The Circle Expands, the Circle Contracts

I know the difference between a meaningful life and one that is not, and I’ll take meaningful over most anything else. Every time.

When I was a child, our schools got out at half past one and by two in the afternoon, already changed out of our school uniforms, we all—myself, my brother, my parents, and my maternal grandparents—were having lunch. Every day. I can remember, so vividly, sitting at the dining table together. Those memories are filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of growing up in a traditional but relatively liberal family in Karachi. Conversations in two different languages, my maternal grandmother reading in Urdu and entertaining us with literary jokes—a way to pique our interest into diving deeper into the language. Gentle admonishments on how to ask for things as hands moved to pass dishes of steaming rice, curries, daals, and, in the summer, mangoes of all sizes for dessert. The smell of cloves, black pepper, and garlic made the air so aromatic that it felt heady.

My father was a naval officer, my mother was a teacher. My maternal grandparents stayed with us when they landed in Pakistan from their travels abroad. Along with my brother and I, we were a very close family of six for the longest time. In addition to this core unit, we lived in a large family compound—a series of apartments that stacked one on top of the other. My paternal grandmother, my father’s sister and family resided in the compound as well. The matriarch of the family, my paternal grandmother, lived on the second floor which was accessible by a column of stairs that cut the buildings down the middle. Our family lived in a ground-floor apartment on the right and my father's sister and their family on the left. There was ample space to fit everyone, including my father’s two other living siblings who would visit periodically from the US and Iran and our cousins who came and went in the hot Karachi summers. 

Our family house had two large gardens flanking both sides of the house. Hedges that my paternal grandmother trimmed every morning without fail framed the outer boundaries and chumpa trees we all climbed as children lined the peripheries. We had all manner of fruit trees too; mango, chiku, almond and even a small lemon-lime tree bearing perfect tiny wedges that were too sour to actually consume. In the corner on one side of the garden was a white metal swing around which we played games. The rest of the garden, on both sides, was a wide expanse of closely cut grass. In the evenings, in a large circle made of folding chairs in primary colors, we would have tea together. Every evening. Without fail. Well, barring monsoon season when, for two months, the evening ritual was held inside to escape the curtain of rain that blanketed the city. 

Evening tea time began when hints of cardamom would waft through the air. Close to five, a tray with a large teapot would follow the aroma of the special type of tea my aunt used. The teapot was always covered in a cosy to keep it warm. There was no excuse for being served cold tea even in the height of summer. There was also a jewel-green ceramic dish of condensed milk and something sweet and salty to eat housed on the many-tiered display of the rolling cart. It was a setup that was constantly and diligently replenished.

During the course of the evening, people often stopped by unannounced. It was a time and place where that was totally acceptable. You didn't need to call ahead of time. You came for a visit or picked up the phone when you thought of someone. You caught up when and where people were available, often while in the middle of multiple other conversations. Your aunt would be speaking to you, then she would speak to the cook, give the driver rapid-fire instructions, complain about the gardener being late, yell very loudly at the children, and come right back to you without skipping a beat. And without an apology of any sort. Yes, a different time and place. 

As family, friends, acquaintances and their children stopped by, folding chairs were added to the ever-expanding circle—a circle that also included the cats that my paternal grandmother liked to feed. Tea would continue late into the evening—only beginning to wrap up when the orange halo of the sun began to set through the mango trees and the crows started cawing. Those who prayed broke off first. Soon after the official Azan, the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque was heard, the rest of the circle would disperse to reconvene the next evening.

This was the Hashim family house. We stayed there for years at a time between stints in Islamabad where my father would be stationed periodically. It was a peculiar situation where a naval officer was stationed in a landlocked city, but it is the capital and was the order of things. Shuttling from one end of the country to another, our belongings were driven across in a large container every four years or so. It was meticulously packed by my father, an expert in the art of packing things so they remained intact through the long journey.

The one exception to this back-and-forth between capital and seaport city was a stint in Manora, a peninsula off the coast. While there, my brother and I attended a well-known school that we had to take a boat to everyday. I was eleven and yes, it really was an eleven-year-old’s dream come true in every way. One of the few coeducational institutions in the city, my mother and her brother had gone there a generation before. Established in the British educational system, the school clung stubbornly to certain vestiges of time, like sorting students into houses named after caucasian British gentlemen such as Napier, Streeton, and so on. I was a Napier as was my mother and her brother before me. 

