Amy Swift Crosby

I often look to the natural world to help remind me that everything… is a reflection of everything. Like so many, I am often drawn to the river as a metaphor – a wordless guide for how to think about what comes (or goes) in life.

To be water rushing and winding over stones, whose edges have been rounded by time.
To flow effortlessly through a steep gorge or dense pine forest.
To know where to go next, without question.

When I can’t identify a feeling, can’t pull the answer from a canon; when the walls are too close or the infinite too formless – I often think of the river.

I don’t spend enough time near one, but just the thought of its continuous movement helps me make sense, make meaning, make peace – even make less unnecessary effort. Thinking of a river’s purposeful, yet entirely unconscious mission – a mission met just by existence itself – is as mesmerizing as it is calming.

These past months, as they’ve rolled on, have only occasionally resembled a river for me. That unmistakable sense of motion, and progress – has been fleeting. Although initially life slowed down (to the joy of introverts everywhere), delivering an unexpected pause and reset, it was only a matter of time before the days recalibrated to a different kind of fullness, albeit with a new cadence and revised schedule. As dinner called for invention (a nightly magic show) and projects required attention (despite hourly stops and starts), I felt – and am – busy.

But not busy in a jagged, harried way – although the demands of this changing home life / work-life / inner life / creative life present new ebbs and flows. It’s something else. It’s a persistent feeling, like a whisper of disorientation – of internal deceleration. A longing to be carried (rescued?) by the reassuring current of new ideas, fresh energy and encouraging patterns. To feel somewhere versus elsewhere; to find the chi.

When I’ve asked myself “what’s wrong?” I’ve struggled to identify it. Despite the optics – relocating across the country with my family, closing one part of a business and resuscitating another – the conversation with myself had become eerily anesthetized.

Is it that now – with scant mental mile markers – I feel “lost”? Or is it more like “unmoored”? “floating”? “rudderless”? It’s not stagnation, nor depression, yet there’s a perceptible sensation of weight; of drag. Maybe because, like everyone, I’ve had to reconsider my personal mileage – to establish new types of milestones, to consider how “productivity” (unfortunately) supports my self-esteem, or how I rely on variety to clarify purpose.

I fully recognize that I’m not alone in this.

I’ve reasoned that because my professional work is to create narrative and “story,” those same devices feel central to how I remember, and make sense of, my own timeline. Just as looking at a brand’s mode of expression requires looking inside it, and often to its history, in order to create the “now,” maybe I personally need to thread the needle of the past in order to establish coordinates for my present (and to understand why). For me, they appear as little maps with roads – each with discernible topography and signposts, weather patterns and surprises. They’ve always been full of left turns and off-ramps, diversions and invitations.

Without them to trigger “next”, my compass has almost felt broken.

What is so appealing to me about the call of the river, so unequivocal and desirable, is direction. There’s no sideways or backward; no wind that takes it one way, one day, only to reverse the next. It rushes, curves and meanders…sometimes with disarming ferocity, and at others with an easygoing smile. But always forward. No matter how the riverbed or surrounding landmass impacts the pace, it makes its way… forward.

Except!
(this was my exhale…)
Except for the eddy.

Eddies: Sections of the river that actually move upstream. Eddies are created when the main current flows around an obstruction and as the main flow of water continues downstream, some water backs up on itself to refill the space left behind the obstacle.

Trapped in the eddy is how I have felt.
Oh what. A. Relief.

To know that the seemingly, most synchronous organisms have a coping mechanism for some immovable element introduced to the environment; that what appears to be a separate phenomenon is actually just a confluence of events that lead water one way… until some catalyst (natural or constructed) folds it back into itself. That. Is. It. 

Of course, even the river has a history – if you look. It’s not as though the impact of space and time doesn’t exist in its clarity or opacity, with subtle (or obvious) impressions throughout its ecosystem. But it doesn’t possess that human need to derive narrative from it – to weave the past to the present as a means to better understanding today or tomorrow. It goes one way, on all days – except for when it can’t – in small pockets. It doesn’t need to review yesterday or ask directions for tomorrow.

My favorite part of understanding the eddy’s role in the river is that the lodged water will always be swept back into the movement, because it was never separated from it to begin with.

That water never “disappeared” so it’s not as though it needs to “come back.”
It was, in the simplest terms, adapting.

This small but meaningful epiphany caused a shift, one that freed – and paradoxically – re-anchored me. I felt my energy change shape – and just like that…I was back in the flow.

