…Sometimes I Need a Witness

“Karma owes you a talk­ing puppy, wings, and an extra birth­day.“
– a friend, Octo­ber 2009

“Some­times I see myself fine, some­times I need a wit­ness.“
– Dar Williams

photo credit: Jason Per­me­nter

One day last fall a woman was wait­ing for me when I came home from walk­ing with Sawyer. She used to be my neigh­bor but had moved away months prior, and we had sel­dom even exchanged pleas­antries, though I did at one point jump-start her car. After an uncom­fort­ably long stretch of small talk she asked if I’d drive with her to Raleigh to pick up a couch and bring it back to her new apart­ment. Right then. Now, I’m used to being asked to haul things in my truck, and I have trou­ble say­ing no when any­one asks for my help, but ran­dom and imme­di­ate solic­i­ta­tions by rel­a­tive strangers pinged even my this-lady-might-be-crazy radar.

I declined, but offered to help on a day when this woman wasn’t show­ing up unan­nounced on my doorstep and mak­ing absurd requests. That’s how I found myself in a sketchy part of Durham at a per­pet­ual yard sale, wait­ing on my for­mer neigh­bor to show up (half an hour late), then wait­ing for her to pick a couch (the one she’d seen on Craigslist wasn’t up to snuff), then wait­ing for her to hag­gle in bro­ken Eng­lish (she bor­rowed the guy’s lap­top to look for a bet­ter deal online), then watch­ing her nearly walk away because she wasn’t sure she wanted any of the couches. I won’t say I was rewarded for my patience, but she did pop a but­ton off her pants as we finally unloaded the couch at her apart­ment and tried for a com­i­cally long time to pre­tend noth­ing had hap­pened. It’s hard, I noted, to hold up your end of a couch when one arm is pre­oc­cu­pied with hold­ing your pants up.

When I tell this story, I am some­times scolded for being too kind. It has been sug­gested, in jest and in earnest, that I am due some cos­mic reward. I don’t like to think about karma because if there’s a Thumb on the scales I don’t want to end up resent­ing It. It’s hard enough fig­ur­ing out the right thing to do with­out try­ing to keep an eye on a ledger that I have no hope of under­stand­ing. I don’t want to coast on the good­will from good deeds any more than I want to ask “Why me?” when struck by ran­dom tragedy. Besides, by my own mea­sure I tend to fall short of what it takes to be a decent human being, and that wouldn’t bode well for me in the karma depart­ment, would it?

Hold It High For Me

In Jan­u­ary I applied for a job. The one I had was soul-crushing and had sapped just about all of the cre­ative energy that I had to spare, and the one I applied for was for­warded to me by sev­eral friends, all say­ing how per­fect a match I was for it. Even I had to admit that I was pretty amaz­ingly qual­i­fied for it: the ideal can­di­date, accord­ing to the job descrip­tion, “speaks geek as well as Chicago and is fond of both pen­cils and pix­els.” I wrote a stir­ring cover let­ter, begin­ning a months-long courtship.

Four months, three inter­views, two edi­to­r­ial tests, and about 5,000 words later, I was offered the job. It felt like win­ning the lot­tery. Like learn­ing to fly. Like going to col­lege all over again. Like I was in over my head. If there’s a jack­pot, I hit it. Karma puppy has licked my face. I am lucky. I am blessed.

Maybe my last job took more out of me than I thought, or maybe The Sun puts some­thing in the water, or maybe I was always defi­cient in cer­tain vit­a­mins of the spirit, but change is afoot beyond spend­ing my days in a new office full of amaz­ing peo­ple doing impor­tant work.

Peo­ple say, “You look younger.” Or, “Have you met some­one?” Or, “If you keep look­ing younger every time I see you it’s gonna get weird in a few years.” I don’t know what to tell them, except that it’s hard not to live a lit­tle more fully when you spend a lot of time with ideas that are beg­ging you to do so. I don’t attribute this just to a change of work­place, how­ever com­pelling; I don’t have a name for what­ever else is at play, either. My engine was primed…there just wasn’t any gas in the tank.