Looking back, I am aware that these more quiet memories are gifts of a very cared for, privileged childhood in a starkly divided country. Even to this day, post-partition, Pakistan remains divided politically, economically, religiously, and in many other ways. And there was, of course, all the expected tumult of that in the background. 

Periodic protests in the streets, military rule, then democratic rule that was quickly overturned by military rule. At times, military rule was almost preferred as it inferred a certain order and stability. Although, it had other troublesome repercussions on the wheels of democracy—mostly to flatten them. At eleven, I escaped my first bomb blast, narrowly, by seconds. I most remember the smell, bodies and blood. There were two more blasts I missed not as narrowly in the coming years. This is not an unusual story. My generation of friends all have these experiences. 

July and August monsoon rains would wipe away poorly prepared infrastructure, stopping cars with water up to the bonnet. The only way out was to have a friend who had a jeep that could make it through all manner of roads. They would rescue you from work and deliver you safely home where you would enjoy pakoras, parathas and tea as you watched the rain come down. Summer also meant load shedding—hours of no electricity meant to shed the load on the electric grid. We spent those evenings on the rooftops of the Hashim family house grateful for the sea air that blew across the city through swaying palm trees. 

In our circle, there were sobering moments that too left a mark over the years. When my father was five, my paternal grandfather died of tuberculosis, leaving my grandmother the task of bringing up three boys and two girls. She did so in short order. She wore only white—a white linen gharara, a white tunic top, and a muslin scarf to cover her head if needed—as a sign of mourning for the rest of her life. My paternal grandmother was a slim, petite, tall woman (I imagine) when she was younger. From the earliest time I can remember, she was hunched over somewhat. She had an elegance about her that was striking. And sometimes she had a very dirty sailor's mouth. It was a perplexing contrast that, to this day, I have not been able to firmly reconcile in my head.

When I was 16, my father got very sick with renal cancer, a disease that took his life less than two years later. It was a casual moment where the body betrayed itself. As a family, we staggered through years of treatments that were destined to fail. I was too young to understand the consequences of what was going on in the beginning and too old to escape it at the end. 

While my father was sick, my maternal grandmother called from Chicago one day where she was with my uncle and her voice sounded slurry. She came back to Karachi for medical care where a tumor in her brain was discovered. Despite surgery and medical intervention, it killed her a few weeks later. After her death, my maternal grandfather had a heart attack that unearthed heart disease, keeping him in a deep depression until he died a few years later. My mother lost her husband and both her parents within a span of seven years. We lost half our core family. We moved houses, we gathered with each other in homes and hospitals, we bathed those who were sick, we buried those we loved. My mother would never be the same. My brother was quiet. I sat by the graves in disbelief.

But this is not the whole story. Even amidst all the personal and civic turmoil, we gathered. We had large meals together. We sat in the drawing room and laughed even when things were hard. Inside jokes that only those who carry profound grief understand, tiny essential sparks amidst overwhelming darkness as we moved from funeral to funeral.

While my father was sick, we played a game called caram which he won. He stole bites from our favorite desserts by asking to see them for a second, a request we always complied with while grumbling loudly but good-naturedly. We celebrated my 18th birthday nine days before he died. He came home from the hospital that day, donned a striking blue shalwar kameez, and enjoyed a bite of chicken after having been in a hospital for a month. After it was all over, when we wondered how the world could ever be the same, we were embraced by our large family and friend circles. They encamped at our house, cars lining a 3-block radius. They brought us food, reminisced, and pulled out memories, memories that keep those we love alive. We loved our people for being human but refused to put them on pedestals despite every attempt to immortalize them in death, blurring the edges of their actual being. 

My mother did not give up on our future, putting my brother and I through the rest of our schooling, eventually sending us to colleges and graduate schools by taking on more work. She built a house on a plot of land my father had set aside for our family, an unusual thing for a woman to do on her own in a society where men were treated more respectfully when taking on a construction project of this kind. But she found a kind, very talented, well-known architect who guided the construction with such care that we think of him as part of our house in Karachi even now.

My mother refused to become a traditional widow even though she was, at the same time, so incredibly sad she felt unrecognizable to us. I now realize my paternal grandmother had also defied the strict expectations of widowhood half a century earlier. 