Getting out of the eddy had nothing to do with strength or muscle, nor strategy, nor even much thinking or grand act of mental gymnastics.
It was less seeking, more surrender.
It was less arranging, more allowing.
These takeaways won’t surprise any regular reader of this work, of course.

Looking for the current, waiting and angling for it to come get me, was actually swimming against it.

The eddy is the solution, not the problem.
What a thing to discover.

In my house, we’ve been talking about how it is to be with… each other.
In my mind, I’ve been thinking about how it is to be with, period.

With two tween girls, and the fourth member of our family in another state, our togetherness – and even our apartness – has a quality    to it.

I’ve reminded everyone that we are who and what we have. And, that our togetherness colors our worlds. We can lift, annoy or deflate each other… in an instant.

To them, I’ve asked –

Am I being good company… for you?
Are you being good company…for us?

It got me thinking – what does it mean to be good company? And what does this moment help us see about each other – about “us” – that we might not face in the midst of life as we knew it?

We’re mostly in the business of evaluating how others push and pull us. We’ve become semi-professional articulators of how your habit/way/mood/view…impacts me and mine. But how often do we consider how it is to be them…around us? Or even, how is life      with me…
as me?

With proximities we haven’t had before, and for durations that transcend any past frames of reference, our togetherness (or aloneness) has created new sensations, perhaps even revelations – welcome or not.

Nothing is how it was.
Yet simultaneously…
Some things, how ever they were, have now become magnified.

A natural instinct would be to continue to manufacture distractions – as that is what we know how to do so well. But that would miss this unprecedented opportunity, where life has paused out there…where we could make eye contact with right here, right now and see
something important.

On a more superficial level, I see that for myself it’s easy to react with jagged edges to various triggers – be it my tiny roommate’s leftover dishes on the coffee table or a silent (but definitely judgmental) response to someone or something on social media. On a dark day, it can sound like my greatest hits of personal disappointment – the voices of every little or big way I’ve let myself (or others) down. The compare = despair machinery wakes up – even in these new conditions.

Under normal circumstances, I might quickly reset myself with – so what? To what end? And arrive, ultimately at … move on…no time (or energy) for that.

But that grounding exercise is easier to do when the proverbial “edge” is within sight.

When the world made sense (a month or two ago), we measured our reality – our overall OK-ness – through a dynamic lens, often comparing what is to what could be. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we are almost always self-regulating our relationship with good, getting better…bad, getting worse…stagnant, not going anywhere. We have end dates. Start dates. Calendars. Before we let a feeling submerge too deeply, it’s probably time to …make dinner, see friends, meet a work deadline…get on a plane. Diversion was our frequent companion.

And it’s not that we didn’t feel, or let ourselves feel – if you’re reading this – you’re a feeler, like I am. We feel.

But now, whether alone or with others, the feelings that might have stayed boxed away in storage have nowhere to go, but here.

For me, these mercurial tides take the form of reflections, questions and ruminations about my purpose, about my relationships. They can wash over me in huge waves or nip like tiny laps at my ankle. In these moments, I don’t know whether it’s harder to be with, or to be alone.

There are times when my own company is startlingly honest. I’ve been aware of a pattern emerging, noticing the distance between how I feel and what I want, and what I do about it.

I’m not always ready to face these emotional voicemails.
Yet, I don’t want to be afraid of them.

Are the answers to questions of being good company – for each other, for ourselves – more important to answer today? Are they more pressing than a month ago, or a year before that? Will they be as important six months from now? I don’t know.

What is pressing is this unusual opportunity, despite its dark catalyst. Our accepted constructs of time and space have been redefined, removing the usual barriers to eliciting authentic answers. Our emotional nerve centers, more porous these days, are letting more in…letting more out…with fewer filters. We’ve been invited to what could be a one-time conversation, if we’re willing to accept.

What an opening to take inventory of our impact; on each other, on our worlds – both literal and figurative.

How am I, for you?
How am I…for me?
How are we?

We are always keeping company.
This seems like a rare moment to inquire about how it is, to be us.

Today, I got down on my knees and did something I’m slightly ashamed to say… I haven’t done in a very       long time.

I cleaned all the floors in my house.
I scrubbed the corners of the bathrooms, the places that no one sees until they look too closely.
I scoured the kitchen, edge to edge.

It is a privilege (under normal circumstances) to be able to outsource this work.
At the same time, it was on my knees that felt right on this day.

On one’s knees there is humility. It’s the way we pray; it’s where we play with our babies, and where we come to understand what vulnerability really means. It’s often where we cry.

There’s something about being close to the ground, the earth. The act of lowering our bodies also lowers our walls, our egos, our pride.

