One day during my early years as a wee, neurotic, overthinker-in-training, I decided to take on the problem of death.
I was about 8.
I was specifically interested in my own death, and when it was likely to arrive. In the absence of a suitable calculator for such an unfathomable problem, I rigged up a theory. I would live until I had accumulated all of life's important lessons, perhaps a few weeks longer.
Then -- poof -- I would die. Peacefully, in my sleep.
This was an immensely satisfying notion. All in one swoop, it suggested purpose for life itself and assured me that the end was far, far away, because the world was so full of confounding mysteries and it would take a very long time to unravel them.
I also figured that by the time I HAD learned everything, I might feel bored by the planet and ready to move on.
Wisdom. Longevity. Then ready-to-go. Perfect.
Today I sit here with a bad shoulder, aware of my overlong hair giving me a kind of hippie-crone cast. I feel grateful for the years I've enjoyed so far. I feel semi-wise and not at all ready to go, even on evenings when TV news does a special report on the melting of the ice cap. Most days I feel like I am a bunch of ages simultaneously, including but not limited to: 8, 15, 25 and 60.
As for accumulated knowledge, well -- it just hasn't worked as I had expected. Sure, if we are even half-sentient, we all gain some skills and street smarts along the way. We get a grip on how we want to spend our time, how to treat each other, and that credit cards are not actually free money.
Yet I am lesson-resistant on some topics, and the one I've been fixating on lately is the idea of permission. All my life, I have watched people I admire (and many I don't) decline to seek permission or approval for what they want to do. On balance it all seems to work out for them. Sometimes, notoriously so. (Please refer to whatever mental list you keep of all the people who should be indicted but are instead grotesquely wealthy.)
To borrow a colleague's line, this has really frosted my flakes for most of my life. On this topic, I have remained the Catholic 8-year-old who, having learned the rules, wants everyone to follow them.
Still, I cannot help but notice that glorious things also happen for good, creative people who decide not to sit at the empty intersection waiting for the light to turn green. And where art is concerned, it's undeniable: the most creative people -- the ones who, regardless of how famous they are, make work with real sticking power -- stopped waiting for permission a long time ago. They don't wait for an agent or publisher to tell them to go. They may hope to be discovered and earn riches or fame, but they concern themselves primarily and fiercely with the creative process.
My husband and I just watched The Sparks Brothers, a documentary about Ron and Russell Mael, the pop duo behind the 70s-born band Sparks. It's a blast for a certain kind of viewer, and I came away with such admiration for the brothers' relentless focus on making their weird work, apart from whether it would ever earn them household name status. (It hasn't.) They have lived purpose-built lives in their pink jackets and dubious mustaches. Along the way, they have spread joy. There seems to have been no permission-seeking component to any of it.
As I face the next 60 years of my mystery-unraveling, wisdom-seeking existence here on Earth, that is the spirit I hope to bring. The Catholic 8-year-old will always live inside me and remain attached to a belief in the need for rules and order. There are times when asking for permission is exactly the right thing to do.
But inside, too, is a grownup who is scanning the crossroads under the red light.
All clear.
I say we gun it.