cadence

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were eating dinner when he paused with his fork in midair, blinked at me thoughtfully over his mashed potatoes, and said, "You know what you should write about? Timing."

Just for the sake of argument, I asked him to elaborate. But he simply took the next bite and raised his eyebrows at me while he chewed. We both realize that writing, for me, is basically a formalized way of holding life up and examining its many angles. Maybe, the eyebrows were saying, you should mull this one over a little. And so my thoughts, left to their own devices, began by going back to the beginning.

Even as far back as junior high, I used to get pretty decent grades -- a fact that had way less to do with intellectual aptitude than it did with observational abilities. In presenting assignments, teachers were essentially telling me where to focus, spelling out expectations, highlighting preferences. Over time, I simply got fairly good at following instructions. It actually became a kind of dance, with its own specific steps and predictable rhythms. A shuffle here, a half-turn there, a glide to the left, a spin. The pace was clear, comforting, almost insulating. In those days, I presumed I was being taught to think for myself. But the thinking was constrained within a larger box; a defined set of parameters that produced a regimented response.

Maybe that's why one assignment stands out with such clarity. During my senior year as an undergrad, I took an elective anthropology course. Shortly before finals, the professor challenged us to remove our wristwatches and to function without looking at clocks for two solid weeks. In retrospect, it was one of the most eye-opening exercises I'd ever been given. The first week was nearly chaotic. I overslept a lot. I was constantly late. But as we approached the end of the second week, I began to get the subtlest sense of a tiny rhythm ticking behind the pattern of my days -- hinting when it was nearly noon, when it was almost time for dinner, that sort of thing. Of course by the time I even began to notice this, the project itself was over. And like clockwork, I resumed my reliance on digital displays to move me through my schedule.

Then right on the heels of that assignment came the abrupt rite of passage known as graduation. Suddenly, it was like my partner had spun me out into the world, let go, and slammed the door. Professors, my family, my neighbors and friends insisted on calling this milestone "commencement" -- but for me, it meant that the dance, as I knew it, was over. I found myself in an entirely new ballroom, feeling utterly out of step. The pace and the timing seemed arbitrary, unpredictable, and decidedly, disturbingly erratic.

Through all the intervening years, I've thought about the way assignments of any kind can act as blueprints, if we let them -- maps and diagrams that crystallize our focus. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, not by a long shot. It's just that I'd never recognized how much "learning to learn," in a formalized sense, can sometimes preclude us from learning to live. Much in the way, I imagine, that over-reliance on a wristwatch can block us from subtle promptings and signals. Over time, we can grow detached from the almost imperceptible cadence of our own intuition and spirit, from larger patterns that are far too expansive to perceive.

Released into the currents and the undertows of life, we often discover that free will is indeed a double-edged sword. We question and we doubt, we regroup and second-guess. We listen to others around us, uncertain of which voices to heed and which ones to ignore. Eventually, we run up against inevitable conflicts -- faltering relationships, fickle health, fraying finances, wavering determination. Outside cues can begin to overtake our feelings, our actions, our choices. They can swell to a combined clamor that makes it nearly impossible to discern the innate voice that's been whispering in the background all along.

How easy it is to look back in hindsight through the filter of years, to recognize the ways we were primed to expect certain outcomes, the ways we allowed resentment or entitlement to shadow our perceptions. How easy it is to evaluate our achievements in terms of a clock or a calendar. I don't know of any other creatures on this earth, save for human beings, who are so preoccupied with the idea of minutes and seconds marching in linear sequence.

And I wonder, perhaps, if that idea of linearity is where our man-made blueprint fools us while it fails us. How many seconds, after all, can we truly expect to spend on this earth? Not one of us can say for sure; nor can we explain occurrences that aren't clearly discernible through the window of our own five senses. Maybe it's no coincidence that in scripture, we're repeatedly warned against putting too much trust in worldly things.

As human beings, it seems so natural to question the countless tragedies, struggles and misfortunes that come our way on this earth. Why this? Why me? Why now? And yet rarely do we question in parallel fashion the love, the luck, the treasures and simple joys that cross our paths.

I initially met my husband, for example, at a juncture when a great many factors had not gone according to plan; when I was struggling to reconcile disappointment, disillusionment, randomness, anger, fear. I was certainly not looking to build a shared life. I did not feel ready for a round-the-clock witness to my numerous faults and failings. Yet we recently celebrated a milestone anniversary, and I notice increasingly how we share a heart for the orphaned, the abandoned, the mistreated. Not a moment goes by that I don't contemplate the way time's passage has worn away our edges, weather-toughened our mutual outlook, brought us to this point. Not a week transpires that doesn't suggest the possibility of unseen paths, imperceptible timetables beyond our own.

These days, of course, I'm able to look at a clock and realize I'm not seeing actual time -- just a man-made construct that approximates our human sense of the universe unfolding. And yet here we collectively sit, casting about for signs of God, so frequently lamenting (or in some cases, proudly proclaiming) a lack of meaningful evidence. I often wonder exactly what -- in this world of clocks and watches, mobile devices, pre-packaged goods, man-made definitions, reassuringly tangible constructs -- we're actually expecting to see. After all, if we view a Seurat painting without sufficient elevation and perspective, its image dissolves into a series of seemingly unrelated speckles, random colors sprinkled over canvas.

I think about higher perspectives as I ponder the seemingly unrelated flecks and fragments of life. The trusting eyes of a child. Shimmers of sunlight on water. The supportive laughter of friends. The refrain of a favorite melody. The scent of springtime lilacs. The delicate sound of wind chimes. The face of a loved one, sitting at a dinner table, patiently reminding me to hope.