Once, when I was in India, I saw something that I still think of often.

I was sitting in the courtyard of a shrine, an open square surrounded by an ancient wall whose center housed a divine Hindi god. There are hundreds like them.

Thousands of people, of all socioeconomic groups, were making their way in and out. The very, very poor — shoeless, toothless, penniless — stood alongside the very rich, with expensive watches and waiting drivers. Some were moving slowly, others in a rush. Worship, in India is a daily devotional practice — a stop on the way to work as much as a holy family outing.

I watched as throngs of people poured out of every doorway, walking briskly past the others who had prostrated themselves in front of the structure itself — some, kneeling, noses down, others laid out on their bellies, arms outstretched in supplication. This chaotic scene plays out often there — to the curiosity of Westerners who can’t imagine ourselves face down in our own sacred venues — which might be church for some, or a concert for others.

A young man, maybe 20-years old, in his rush to leave, inadvertently stepped on the arm of an elder woman still in the process of worship. With her face down buried into the stone, she most certainly felt the injury — it was the full weight of his body on her frail wrist. But she didn’t move.

Realizing his miscalculation in space, he quickly turned back to her, and without registering a second of contemplation — he got down on his knees, and kissed both souls of her aged, bare, blackened feet. As quickly as he had knelt, I was no sooner looking at the back of his checked shirt, pushing the turn style to leave.

She never looked up.
And he never turned to see if she did.

What will it take for us…to get here?
To feel this sense of connectedness?

Something passed between them, yet no thanks was given, no validation sought. But humanity, nonetheless, was undeniably present. The act itself, of course, transcended all practical precaution for hygiene, a behavior that has become part of our daily consciousness at this moment — a practice that could (in fact) determine life or death.

But even at that moment, it wasn’t the act itself I hoped to replicate, but more that such instinctual reverence for a complete stranger could be second nature… that seemed worth emulating.

I chose my knees today because I think it was the only place that matched my emotional hillside.

It was devotion.
It was humility.
It was surrender.

I can’t remember the last time…I had time.
When I wasn’t in a hurry.
When I wasn’t doing two, three, even four things — at once.

This is unprecedented. Perhaps even sacred.

Strangely, I’m now beginning to realize how upset I’ve been at never having enough…
Hours…..Space…..Width…..Depth.

We, as a culture, know so little about staying in one place. About settling in. About being quiet, within the quiet, in the soft corners of our interiors. We talk about it. But how much do we embody it?

Our footprints are on everything, even while we talk about stillness.
Our minds are everywhere, even as we preach about mindfulness.

Yet, there are some of us — many of us I’m learning — who see the gift in this (undoubtedly) finite moment.

We are doing things we haven’t had time to do in years. Our schedules are empty, and one thing doesn’t have to be sacrificed for another, because the day just got a lot longer. We aren’t checking the box, we’re climbing out of it — even as we’re confined to it. For the first time in a long while, we can hear ourselves think. Yes, the thoughts are scary, uncertain, confronting and even bleak at times. We see suffering, and fear.

But somewhere, deep inside, is that relief I also feel?

A regeneration is happening.

What can we learn?
What can be birthed — in all this space?
What closure — within us, around us – has been forced, that needs to
take hold?

I hope this time can and will mean something. Because unequivocally, we are getting a message, if we’re willing to hear it.

Could this be the beginning of everything that needs to be next?

I’m going to let it come.
And then, let it roar.
I want to be ready for something precious and bold.

I want this to be the time…
we didn’t go back to that.

We have some change to make.

PS in case you missed it, check out our last post, Uncertainty.

TBH.

Admittedly, language and the construction of messages fascinate me. I really really, love noticing how people use words. When I meet someone who strings just the right words together to communicate precisely what they intended, it gives me goosebumps. Or, when I hear something complicated expressed with only a few (usually exceptional) words, I want to give a tip of the proverbial hat.

Of course, language is my vocational currency, but it’s also in our shared interest to be conscientious (if not vigilant) about how words and their meanings get co-opted. When we become complacent, our shared meaning evaporates.

In this spirit, I want to acknowledge an increasingly common preamble I’m seeing all around me (a particular favorite of those born between 1980 — 2000.) 

TBH.

It goes like this. “TBH, that date and time doesn’t really work for me.”

(For those over 50, TBH is shorthand for “to be honest.”)

Why do these three words necessitate an anacronym, you might ask?

Because along with IMHO, “in my humble opinion” and AFAIC “As Far as I’m Concerned” and FWIW, “For What It’s Worth” they have become much too long and clunky (apparently) when written in full.

