Two days later

I'm struggling to write about the bombings here in Boston. That sentence sounds so bizarre that I want to backspace over it and write something different because this can't have happened. But of course it did, and life here is strange and sad in ways I'm not sure how to describe.

Yesterday I panicked every time I heard a siren. There were a lot of sirens. It seemed like they were everywhere and that each one of them represented some new tragedy changing someone's life forever. There are lots of sirens most days, I guess (I've heard three or four just while writing this post), but I don't hear them the same way.  Now I'm jumpy and there's a big lump in my throat and I don't exactly know how to be in the midst of this.  And yet life goes on, shooting right through my lumpy throat and tears.  Like this: We're having a new couch delivered today. That just seems absurd.

And so I, along with the rest of the city, cast about for ways to cope.

One of my life strategies this spring has been to focus on bright spots: places where, in the midst of a whole lot going really wrong, something goes right.  It's an idea I picked up from the book Switch, by Chip & Dan Heath. The gist is that when you're faced with an intractable problem or tough situation, there will always be a few things going right in the middle of all the wrong. So when you're tempted to feel overwhelmed by the hopelessness, focusing on the bright spots gives you something tangible to work with: you can look for what allowed the light in, so to speak, and work to replicate that.

The bright spots for me yesterday were ways in which this tragedy is bringing us together. This "United We Stand" banner over Yankee Stadium just blew me away. And when I think of them singing "Sweet Caroline" between innings (a longtime Red Sox tradition that is one of the sweet spots of games at Fenway) it makes me want to hug everyone in New York and say thank you. These gestures fill me with certainty that we're bigger, somehow, than the evil that attacks us. The Yankees didn't have to sing Sweet Caroline, or stand with us. But they did.

And this much needed humor from Stephen Colbert, about the toughness of people here. If we're going to cry this much, we need to laugh some, too.

Boston College students have organized a walk for Friday night called The Last Five Miles. It's such a tangible way to satisfy the need we have to do something, to respond to this horror with an outpouring of positive action.  Another bright spot.

Last week, a friend told me that when her boyfriend visited Boston for the first time, he said, "This might be the friendliest city I've ever been to!"  We laughed so hard we choked on our beverages. This is not Boston's reputation at all.  Friendly is not our thing. But taking care of each other in emergencies? We're all over that. And as we figure out what life looks like in the midst of FBI investigations and having Anderson Cooper reporting live from Copley Square, I'm grateful for the ways in which all those cliches about reaching out to help one another are true.

Bright Spots

In some seasons, certain books or songs come along that are like monkey bars for me - I reach for them over and over again as I make my way across the day. They hold me, somehow supporting not just my weight, but the emotional/spiritual burden of everything I'm carrying, too.  I think of these things as bright spots: bits of light to reach for when there's darkness all around.

Here are three bright spots lighting up my Advent season:

A book: Enuma Okoro's memoir, Reluctant Pilgrim.  She writes long, beautiful, sarcastic, candid, challenging, FULL sentences that poke at me and say, "Remember when you were brave enough to do that?" For example:  "I am a well raised, charming, highly educated young woman who can get even a mute person to tell me her or his entire life story in less than an hour. But that doesn't mean I know about neighborliness and servanthood. It basically says I know how to work a room."  Love it.

A song:  Stand, by Rascal Flatts. I first heard this when a contestant on The Voice performed it.  The lyrics make me tear up because they're so true and I need to be reminded: "Every time you get up & get back in the race, one more small piece of you starts to fall into place."  Amen to that.

And a sermon series:  Are You Stuck? by Jordan Seng. (Scroll down to 11/4/12 for the first one).  It's a series about waiting (and praying and working toward) a breakthrough. Jordan is a man of genuine, delightfully low-key wisdom.  I listened to this series in the car as I drove all over Cambridge this month, and the temptation to try and take notes while driving has been very real.  I resist, of course (If you've driven here you understand how truly stuck - or wrecked - that sort of multitasking would get me). But this is good enough that I'm hoping to rope off an entire afternoon soon and listen again, car in park & pen in hand.

My prayer today: Dear God, thank You for these bright spots. Please send more. Help me to see You in them. And bless us all as as we fumble about hoping to be bright spots for one another.  In Jesus' name, Amen.

What are your bright spots this season?

Navigating Change by looking for the Bright Spots

You'll be delighted to hear that I found an outfit for today's event.  Thank you for your support :)

Admittedly, it was a bland ensemble - black "trousers" (to maintain Stacy & Clinton's love), and a sweater that's best described as, well, sufficient.  But it was fine, as I wasn't at this event to be noticed - I was there to hear Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick and Switch (two of my all-time favorite nonfiction books) talk about navigating change.

At the end of the session, I had the chance to ask him how being immersed in the principles as he wrote has influenced his own life.  His response was great.  He said that the best thing he's internalized since writing this book is a commitment to "looking for the bright spots." 

As he describes in Switch, we're psychologically wired to focus on bad over good.  We'll notice things that are ugly, unfortunate, and problematic much more quickly than those that are lovely, pure, or working splendidly.  (As he put it, "When was the last time you & one of your friends got together and said, I really want to talk about the things in my job/family/relationship that are going well so I can figure out what's working & replicated it!?)'

So one of the things he discovered in his research is that, when you're facing a huge problem or set of circumstances, one way to get passed feeling overwhelmed & helpless is to focus on whatever is going well.  Ask yourself: What's working? What doesn't need to be fixed?  Where are expectations being met or exceeded?  He calls this focusing on the bright spots.  Hidden in there are often clues to things we're doing right that might apply to other areas where things aren't going so well.  So it's not just "Don't worry/Be happy."  It's making smart choices about where we focus so we're more likely to see solutions.

I like that :)