think about money with how I might think about time, which is of course a far more precious wealth. Time is where we live our lives, after all. We don't fill it; it fills us. I want it to come not with my manic habits, but with art and love.

 

About the Image: Anne Lamott, via Sunset.

Comments

[Nina Misuraca Ignaczak]

thank you thank you thank you :)

[Nina Misuraca Ignaczak]

Anna, BTW, I have a BUNCH of yarn, I used to be an avid knitter, but I've sort of moved on to sewing.. you are welcome to it!

Also, there is a lady way north of Rochester who raises sheep and sells the yarn, she has an annual festival which is coming up, lmk if you are interested in going, i may want to head up there: http://www.sheepstuff.com/Festival.html

[margosita]

This is just what I needed today. Thank you.

[gina]

I am going to echo Margosita's sentiments, definitely needed this and thanks for sharing it. I need to remind myself of this--more and more often, it seems.

My coworker and I were just talking about how we would like to spend less time on the internet. I am leaning toward taking a long break from Twitter and Facebook, cold turkey, while she is taking a more measured approach--"is this going to bring me pleasure or make me happy?"--and if the answer is no, why waste the time when there's so much to experience.

[chelsea]

i love this. i love anne lamott - she was a significant person in my return to writing and really, in my desire to write and the belief that it was valuable at all. i, too, have those same struggles - and sometimes (most of the time), i decide that it's better to nurture my soul than to may a little extra on that bill. will we actually be free and living the "good" life someday, or will we just be subject to different bills and different stories? i was reading your post about returning from kenya and being paralyzed by the tiny choices - i did volunteer work in haiti once and when i came back, i remember standing in the frozen aisle at kroger and i had a total meltdown over picking waffles. i get it. that same experience is deeply intertwined with this. sometimes, we have to shut off. sometimes, we have to tune out. i think we also feel like we have to go extremely one way or the other - like, taking less time on facebook isn't okay, we have to completely shut it off and deactivate our accounts and tell everyone that we're doing it, and by the time all is said and done, we feel no more satisfied. it reminds me to slow down and to take little sips, small movement, letting myself be cocooned. i really enjoy your blog.