These are almost exclusively used in the digital realm. And all of them are curious attempts to truncate expressions that actually didn’t need a short cut to begin with.

At one time, “to be honest” was reserved for a particularly candid revelation that prepared the listener for what the speaker was about to (honestly) share. A linguistic pre-game with a specific purpose — to delay the delivery of a piece of information that might otherwise land abruptly, hurt feelings or cause a shock, even the good kind. “To be honest” (said in full) is a natural transition to something brave — opening the gate to a disarming truth. 

“To be honest, I never liked your husband.”

“To be honest, I never showed up to work that day.”

“To be honest, I’ve always loved you.”

But today, not only has it been shortened, which naturally dilutes its potency, but the information that follows TBH is— to be really honest — a sizable non-event.

“TBH, I prefer tuna to turkey.”

“TBH, I thought it was at 5pm, not 7pm.”

“TBH, I don’t follow her.”

Dear TBH users, you’re committing a crime of precedent; sending a clear signal to anyone reading to wonder what you weren’t TBH’ing before. It also runs the risk of sounding passive-aggressive, an assemblage that can’t help but be heard with a whine. It adds unnecessary seriousness to otherwise transactional language that consciously or unconsciously cues others to listen to your words with gravitas.

A hunch about these sentence-starters is that they provide an onramp to messages that sound banal, but actually hold feelings. I should say Feelings with a capital F, the kind which call for an extra “umph”— for emphasis. An exclamation point wouldn’t be right, nor would bolding (though both would be more straightforward.) TBH is actually a digital shortcut for “read into what I’m about to say because I’m not going to say what I really mean.” 

Going back to the TBH examples above, here are some riffs on how to lose TBH, and turn subtext into context.

“That time doesn’t work for me, and I’m feeling frustrated that you always forget I have dance class on Tuesdays.”

or

“I prefer tuna to turkey and why doesn’t anyone remember that I’m a pescatarian.”

Or whatever.

Who cares, you might ask? We all need to care.

Language is a primary tool for us. If we aren’t saying what we mean, we’re still saying something. We rely on each other, whether in close and intimate relationships, or in professional collegial settings, to be candid — as much as possible. When that isn’t the case, dialogue becomes a moving target — a guessing game. When we aren’t direct or clear, we force people to assume, or makeup stories, and we lose opportunities to deepen understanding and strengthen relationships. In the perfunctory sense, it wastes time. In the poetic, it skirts connection.

TBH erodes the credibility that candor naturally cultivates. In many office communications, TBH lands with defensiveness. Interpersonally, it has a boy-who-cried-wolf quality. TBH is a sidestep (and copout) in the communication path

Don’t get me wrong; efficiencies are nice.

BRB, “Be Right Back”

FYI, “For Your Information”

GTG, “Got To Go”

These and others like them are useful for a few reasons, but the most important one is that their intent doesn’t get diluted by becoming an anacronym. And this, to me, is the litmus test.

If you have a minute for one more…

A similar frustration exists for me with “in my opinion,” but in a different way. Of course, it’s your opinion. You’re the one sharing it. In addition to the obvious, IMO initiates a subtle move to disown the idea about to be presented and adds a touch of humble bragging. Because ownership is implied in whatever statement is about to be made by the speaker, IMO signals a lack of conviction, and unwillingness to fully own whatever is about to be said. IMO feels like “this is just from the humble, possibly uninformed position where I sit. I may know nothing. Or everything. It depends on the outcome.”

Example.

“If we hire this guy, we’ll be solving a problem, but we won’t be creating a solution.”

Add IMO to this sentence and suddenly it’s smaller, less impactful, and reduces the idea to a purely subjective expression tantamount to hand-raising for agreement or disagreement. It’s just another opinion… with a whisper of “take it or leave it. If I’m right I’ll get credit for saying it, but if I’m not, then it was just my opinion — nothing more.” 

My hope is that these hashtag-style crutches will lose their luster in 2020, and that those who hope to drop a mic by using TBH will realize that this word cocktail has the opposite effect. It’s like being invited to a party billed with suspense about an impossibly cool band, only to show up and find Pandora playing that band’s music (with commercials.)

When we use language consciously, we become closer, wiser and even more free. 

When we phone it in, even without mal intent, meaning is diluted, and we miss the chance to be heard, known and seen.

The consequence to this seemingly granular referendum is that we lose something much bigger than we think – which is the attention we earned to be in the conversation at all. 

PS if you liked this post, check out Replication.