I have always been, I think, the quiet, delib­er­a­tive, self-effacing per­son you know (if you know me). The kind of engage­ment I crave has shaped the kinds of inter­ac­tions I’m com­fort­able with–an inti­mate din­ner party, yes; a rock con­cert, not so much. Estab­lish­ing capital-R Rela­tion­ships has also been tricky. I don’t go to church, and I find online dat­ing a soul­less prospect lack­ing the inher­ent mys­tery, beauty, and chaos of life (and of rela­tion­ships). Nor am I going to approach some­one in a bar: for one thing, it’s too loud to have a con­ver­sa­tion; beyond that, I think the nav­i­ga­tion of social expec­ta­tions in that set­ting is lousy with the kind of poten­tial mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions that I find excru­ci­at­ing and excru­ci­at­ingly bor­ing. I resist putting peo­ple in a posi­tion where they have to say no to me. So I don’t ask for help a lot, or for things that I might really want. I can talk myself out of almost any­thing involv­ing another per­son by per­suad­ing myself that there’s likely no reciprocity.

Of late, though, some of these anx­i­eties have eased. I am more recep­tive to new oppor­tu­ni­ties than I’ve been since I started col­lege in 1997. My life is joy­ous. It takes some get­ting used to. It’s dis­com­fit­ing for an intro­vert to not find his inner work­ings famil­iar. With this comes a tremen­dous urge to share this energy, to be kinder to my friends, to share my hap­pi­ness, to pay it for­ward, as they say. So I’ve been say­ing “yes” to every oppor­tu­nity that’s offered–routine social engage­ments like din­ner par­ties, or movies, or drinks with friends that I often felt too drained to par­tic­i­pate in over the last cou­ple years. All that activ­ity feels like it’s a cor­rec­tion of bal­ance, a restora­tion of equi­lib­rium long out of whack. Like the mer­maid sings, “I want to be where the peo­ple are.” It seems I’ve fig­ured out how to short-circuit the habit of second-guessing myself that usu­ally keeps me con­fined to a teen­sier box.

It is exhil­a­rat­ing, of course, but it also feels a lit­tle more unre­strained than I am typ­i­cally com­fort­able with. I’m not really wor­ried about myself–I’m due a few lumps, and to main­tain bal­ance this joy has to be leav­ened with some new pain. But because I have become some­what unpre­dictable to myself, I worry that I might be more capa­ble of doing or say­ing things that could harm other peo­ple. It’s fool­proof to be the wall­flower, always observ­ing, never engag­ing; it’s risky to reach out and touch peo­ple with­out know­ing how frag­ile they are or how a twitch of my fin­ger might inflict unin­ten­tional harm.

I real­ize I’m describ­ing the way humans inter­act as if it’s a new and unique con­di­tion: late-onset human­ity, maybe. I’ll get used to it. For sev­eral weeks I sus­pected that this is all just the first blush of a new job, a new oppor­tu­nity, and that I’d set­tle back into a rou­tine, maybe a lit­tle perkier for my trou­ble but not sig­nif­i­cantly changed. But I’m begin­ning to think of it all as a pipe that got unclogged and now flows with a fiercely won, indomitable energy, not a box whose clasp got bro­ken and could be re-sealed.

photo credit: dark­mat­ter

I don’t know whether this is all a long-building wave of good inten­tion that finally crested or just a ran­dom point in a ran­dom cycle. The thing about mys­tery is once you try to name it, it’s a lit­tle less magic. In my new boss’s office is a sign that says “Be Kinder Than Nec­es­sary.” If this is a wave, I’m try­ing to do my part to help the next per­son catch it. All I know is, it’s nice to see you again, world. I’ll try to keep my head above water.

Acoustic foot­notes:

• My Friends by Dar Williams

• Lantern by Josh Rit­ter

• Part of Your World by Lit­tle Mermaid