Riding the cycles of our lives
In which I recall the difficulty of speaking about a difficult time
While each talk I’ve given has had its challenges, my Learning from Alumni talk feels like it’s been the most difficult to write.
The class has an alumni guest about once a week, and aims to “have students think about the kinds of lives they want to create holistically—inclusive of not only careers but also service and other aspects of life.” That’s a quotation from Henry Rietz, the class’s professor and the person who invited me to speak.
I write my talks by speaking aloud. When I prepare by writing out a talk on paper or screen, it’s too easy for me to get stuck trying to remember the exact turn of phrase I’d previously written down. So, I write them aloud, eventually into the voice recorder on my phone, often while walking around my neighborhood. I try to talk for the amount of time of the presentation, and see how far through my intended story I get. Then I refine as needed, until I know where I’m going.
But this talk felt too big for that. The assignment was described in part as:
Reflect on how your experiences at Grinnell (curricular, but also co-curricular, informal, etc.) have contributed to your life.
Your varied experiences would be very interesting to the students
UX
graphic novel
raising a child
The ways that that you shaped your successes, and learned from your failures after graduation.
And that often people do a powerpoint of their life and work (including a bit of their time at Grinnell and key moments in between).
And often the powerpoint is about 30-40 minutes and then Q&A.
How do I fit allllll of that into 30 minutes?? There were so many experiences and lessons I might share.
What haunted me the most, though, is that I was committed to talk about the big dip in my life from 2020-2023. I was committed to being authentic to my experience. And yet, that time still feels very close, still like I haven’t finished coming out of it. I am still very much afraid that I will sink into it again with only the slightest trigger. It can be hard to remember how far I’ve come, and the skills I’ve built and the relationships I’ve nurtured.
The fear and the reflection was bad enough that it was hard to sleep in the week leading up to the trip to Grinnell. I started grinding my teeth again. I mostly avoided working on the talk when I knew I could have been.
Eventually, as the presentation day grew nearer, I got myself to work on it. And eventually, clarity started to come to me. I decided I would present a perspective I’ve been trying to absorb into all parts of me. I decided I would frame that time as a natural part in the cyclical nature of life.
Andrea Gibson beautifully describes the dips of life in a poem, excerpted here:
Instead of Depression
try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
—Andrea Gibson, in You Better Be Lightning
A visual came into view. A sine curve, with its smooth wave from a middle point to a high, down through the middle, to a low, and back again over time.
In the presentation, I contrasted that wave with what many people see as the path to success. A linear path from low status to high status over time.
For each visual, I used different labels on the vertical axis. For the graph with the straight line, I labeled the top as “highs” and the bottom as “lows.” But for the graph with the wave, I labeled the top as “summer” and the bottom as “winter.” The lows aren’t failures, but, as Gibson describes, times of hibernation and slowness.
I titled the presentation, “A Cyclical Life.”
In its stories, I discussed moments and segments that I had labeled on the wave graph, and how one experience lead to another.
During class, some students looked sleepy. My professors-turned-friends assured me that that’s just the way some Grinnell students are, no matter the context. I definitely recall that as true in my time.
There were others who were very engaged. I had a beautiful, vulnerable question from a student about Western medicine for mental health. “Do you become a different person?” they asked. I told them that I had worried about that, too. And what I found, at least for me, is that I’m still me—it’s just that the static has died down, like a radio that was finally in tune. The class laughed when I teased them, “You all do know what radios are, right?”
Facing this presentation was hard, and it was good for me. I now have a visual of how my life has been, and how the hard times have lead to joyful times.
On campus the evening before my talk, author Jessica Bruder summarized a perspective held by George Orwell: that warm human emotions are learned only as a response to adversity. I’m familiar with that perspective, and although I hate it, I have to admit that I see truth in it.
My life, our lives, our world—we move in cycles. We move from fall to winter to spring to summer, again and again, whether we like it or not. Even if I don’t quite like it, I’m beginning to accept it. I’m beginning to learn to ride the wave.
GSP Update: Happy accidents in Grinnell
Although I had planned to use my Learning from Alumni trip to continue my Grinnell Students for Peace research, I decided in the week before it that I would drop that goal. I was too strung out from writing the presentation, and I was pretty sure that I’d continue writing it while I was there.
Instead, I encouraged myself to enjoy time with mentors (which included a drink, a dinner, a breakfast, and a chance chat while walking on campus), and to generally enjoy being on campus.
In doing so, I happened upon some happy accidents, including meeting three new lovely people: Bruder, mentioned above; a fellow alumni who is now a poet and who was on campus during the infamous Playboy protest of 1969; and another alumni who is a retired religious studies professor and who said of the GSP project, “See, that’s exactly the kind of research I love. Something that you can find the facts—and then tell an untold story.” What a boost to my enthusiasm and confidence in myself. (Isn’t that too often the case when complimented by relative strangers?”)
I’ve also realized that I’ve let my new responsibilities at home—especially the docent position that has ever so much more possible work than I expected—become a barrier to continuing my GSP interviews. Before, I had seen it as a delay I had to accept. Now, I am reminded that my schedule is a choice that I can change, so that I can pursue the things I care about the deepest.
Mentioned in this issue: Grinnell College; Andrea Gibson’s poem, “Instead of Depression,” from their book You Better Be Lightning; Jessica Bruder, author of Nomadland; George Orwell, and a quotation of his that I haven’t been able to find in its original form; and the Playboy protest at Grinnell College in 1969.