Thinking about Iris
A new friend of mine whom I met last summer in Copenhagen recently sent me a lifeline. I had been thinking of her and had intended to reach out so I was not surprised to hear from her a few days later. I asked if she had felt me thinking about her. Of course, she said. Being the kind person she is, she first asked about me and if I had had any new adventures. How was my winter? Then she shared this: “I feel busy in my head, like a bumblebee buzzing around. Looking forward to spring and summer, moving out of the stagnant energy in my body.” I grabbed onto her generous lifeline. I was not alone in feeling the chaos and the emotional weight of the winter, the distant witness to the pain and suffering in many areas of the world and my bottled up emotions, how to ease the pain outside of your own angst? How to distill and make sense of the intensity of these emotions? How to keep steady while being a witness to the fallout–the great fall each generation experiences, this one THE ONE of all mothers, without shutting down, stagnant energy and inertia?
The bees go to their hives and they work. They have a purpose, a purpose that requires specific tasks for a greater good.
Years ago I enrolled in back to back seminars over several terms with a favorite English professor, a tormented man who was seeking clarity. His bees were buzzing intensely those years. The focal point of his seminars, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. One of the many messages I took from my time as a Murdoch devotee, book after book, was to do the work, get your hands dirty cold plunge. Being in the work will quiet the buzzing in your head, the confusion and chaos and angst of irrelevancy. We did a lot of gnashing of teeth and pulling out splinters in those two-hour long sessions, rebuilding ourselves, remaking our narratives, promising ourselves we would learn and live a humanistic philosophy, realism at its core. No judgment but simply living life engaged in intellectual and physical pursuits with equal gusto and finding the humor in all of it. The absurdity of the human condition being the connective link to living a life of abundance rather than regret. One of the most memorable novels for me from that time was Under the Net. Set in London and rich with existential doubt and longings for intimacy and commitment to oneself and to others while turning away, energies instead spent on deflection and distraction from the depth of our need for love, for honesty and truth. I loved the novel for its acknowledgement of the impossibility of language to fully reflect the human condition and why it is so necessary to be engaged in the struggle despite the continual challenges. Murdoch allowed for complexities and contradictions, a mirror of my life at that time, and still resonating today. I interpreted the novel’s key message as self love to love others.
“ Love is action, it is silence. It’s not the emotional straining and scheming for possession.”
Murdoch made you think and laugh and be in discomfort. Her novels are both disquieting and comforting. I think of her Irish Protestant upbringing and the discomfort she must have felt when she moved to London. Being out of place and always feeling foreign brings a heightened sense of awareness, you become an astute observer of others and of yourself. You know when you are avoiding the truth of your observations, you do know. It’s a burden and also a gift that we humans feel out of place, feel the imposter, existing outside of influence, looking in on society. It’s not what we might have chosen, but it suits living large. By this I mean that when you are pushing yourself to do something that is scary—a new job, pursuing a degree, taking singing lessons, or performing in that improv troupe, whenever you push yourself to grow, the fear will reach down into your toes and those toes will help ground you in the moment. To feel discomfort is to know you are alive and to be alive, present in your body and intellect and, yes, present and intimate with fear, is better than the alternative. What is the alternative? Hiding behind apathy, pushing your emotions into a bucket of water and watching them drown. You do this enough and you won’t know when you are feeling and when you are deflecting. The safety net becomes a room with no doors.
Feel the discomfort, laugh and connect with others. We are all here together, living in a time of perplexity. With AI tools holding out promise of simplicity and ease, we shouldn’t detour from what really keeps us connected to each other - love, discomfort, confusion, and reassurance that the buzzing will subside and we’ll be in full sunshine with satisfaction of work done well, the garden tended, homework completed, day to day tasks of upkeep and maintenance, the work of being human, all settled for the day and the warm hand you are holding is the lifeline you seek.