"Have you acted?"
Recently, after listening to me recount a story, a friend asked, “Have you acted?” There was a marked pause between my storied pontificating and her attentive question. There was an even longer pause between her question and my answer.
That pause held a familiar ambiguity. I didn’t know exactly what she meant. For when she asked “Have you acted?”, what I heard was: “Laura, have you taken action on this?” not “Have you ever had a role in a play on a stage?”
The easy answer to the meaning of that latter question is: Yes, although it’s been a long while since I’ve played a character on a stage. My uneasy answer to the possible former meaning of that question - Have you taken action on this? - is, often, “I don’t know if I have, or I don’t know how.”
As another dear friend helped me to see, in another fairly ordinarily human way, I’m easily mesmerized by the “distal” and struggle mightily at making what’s distal more “proximal,” and acting on that. I have to consciously practice the proximal patiently — for as my dear philosopher-daughter puts it, practice has nothing to do with perfection! Above all, practice makes possible! And patience is a key ingredient.
Learning to invite meaningful inputs from wise others is an essential part of that process for me. Otherwise, I’m far more likely to whine dramatically about “the dismal distal” and imagine that I’ve done my part. I’m tempted to call that distal whining, prayer. How kind God is, and how abundantly patient he is with our small, personal processes within the larger framework of his purposes. I think he’s glad too when we take faith-filled action, not because we “manifest” a blessed thing in doing so, but because we are formed by what we practice.
Eight years ago, I wrestled to put words down about longings stirring within me. The thirst of the thesis never quite slaked despite my best efforts to write it out of me. I learned to endure the inner discord. But recently, I picked it up again after a kind editor encouraged me to do so.
So, fearfully, I returned to that old piece of writing and faced those old inner longings, as well as some of those demons. I was in no way magically transformed in doing so, but I am enjoying feeling some new freedom within the questions and longings. It did me some real good to practice bringing some new mind and heart to my younger self, and and to practice some kind, listening dialogue between them. It was action, even if it wasn’t total transformation.
That essay has been published in the latest issue of Comment, and it is now out from behind the paywall and thus shareable. I hope you’ll give it a read and share it with others. I also hope that it will prompt you to face old, perhaps neglected longings you may carry, some niggling dissonance, and come into a kind dialogue with that younger you.