Here’s how a jet lands on an aircraft carrier on the ocean: The pilot lines up with the runway, lowers the tail hook and comes in at just the right angle, with fractions of seconds to catch one of four arresting wires. Once the wheels hit the deck, the pilot pushes the aircraft to full throttle, just in case the tail hook hasn’t caught the wire and the plane has to take off again. I read this description in a New York Times article and I can’t stop thinking about it. This seems instructive for us.
I’ve been adjusting to our land life in a lot of ways and one of those adjustments is to figure out the right level and frequency of communication with our daughters. For two years we were limited by circumstances and time zones. This created natural boundaries. Now we have to create those boundaries intentionally. This isn’t comfortable. The process of figuring things out isn’t comfortable. There’s so much uncertainty. Our daughters are excellent at practicing boundary setting, a skill I’m learning from them. Our youngest is in the exciting but scary era of starting her career, newly married and figuring out what it means to be an adult. It’s a topsy turvy time. I like to check in to offer support. She tells me, “It works better for me if you ask ‘How are you today’ rather than ‘How are you’.”
At first I don’t get it—these are the same question, right? But they’re not. One, “how are you?” invites an existential examination of all the decisions you’ve made to arrive at this shaky moment. The other, “how are you today?” brings us into right now, a timeframe so manageable it almost feels like we can control it. Right now I’m feeling good. I’m drinking water and planning to read for a while. In this span of time—today—I believe I will continue feeling good. Tomorrow is a new event. We don’t have to think about tomorrow.
A friend of mine was suddenly, unexpectedly laid off from work. This is a major destabilizing event. One day you have a job, the next day you don’t. How do you begin to work through this? It’s so big. I walked with my friend two days after her lay-off news and I asked her, “How are you in this moment?” She was able to say, “Right now I feel ok. Earlier I was not good. I was not good at all. But right now I’m better. Maybe later I won’t be.” This time-boxed view of our feelings makes so much sense when we’re living through tough times. It gives us a lot of freedom and permission to move through roller-coaster episodes with more confidence. Just take the current moment, the next hour, and experience it. The hour after that can worry about itself. Shorten your vision from a whole day to this hour.
Do you know about Cole Brauer? (All of these thoughts are going to come together, stick with me.) Cole, a 29-year-old woman, completed the Global Solo Challenge, a nonstop solo race around the world, early this month. She’s the first American woman to sail solo nonstop around the world. I followed her journey via Instagram, marveling at the magic of Starlink plus a capable, charming, bright young woman in the middle of the sea. She’s singlehandedly transforming the profile of ocean racing. About a week after she finished the race she posted a video of herself trying to process her return. “…it’s been very confusing being back on land.” She misses being on the ocean and she’s so happy to be with her family. In the video this is a very emotional moment and I relate to it so much. The early weeks of our return were a very confusing time. Until Cole said this, I didn’t have the words for it. I kept thinking I’d settle on a feeling and stay there (for example, “I’m happy to be back”) but that didn’t happen (“I miss the ocean”.)
It's my nature —probably your nature too, if you’re a human—to seek certainty. I want to know what’s going to happen next. I want to know that how I feel right now will continue to be how I feel. I want to feel emotionally consistent.
I’m recognizing and working to accept the disappointing truth that there’s no such thing. We can only know how we feel in this moment, just for today. Tomorrow is a whole new event. The next hour is a whole new event. We can bring our plane down to the flight deck, ready to catch the safety lines, ready to sink into stability, but we must carry an awareness that it might not last. We might need to push full throttle into the next challenge, into a feeling we weren’t expecting and didn’t really want. But it’s there, and it calls to us in its ridiculous, real-life way, and we have no choice but to fly straight into it if the tail hook doesn’t catch.
I hope you’re hanging in there. I hope you’re getting your tail hook down successfully as often as possible.
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Oh, I love this. Wise, gentle, and true. Nice bookending with fighter jets and weaving in Cole—I loved the story about her in the NYT.
Isn't it amazing and gobsmacking when the next generation is so much smarter? And I'm not talking about technology. Loved your daughter's gentle, self-know direction abouit what worked better for her and your ability to hear it.
Nice work,
H.
Years ago when my favorite Pilates teacher added “if it’s available to you today” when announcing the next move I noted and appreciated it. It was freeing to think I’m not doomed to the same stiffness and inability to do something forever, maybe I’ll be able to do the move in the future. Hopeful.
However, as humans, we have our own agency. If someone asks me how I am, I can respond: today I am or in this moment I am.
As adults, I feel we need to be responsible for our own internal care and not expect others to say exactly the right thing to us at the right time.