9 Down, 91 To Go
Notes on Not Quitting #7
Recently a client of mine reminded me of a very old Jewish teaching, namely the notion of saying a hundred blessings a day. The notion came, or at least it is credited to, a teacher from the first century CE called Rabbi Meir, who derived it from a line in the book of Deuteronomy.
It’s a nice round number, 100, and a nice human size. Unlike a billion or a million, a hundred is a number you can grasp, a number you can count without too much trouble. It feels like a logical number, though perhaps that feeling is just the result of living my life in a culture where the division of things into hundreds, so that 100% on an exam is a perfect score, so that 99 cents is just enough less than a whole dollar that your brain thinks you’ve gotten a deal.
When my client mentioned that bit of advice in passing, my brain lit up with memory. I’d heard it before but forgotten where it came from, and I scratched down a note so I could track it down. Like many scraps of Talmud, it isn’t much on its own. Talmud’s an odd collection, a sort of family album of what the big name teachers in Judaism had to say about the Torah, conversations and recollections and opinions and insights collected during the first centuries of the common era. There’s no plot, no narrative, and no one-true-way thinking to be found, but there is a colossal freewheeling time-traveling conversation across generations and sprinkled throughout the mix, there are some fabulous ideas.
Like “say a hundred blessings a day.”
I have been attempting it. Not in any formal sense, mind you. I am not carrying around a little clicker counter in my pocket toting up the blessings to make sure I hit my quota. There’s no formal language involved either, though obviously there’s no lack of language I could use. I don’t feel that a blessing has to use some particular formula of words to count as one. As the saying goes, it’s the thought that counts.
To me, a blessing is somewhere on a continuum between being aware of a something that brings goodness into the world and feeling grateful for that goodness. It seems like a worthwhile project, to me. Each one is a small way to be more aware of what’s going on and where I am and what’s good about it and what’s made it possible. For me, a blessing is a small antidote to anxiety. Telling myself to come up with one is a way to force myself to create a counterweight to the other, harder parts of whatever I’m facing.
That’s the point of it: the counterweight. The thing you put on the other side of the scales to balance the weights. There is so much that is hard and ugly and cruel and bad. If we’re to survive, there has to be something on the other side of the balance, too.
Sometimes I think I should give the ugly and hard and cruel and bad some more time here at Reasons Not To Quit. I don’t want readers to think me a Pollyanna, or one of those people who believe that good vibes are all you need (and if they aren’t then your vibes weren’t good enough, obviously). There are a thousand versions of that and they’re all misguided. The bad things and the hard things and all the awfulness are, yes, huge and they’re everywhere and they’re serious and they’re urgent and important. I know what they are. You know what they are. They’re not hard to find and if you want a hot take on any of it, well, here we are on the Internet.
But the longer I write Reasons Not To Quit, the more I realize how much I need there to be places where the things that are trying to suffocate us are not actually invited in and allowed to suck up every bit of air in the room.
I need ways to make sure I still have air to breathe. Some fresh air at that. We all do. And it’s not a thing any of us has to earn. The sneaky little bastard of a word “deserve” has no part in it. You don’t have to deserve it. You don’t have to be something exceptional or do something particular to “deserve” to have space in the world where you have air to breathe, whether metaphorical or literal.
So I add little counterweights to the scale. Or at least I am trying to teach myself to. I do not find it reflexive, this finding blessings. But habits of mind can be learned. It takes practice.
So here are a few of the blessings that I have found in the past few days, a few of the counterweights I have put on the scale, a few bits of the barrier against the things that want to come in and suck up all the available air.
The hopeful resilience and willingness of people going out into the world to be seen and heard refusing to let badness and ugliness go unresisted is a blessing.
Hearing that two people I love found the time to have lunch together hundreds of miles away and knowing that they got to enjoy each other for a bit is a blessing.
Seeing a little blue heron standing nonchalantly at the edge of a retention pond suddenly dart out its neck to give a sharp peck to the head of a very small alligator that was inching closer to it, and the tiny alligator make an abrupt turn away, was a blessing.
A pint of ripe flavorsome blueberries grown not too far from here is a blessing.
The ways people find to punch up and make jokes about even the most choking ugliness; those creative hatpins jabbed hard and deep into the backsides of the richly deserving, those Legos strewn everywhere a crushing foot might try to step, are a blessing.
Writing, even when I’m anxious about how it’ll land, even when I worry that people will see the references to Talmud and words like “blessing” and roll their eyes and click away, is a blessing. That so many people show up to read what I have to say when I write is a blessing. That so many people are willing to make an investment in my work is a blessing. That you’re reading this, that’s a blessing too.
That’s 9. 91 to go. And then tomorrow, again. Shall we?
Blessing is an important part of my practice, and one of the first things we teach in my tradition of Wicca. We talk about blessing people, which is a kind of calling out of attention. It's my attention to their individual beauty and ways, sharing that attention, and naming the person Good in their specificity, their authenticity. It is an act of creation, much like G-d, in reflection on hir handiwork and declaring it good, and declaring the creation of the adamah, the human being, and declaring it very good.
So today, Hanne Blank Boyd, I give thanks for your care and tenderness, your cleverness and depth, your femme identity and expression. I bless you and call out your birthright of beauty, radiance, strength, resourcefulness, and endurance.
Blessed be you, all you have been, all you are, and all you ever will be.
Miss Hanne, you, and your persistence in making spaces with fresh air, are a blessing. Thank you.