It’s raining out today. Gray, pitter-pattery rain. It seems like a good day to sit down and tell you about this idea I have for a blog. I’ve had an idea for a blog since I was sitting in the waiting room of my ocular oncologist’s office in Philadelphia about 5 years ago. I was diagnosed in 2011 with ocular melanoma. Ocular melanoma is rare, aggressive, deadly. But I’d survived and was in Philly for my annual checkup. I started thinking that it could be useful to talk about surviving things. But thinking something is useful is very different than having time to be of use.
Then a year or so later, I was in a recovery meeting and I heard someone refer to themselves as “a work in progress.” You hear that a lot in recovery. Or really anywhere people are owning up to their humanity. To me, the subtext is, “I’m deeply flawed but at least I know I’m flawed, and I’m working on improving.” It’s almost an apology. Being a work in progress is to have the good part ahead of you, which isn’t all bad. But “work in progress” doesn’t acknowledge the fierce beauty of having survived the things that make us flawed, and it doesn’t celebrate how rare and amazing it is to be able to acknowledge where we are right now and to reach for the next thing.
Rather than living lives that will eventually be works of art, we live lives that are art at every step.
So I think we are “progressive works.” Our lives are like a progressive dinner, where each course is at a different person’s house and you go from house to house through the evening. The dinner is a single event but it’s composed of these mini-events at each house. I think we’re like that. Our whole is life is The Work, sure. But every stop along the way can be celebrated as its own event, its own finished product. Rather than living lives that will eventually be works of art, we live lives that are art at every step. The flaws are a very individual, beautiful part of the art that we are in this moment. We won’t become more worthy or valuable or precious later. We are worthy and valuable and precious right now.
Of course, “progressive work” refers to other things, too. It refers to the fact that my work on myself and in the world is progressive rather that contained. It goes on; it changes; it evolves. It refers to the fact that I relate to causes and philosophies that are labeled “progressive.” And it probably refers to things I haven’t even thought of yet. Maybe it refers to something different for you.
I have a friend who says that people with anxiety disorders are the only people who have accurately assessed the situations we live in. Everyone else is delusional. She says that the occasional panic attack is the only rational response to what goes on in the world. That makes a lot of sense to me. The world is scary. Life is scary. Adulthood is scary. And we’re all feeling around in the dark to figure it out. And still, we find our people and experience friendship and love and joy. The way we find our people in all this scary darkness is that they turn on their lights. It’s when we have our lights on that people in the dark can find us, and then together we experience the good stuff.
So this is me turning on a light. I hope it’ll be useful.
The Progressive Work 