Some things I did over winter break: yoga, Catholic mass with my grandmother, an ex-dudefriend. My New Year’s resolution for last year was “be not afraid.” For me, “be not afraid,” meant to shake off my tendency to over-plan and overthink, to take risks and to accept when things don’t go according to plan. So maybe it was more like “be less neurotic.”
But I followed through, sort of. As I did an internal year-in-review on the eve of 2013, I recalled some key moments in the past year when I successfully spoon-fed my Type A personality some spontaneity. One day last summer, while I was sitting in a cupcake shop to escape a rainstorm/eat two cupcakes, I decided to spend the following spring in Istanbul. It was the 11th hour in the study abroad application process. I knew next to nothing about this Eurasian city of 13 million. It happened a couple more times — I took more risks, I made fewer to-do lists. It’s like 2012 was the cultivation of my soul’s secret SoCal-stoner-philosophy and 2013 will see the payoff in the form of 60 percent fewer anxiety attacks during exam week.
Even though this go-with-the-flow state of mind isn’t something that comes naturally to me, it has some powerful results. The most joyful moments of my year coalesced in space and time and always caught me off guard.
On space: At Catholic mass on Christmas Day, I listened to Father Matt giving a homily about “thin places.” A “thin place” is a concept from old Celtic Christian traditions and refers to a holy place on earth that is especially close to God — a place where the veil between heaven and earth is very thin. But thin places, it seems, can appear just about anywhere. It’s more in the feeling than in the name.
On time: Spontaneous encounters with joy were the subject of Zadie Smith’s recent article in the New York Review of Books, a discussion later picked up by Gary Gutting in the New York Times. Aside from the main discussion of the human experience of joy, I noticed the circumstances of Smith’s stories. From her account of a night of wild abandon in a club, to the moment of sheer joy she felt jumping over a wall with her companion, those rare moments shared the breathless, slippery element of surprise. They were all wholly serendipitous.
Which brings me to ex-dudefriend and my impending international flight — two recent exceptions that I met with my old Type A ways. Before I met for coffee with long-time-no-see ex-dudefriend, I bought a new dress. I did girl magic with my hair. I didn’t turn the heat on in the car on the way to the coffee shop so I wouldn’t sweat all over my dress. I played out 15 different scenarios of the afternoon in my head. I thought of interesting things to say. I had fond memories of this person. I carefully crafted plans on how to either preserve or revive the joy I remembered. The reality was much like Zadie Smith’s morning-after reaction to a character from one of her most joyful nights: “There, on your mother’s sofa — in the place of that jester spirit-animal savior person you thought you’d met last night — someone had left a crushingly boring skinny pill head.”
For all my efforts, it wasn’t going to be the beginning of my romantic comedy. The magic didn’t hang around, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fully present the night before. It was a matter of history; it was a time-sensitive kind of joy. I waved goodbye to ex-dudefriend and didn’t look back.
Today, I have a backpack full of 15-digit reservation codes, Ziploc-bagged TSA-approved liquids and an extra pair of underwear in case my checked bags get lost in Switzerland (there is a real probability of this happening). I am apocalyptically prepared. Something will probably go wrong. I will have to take it in stride. As I tiptoe through my list of mosques and churches in one of the oldest cities in the world, maybe I’ll brush cheeks with the divine. Maybe I won’t feel a thing. Thin places cannot be scheduled into an itinerary, and the best-laid plans are usually the least likely to spark joy in your heart. So let go. Be not afraid. I have to go now and learn how to say “I’m lost” in Turkish.
The Best-Laid Plans
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