Hello all, and happy Thursday,
We’ve reached the twentieth issue of On the Common! Next week On the Common will be able to have an adult beverage because newsletters age a year with every week. Or something like that.
The Part Where There’s an Essay
Recently I was chatting with a friend about those little signs that we see in homes. You know the ones: they say things like “Bloom Where You’re Planted,” or “This Too Shall Pass.”
The thing is, she said, I used to roll my eyes at how cheesy those sayings were. When you’re a teenager and you know everything, you think they’re so dumb. And then, you become an adult...and it turns out they’re true.
Bloom Where You’re Planted? It’s difficult a lot of the time. Expectations are different than what materializes. It might be good to have a little reminder to keep trying.
This Too Shall Pass? Every season has an end. The really whiny season that your toddler is in -- that won’t last forever. Take a breath and enjoy that for a minute. But also -- the cuddling at bedtime? That won’t last forever, either. This, too, shall pass.
Have you ever heard someone say “There’s a first time for everything”? Sometimes this means simply “wow, I’ve never seen that before,” but other times it means, “go take a chance.” Everybody starts somewhere. If you’re scared to do something for the first time, it doesn’t mean you’ll fail. It just means -- it’s your first time. Few things go well the first time. Just jump in and start trying.
Have you ever heard someone say “There’s a last time for everything”?
This concept sometimes comes up in discussions about parenting. There will be a last time that your child holds your hand to cross the street, but you won’t know it when it happens. But one day, you’ll realize that they don't do that anymore. There will be a last time they all ride in the car with you.
(Sometimes David and I force all of our giant children into a single vehicle, all the while shouting, “COME ON GUYS — IT’S JUST LIKE OLD TIMES.” No one enjoys this very much.)
Nashville recording artist and producer Ben Shive composed a song entitled “There’s a Last Time for Everything” after he lost a good friend to cancer. As he attended his buddy’s funeral, the thought came to Ben that one day, there will be a last funeral. Nobody in attendance will know it, but they will be at the last one. There won’t be any more after that.
There will be a last trip to the florist to pick out the casket piece.
There will be a last receiving line.
There will be a last recessional piece of music.
The old things will pass away. The new will come. And there won’t be any more funerals after that.
You're gonna wake up soon
In your lonely room
To the sound of a singing bird
Throw the curtain back
To find your bag's already packed
And the cab is at the curb
Then like a bad dream
Unreal in the morning light
So will the world seem
When you see it in the mirror for the last time
Cause there is a last time
There's a last time for everything
For the Anglophiles
I’m finishing up a mystery novel this week (The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin) and I loved this idea from a chapter near the end. Forgive me, but just read these two lovely sentences describing the main character:
On literature his comments were acute, penetrating, and extremely sophisticated; on any other topic he invariably pretended complete ignorance and an anxious willingness to be instructed, though it generally came out eventually that he knew more about it than his interlocutor, for his reading, in the forty-two years since his first appearance on this planet, had been systematic and enormous. If this ingenuousness had been affectation, or merely arrested development, it would have been simply irritating; but it was perfectly sincere, and derived from the the genuine intellectual humility of a man who has read much and in so doing has been able to contemplate the enormous spaces of knowledge which must inevitably always lie beyond his reach.
The more you know, the more you know that you don’t know. Or, that’s how it ought to be, anyway.
Reads & Listens of the Week
I am a big fan of sounding this theme over and over again: The Only Way is Ordinary. “What we want are extraordinary fixes to ordinary problems. In this desire we miss the reality that there’s always something else to fix, there’s always something else to do, and there’s always something we’ll miss.”
Grab some tissues before you read this one: Does My Son Know You? The Ringer writer Jonathan Tjarks writes a personal essay about having terminal cancer as a young father. I also enjoyed the interview with Jonathan on the Good Faith podcast.
This is neither a read nor a listen, but a watch: Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix special, Nightclub Comedian, is not to be missed. He speaks (hilariously, of course) about our current moment: social media, the vaccines, and how we think about each other. (Language warning.)
Closer to Home
Here’s an old one about one of my favorite places in Oxford: The Candles at Turl Street Kitchen. “What is it about us that thinks we can recapture an atmosphere? What makes an atmosphere ‘just so’ in a fashion that can, realistically, never be recaptured? The air and the mood in that place have taken up residence in my heart.”
For he whom you now treat with contempt was once above you. He who is now made man was once the Unmade. — Gregory of Nazianzus