Through all of this my brother and I were deeply loved. We were protected as something precious. We were given every opportunity to succeed. And when we left to study abroad and build our lives, our success as human beings is due in part to the care that was poured into us, the structure we had growing up, and the investment of life savings into our education. It was ensured we would be allowed a debt-free post-degree life with opportunities to live in a country with less turmoil—if we so chose. Our success is due to this history.

Our family house; the newer house, is still a place where people gather. We sit in the entrance, we overflow onto the stairs, we bring tea and samosas out. We drape across my mother’s bed and look back nostalgically as we form new memories with our subsequent school graduations, engagements, and weddings. We come together to celebrate thresholds we walk through. Our house is filled with flowers, the scent of tuberoses and motia flowers lingering for days. We hold hot mugs of tea as talks and visits begin at midnight. We take walks encircling the new Hashim residence. I take these walks when I visit. Every time. 

Our family of six contracted unimaginably and expanded again as we brought those we loved into it. If you have the profound privilege of growing older, this cycle of contraction and expansion of our circles continues. That is what the arc of time is. And this is the circle I come from. If you strip away one aspect of this story from any other, you lose everything.

Air

The room was large and spacious with an impressive arching door, wood paneling flanking the entrance. The room was the kind used to house weddings. One expected to be met with a carpet strewn with rose petals. This, however, was not a wedding. It was a memorial. A gathering with a very different sentiment but, one could argue, still a passage from one stage of life to another.

The center of the room was divided by a long line of tables on which people were placing food they had brought to the memorial. The food was a hodgepodge of crockpots of macaroni and cheese, some kind of chilli, a cheese concoction and more. Where the cluster of crockpots ended, a series of other food items began. Aluminum trays housing baked items, plastic cups holding utensils and a concentric display of water bottles that was consistently replenished from a pile of packs of water wrapped in plastic stored in another part of the room. The table set up continued with bowls of pasta salad surrounded by economy packs of cheez-its and chips. Then, a truly impressive variety of dessert—from cheesecakes, to hundreds of cookies, cakes, pastries and brownies. Grief desires sugar. An endless amount of it.

Mark had died of pancreatic cancer a month earlier and this was his memorial.

His widow Donna was hosting the gathering of his family and friends. The mood was of people gathering for a picnic with a strong undercurrent of somber that swelled periodically like a wave and then dissipated. There were exclamations as people met each other, incredulous looks as a family member saw another who they had last seen at age 5 and was now, decidedly not 5 anymore. The cousin in question was sporting a sizable fiery red beard that five year olds would have been envious of, a sweet partner and a very small baby firmly strapped to their chest. This was the baby’s first outing. The exclamations were punctuated with a periodic sob when, after the surprise of seeing everyone, there was a reminder why they all were gathered.

Donna, the widow, moved around the room in a bright tie dye shirt. Her request of guests was that they wear comfortable, dare she say, “hippie clothing”. She was meeting strangers and family alike with warmth, generosity and grace. She looked incredibly sad but somehow held strong as if the energy of the room was what was keeping the pieces of her in place. She moved around the room like a moth, never settling in one place too long, always allowing family and strangers to embrace her.

Mark, amongst many other things, was a musician. To celebrate this, a stage with a drum set, amps, and many guitars had been set-up in the corner of the room. For a while, a group of men in their 50s tinkered with said instruments until, beyond a steady hum of conversation, the room settled down enough for them to start playing.

They played the songs of their generation: Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin to name a few. As the music continued, the sounds of people deep in conversation and contently eating added a warm undertone to the hum in the air. A couple sat speaking to a woman they had just met. She was an ecologist who had decided in her 30s to trade her muck boots for a teaching job and was now pursuing an early retirement and picking up hobbies. She was a childhood friend of Donna’s who seemed quiet but also as if she was keeping herself out of the way—for politeness sake. Politeness was put aside as the afternoon wore on. The three talked about her drawings, her career and the couple shared their own meandering paths. The couple was in their early 40s and the ecologist almost 60 and there was something magical about a conversation that bridged those two decades at a time where transition and the weight of time was on everyone’s mind.

