Shanzhai Lu

Someone who recently lost a loved one got me thinking today about something I regret doing during my own grieving process.

It took over a year for me to delete my sister's voice mails and only a second to wish I hadn't as soon as I did it.

A very surreal moment.

At the time, there was absolutely nothing comforting about hearing her voice. All it did was make me burst into tears. Even just knowing it was saved in my mailbox creeped me out. I did a pretty good job ignoring it. But every so often a Pandora's Box effect would kick in and I couldn't help but replay it.

Sometimes I did it because I wanted to remember a time in my life when she was alive and things were normal.

And of course, as soon as I did I'd fall to pieces because all it did was remind me that she was gone.

Other times I know a part of me was trying to test myself to see if the passing of time made it easier for me to listen to them.

It didn't.

This kind of back and forth went on for over a year. Until one day I remember feeling like I couldn't take it anymore. My son was a few months old by then and I became focused -- ok, more like obsessed -- with getting over the grieving process. It was a really simple decision for an emotionally impulsive person. I wanted to get rid of anything in my life that made me sad.

So one of the first thing I did was delete those voice mails.

I wish I hadn't as soon as I did.

Fast forward to right now. I miss those voice mails. There was nothing really profound about them. Just the regular type of voice mails busy big sisters leave for little sisters when they're calling to check in for no particular reason. Most of hers were usually left while stuck in traffic and bored. But a few of the more recent ones were what I call the "bridezilla" voice mails because she took her life just a month after her wedding.

Hearing someone address you by name in their own voice. There's a connection there that I think we take for granted. For me, it's a reminder of a time when she was alive and things were normal.

I deleted that.

We plot, we plan, we assume things are going to go
A certain way and then they don’t and we find ourselves
In a new place, a place we haven’t been before, a place
We never would have imagined on our own,

And so it was difficult and unexpected and maybe even
Tragic and yet it opened us up and freed us to see
Things in a whole new way

Suffering does that—
It hurts,
But it also creates.

How many of the most significant moments in your
Life came not because it all went right, but because
It all fell apart?

It’s strange how there can be art in the agony…

~Rob Bell

My favorite line is the part about how suffering can also create.

I can relate to it.

I live with a restless desire to make things happen and move things forward every day.

Since my sister's death.

Since my divorce.

Since the failure of a recent startup.

It took the observations of a friend to confirm what I already know about myself.

What I'm doing now.

Where I'm going.

Where I want to be.

Has everything to do with that rear view mirror of where I've been.

...and where I don't want to see anyone else end up if I can help it.

I first wrote this back in May. It was inspired by reflections of my sister's life and death. A few months after her suicide in 2004, I found a journal she had kept during her depression. On a few pages she had noted the things she had said she wanted to do one day when she made enough money or had enough time.

Kind of sad that fear of not having enough held her back from doing things that would've given her more by way of meaning, purpose and balance.

Pushing Proverbial Pencils

I don’t care who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done or what you’re doing now.

We all have stories of our lives we want to write. Big life changing ideas in our minds of things we want to do one day. Things we’d like to be doing now but don’t have the time or resources for. Things we’d do in a heartbeat if things were different for us or if the opportunity presented itself.

And so we push our proverbial pencils around and tell ourselves we’ll get to writing one day.

And then time passes.

And we’re too busy with the life we have to live to start writing the story of our life we want.

And so we push our proverbial pencils around the desk and tell ourselves that now’s not the right time to start writing the story of our life because maybe our pencils aren’t sharp enough. Yea, that’s it. We need more time to sharpen our pencils. We want the story to be perfect.

And then more time passes.

And we tell ourselves the time isn’t right to start writing the words we really want to say because we’re too busy living the life we THINK we’re supposed to live in order to eventually get around to living the life we really want.

And so we push our proverbial pencils around the desk and tell ourselves we have to make more money and gain more experience in order to start writing the story of our life.  Besides, we haven’t found the right paper. We don’t even know if we have the right pencils. We want it to be perfect. We’re not ready to start writing yet.

And then more time passes.

And our pencils start getting old and start looking a bit dull

…along with the ideas we wanted to write about.

And the reality of this sets in along with the regret.

And we pound the desk real hard out of frustration.

And some pencils fly off the desk in different directions.

One lands in the trash can next to us.

Another rolls under our desk and out of sight.

Another falls straight down and breaks its sharpened tip as it hits the floor.

And then more time passes.

And then life passes.

…leaving sharpened pencils and perfect blank pieces of paper strewn around a desk with a now empty chair.

Sad thought? Yes.

The end? No.

Just start writing.

Anything. Unrehearsed. Off the top of your head. In the direction you want to go.

Complete with typos and bad grammar.

And go ahead and talk out loud as you write so people can hear you. The story gets even better that way.

See, the problem is — and the problem that Susie had — is thinking that the story of your life needs to be written by you alone in the form of a big huge book that no one’s ever going to buy, read or share with others if it’s not perfect. So you proofread it in your mind indefinitely. And the world misses out.

Pushing pencils around a desk is a waste of time.

Just start writing.

Now.

Proofread later.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some writing to do. And so do you.