I used to have a fantasy gift that I hoped someone would give me– one canceled lunch per season. For years I gratefully received news that someone else couldn’t show up for something. It never occurred to me that I could initiate the gift of needed time or rescheduling to accommodate other priorities. I always showed up.
I remember once traveling an hour to spend a few minutes speaking to a journalism class when I was almost delirious with fever. Another time I showed up for an exam the day I had received some truly traumatic medical news – even though I knew plenty of people who regularly got excused from exams due to cramps! (I flunked, by the way.) I cannot remember ever changing a doctor’s appointment. Countless times a week I short-changed myself (skip the trip to the ladies room, postpone the make-up renewal, don’
t catch my breath) in order to not only show up but show up on time.
No more! I now delight in the ease with which one can cancel, reschedule, or delay appointments. I had never learned because I never tried. Now that I am in the swing of it, I relish the moment when I hear myself tell myself, “Yeah, I don’t think I can get to that.” I am especially pleased when the true reason is no more earth-shattering than that I don’t feel like it. Saying No is one of the juiciest “symptoms” of this new stage of growing up. And not showing up is – along with telling off those who offend me –
one of the unexpected benefits of learning to say No.
Which is not to say that I am careless with my commitments; everyone knows that they can count on me when it counts. And, in fact, now that I don’t Show Up automatically – like clockwork – I am better able to get to where my friends need me to be or to do that thoughtful errand that will brighten someone’s day. I am just more discriminating about my time and more likely to factor my own needs into the schedule.
I know that I am an extreme case, but I am sure a lot of women my age recognize the compulsion to Show Up at all cost. What, I ask myself now, was I afraid would happen if I didn’t? For one thing, I was afraid that I would offend or antagonize someone. I was afraid of letting someone down. Good girls of my era didn’t do that. Good girls were punctual, conscientious, self-sacrificing, reliable, and never, ever inconvenienced someone else.
There was also a grown-up component to the fear of what would happen if I didn’t Show Up. I reached adulthood deeply invested in the belief/hope/delusion that playing by the rules, managing my activities flawlessly, fulfilling every responsibility I encountered would make me safe. Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking writes about the people she knew who “believed absolutely in their own management skills. They believed absolutely in the power of the telephone numbers they had at their fingertips, the right doctor, the major donor, the person who could facilitate a favor.” She recognizes this quality – the “core belief in my ability to control events” –in herself. I recognize it too. But by this point in our lives we can no longer hold on to that wish; we have learned that, as Didion puts it, “some events just happen.”
The secret terror behind efficiency games we “managers” played with the Evil Eye was that we wouldn’t have the resources to cope if one of the events that “just happen” just happened. Every day – and more so as we age – we prove different. We do not need to control events in order to survive them. That sense of what anthropologists call “mastery” comes with life experience and reinforces our coping skills.
So, at least for me, canceling an appointment is more than just being willing to inconvenience someone in order to convenience myself. It is a willingness to take control of what I can control, because I am not afraid (or less afraid) of what I can’t. Showing up now means being present for my own life, not playing a role in someone else’s.