Chapter 104
104. Remembering that you are never alone. There are too many people in the world.
Providence, Rhode Island. September 2014.
I used to say how much I wished that all of the people I loved could somehow live in the same neighborhood. Eventually I realized that neighborhood was the world. But even amidst a life traveling as a performer and teacher I often found myself slipping into feeling isolated and becoming “busy” doing my own thing.
When a student expressed an interest in helping me to share my writing with more people, the Compassionate Creativity Project was born.
This project quickly became a community that included 111 people from around the world: my teachers from high school, my best friend’s mom, people I met in college, my new boyfriend, colleagues from Italy, neighbors, people I met on airplanes, former boyfriends, classmates from graduate school, people from Quaker Meeting, students, one of my company members and his aunt, friends of friends, people who I had yet to meet, and my mom.
Every day I sent one of these 111 values to them. The email would be automatically sent out at 3am so, no matter what part of the world they lived in, everyone would receive it on the same day. When I woke up, I ran to the computer to see who had written and what they had said. My mom was connecting with my company member’s aunt in Switzerland. My orchestra teacher was connecting with an engineering professor I knew in college. My colleague from Italy was connecting to my classmates from graduate school. My young students were connecting with my older friends. These connections energized me more than I could ever describe.
Driving to Pennsylvania to do my solo show, I felt like all these people were in the car with me. When I was on the stage doing the talkback, I couldn’t wait to tell them about what I had heard, what I learned, and how I was defining and redefining the potential of Compassionate Creativity.
After the first few weeks of sharing, I took pieces of all the community responses and collaged them into this poem called Great Observers of Life’s Many Facets:
On the cusp
I'm at a crossroad
Morning coffee by water’s edge
I needed a day off
With a new attempt to heal
A tree fell in the woods near where I grew up
Silent
Retreated into my imagination
A dark hole somebody will eventually coax me out of
Holding a candle
Passed down from generation to generation
To see the view outside my window.
I am not enough.
Longing for longing
I wait
Seeing now clearly
All of the untraveled passages
That will never be
The water too dark
Too dense
Too deep to swim
My heart then too heavy
I would not float
I caress the clarity
That lives between these stones.
Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Steve and Eydie
On a dairy farm
A weekly knitting group and 2 book clubs
A 1940s vacuum cleaner
The M train as it passes through Williamsburg
My first bike
A task of integration
Synchronicity
A meteor falling fast
Where love is the most important thing in the world
A symbol for everything I have compromised and accepted
Cousins with self-forgiveness and discipline
Colored squares and rectangles
A dog sniffing along for the next step.
It all begins with rummaging through my mind
Before anything gets out of my mouth
And I need to experiment now and just see what feels right
But at times the guilt overwhelms.
I have met my quota of road time
But I’d still span the length of the isle of Manhattan
and I'd bring it to where you are
But that's just me
We are all working toward a kind of resolution.
Dear mirror, thank you
Your birthday is tomorrow
What a collaboration
No matter what.
Remember this beautiful site on a Saturday morning
They want to love you
Relax and let them
Just watch the happiness on their faces
Joy at so many junctures
Ask them to share their stories with you
You just have to wait
All in its own time.
Gratitude for all in this moment.
Bless you.
Stay there.
Listen.
You are.
On day thirty-two of the project, one of the members wrote a message to the community that felt different. Her note wasn’t directly related to the value of the day, but rather, a request for support. She described how she was getting ready to go to a critical job interview that day. Feeling that she needed support, but for various reasons wasn’t able to share this news with her family or friends, she decided to share it with all of us. As I finished reading her words, I understood that this interview was minutes away. I hurried to write to her, but as I scrolled down, I saw that over twenty other people had already responded to her. People whom she didn’t know, people from all over the world, let her know that she was supported. People wished her luck by sending her energy, silly dances, and words of inspiration, along with interview advice of all kinds. This vital connection is the heart of Compassionate Creativity.
