One day, now decades ago, I said – out loud to myself – “you know, Carol (that was the name I called myself then) everyone you meet is here for a reason. Your job is to figure out what that reason is.”
It felt like something my father might say, both simple and oracular, possible and impossible at once. When I say such things out loud, it is as if my father – who died when I was only sixteen – is speaking through me. It took me a long time to not run and hide when such simple, inescapable truths showed up in my own mind.
Sometimes, so tired I can’t think of anything more mundane to say, I ask a new person I meet, “What is the big thing we are supposed to do together? The thing no other two people could do, and neither of us can do alone?’ It is no wonder, people sometimes think me crazy when I talk like that!
And then, there are the times I don’t say those words but embody them and between me and a total stranger something miraculous appears.
Last week, driving to visit Rabbi Julie Roth in her office at Shomrei Emunah in Montclair (the story of my relationship with Rabbi Julie is another important story), I called an Uber. My husband Jed and I had organized everything so I could drive his car to that meeting, and then I forgot the plans and called an Uber. The Uber smelled brand new, and so I said, without thinking, “Wow. Your car is so clean and new. I feel special to ride with you today. Don’t follow the GPS, it’s better if you go this way … “
We talked about so many things, the driver and I. He drives an Uber, along with another job, to pay for his college education. I said that I know many people who use Uber like this – to fill the open blocks in their schedule to make enough money to pay their bills and build a better life for themselves and their families. We talked about the crushing burden of debt many people face after college, and he said he would not borrow money for college. He talked about his recent divorce, and running into his wife out with another man, and all the things he’d felt about that moment. We discovered that we are both learning to listen better, and he told me about a book his therapist had recommended to him, It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn. “How did I not already know this chestnut about intergenerational trauma?” I asked myself.
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It is uncanny the way we meet someone for just a few minutes and everything changes. It’s actually like this all the time; we just don’t notice it most of the time.
Today is my 42nd wedding anniversary. I’m reminded that I wasn’t supposed to be where I was when I met my future husband. It took my friend getting mono, me being able to pay $200 cash to switch her ticket to me and fly out to Israel three days later (back in the days when such a thing was even possible). My husband Jed and I met – literally and figuratively – on the outer edge of a group of American college students visiting Israel. In the same instant – because we both spoke Hebrew – we realized that the tour guide was lying to the group. We looked up, and started a conversation that continues to today.
What have I learned from 42 years of marriage?
- A good relationship is steady like an oak, bending down, again and again, to weep like a willow.
- You can push a relationship beyond the point where it breaks. Yes, you can break it, even, learn from where two separate paths took you, and heal the thing that felt unfixable in the moment of heat and anger.
- If you lie, you will get caught. If you dare to tell complicated and unfinished truths – things you have not told before – the relationship will continue to unfold and grow.
Most important, I think, is to know at a very deep level that you cannot change any one or anything but yourself. If you really don’t feel you can love and honor your partner any more – or if they are harming you, intentionally or unintentionally – you should leave, you must leave.
Everything, every little every thing, changes all the time. An enduring relationship is a place where all those changes can be processed individually and together; where change can be held as the essential, frightening and enlightening thing that it always is.
Last year, our relationship took in more than I ever thought possible – joy and sadness in rapid succession, beyond what I thought I could endure. I think that is the point of an enduring friendship: its capacity to take in change, to invite change, even to create change so our souls can dance and sing and imagine in all directions all the time.
Every night, before we go to sleep, we listen to an adaptation of the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono meditation that centers on “I forgive you. I hope you can forgive me too.” As these crazy connections happen, I learned this meditation from one of my Story2 investors, who has become a dear and trusted friend.
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Back in the Uber, the driver (I wrote his name down but won’t share it without his permission) asked me, “What do you do?”
“I teach storytelling,” I said, “but not the way most people think of storytelling – you tell your story and you get more stuff – but storytelling to build community and to heal those intergenerational wounds you were talking about. They often prevent me from listening too.”
“Oh … oh … well, we’re here,” he said, “we’ll pick this conversation up another time.” And the shiny black car that smelled brand new drove away to its next adventure.
Writing prompt: What is something in another person that you are trying to change? What is that yearning saying about you? What do you want to change in yourself, leaving the other person to change and tend themself?