When Mark’s brother went on stage to say a few words, everyone quietened. During his speech, the sense of grief in the room felt heightened and people reached for tissues and their loved ones. Soon after, Donna came to the stage. She spoke of Mark, their relationship, his kindness and their time together both before the disease that killed him took over their lives and after. She spoke about their many beloved dogs, the way Mark was a perpetual MacGyver and could fix anything and how they had often been late to things because he would help strangers on the street. She talked about how, close to the end, Mark spoke about being reunited with their beloved dogs. Donna had said this was truly something to be jealous of as they laughed gently about it in bed together. There was a sense of an expanse. Of a life being more than an illness. Of a life being more than what happens at the end. The room cried and laughed with her, feeling heavy with people’s memories, as she recounted stories of their time together—this large space filled up with a man who was no longer there. Like the quiet moments before the storm, the air felt weighty with the undoubted energy that had built up.

Donna paused when she ended her story. She then asked if everyone had noticed the balloons on the tables. Everyone looked around and indeed there were empty balloons on all the tables. Little children were also running around with baskets of balloons for those who didn’t have any. Donna asked everyone to grab one and blow into it all the sadness they were carrying at that very moment. And they did.

The room went quiet apart from the mighty puffing of adults and children alike filling their balloons with all the sadness they could. A sea of colorful inflated balloons filled the room. They all seemed close to bursting but miraculously none did. As the puffing died down, everyone turned their heads towards Donna to await further instruction. She had her own balloon in her hand—it was yellow— and asked everyone to hold up their balloons . The room was ready; everyone dutifully held up their balloons. Then she asked everyone to release all the sadness.

There was a collective pause in the room, as the energy collected itself under the command of this small, slight woman, wearing a tie dye shirt, looking defiantly out at a future she was about to step into.

Then, the room filled with laughter as the balloons started joyfully whipping around, releasing everything inside.

Placed Between Land and Sea

The smell of roses reminds you of funerals.

You have this thought again as you stand over your father’s grave on a recent trip to Karachi. As is the tradition here, you purchased a bag of rose petals to scatter over his grave. The clear plastic bag it is handed to you in is nondescript; the same kind of bag you would be handed at a grocery store as you buy toothpaste or any other household item. And yet here it is, holding petals for a grave. You dip your hand into the damp petals and release them. They flutter gently onto the grass.

This may sound sad, but it’s not. After 25 years, it’s more of an observation. It was certainly sad at one point—the saddest when the grave was fresh—but it’s no longer that time. You visit your father’s grave every time you visit Karachi. It’s a soothing ritual. One tinged with melancholy on the edges, the way a white cloth dipped in color picks up a hue on the fringes. You suppose, after a moment, it still is a little sad.

Returning to Karachi feels like being dropped head-first into a large body of water. It is a change in the very material of the atmosphere. You struggle to breathe for a moment as your senses accustom themselves to the change in the density of matter. Eventually, your body relaxes, your tongue loosens and remembers its native tongue, and you gratefully breathe into what was moments ago, an environment not sustainable for life. Now, you realize, you’re amphibious. You have the ability to breathe in two places. Crossing this threshold happens, in some way, every time you return. Some trips it takes a couple of days to adjust. In the most recent ones, which are less far apart, the adjustment is almost instantaneous. But it always happens.

There are many reasons for this. It’s not, as one might expect, the culture shock or the visual and mechanical contrasts of your two worlds. It’s the very material of this part of the world. It’s different and it puts into sharp focus that you are standing on a dusty road breathing in the sea air and not on a sidewalk being jostled by New Yorkers late for whatever urgent matter is calling life’s attention at this point.

Here, the houses are built of cinder blocks and cement, often sand-colored or grey. The streets are the same dusty hue, mirroring the houses. Even trees in Karachi have a softer, more muted green about them. Unless it is monsoon season, the rain granting a momentary jewel richness to the surroundings. People wear color with a certain casualness—as if it is a given rather than a personal statement. From the laborer sitting by the side of the road with his tools to the elite aunty having coffee at a high-end store, you’ll see an abundance of teal, crimson, gold. The way the colors live comfortably side-by-side and on top of one another feels true to the experience of being in Karachi.

Family gatherings tend to be large. If you have any family in Pakistan, you soon realize you have hundreds of family members stitched together by stories. Stories that they will remember down to the detail. Stories you’ll have to ask forgiveness for forgetting—or feign familiarity with. And here, familiarity abounds. You may not have seen your third cousin for twenty years but they will greet you with a warmth that surprises you and an admonishment for not having come to visit sooner that will make you laugh. Years ago, it would have upset you to be met after so long with this demand of your time given the two of you are no longer well acquainted. But time and distance has managed to soften that perspective. A palpable undercurrent of affection runs through the encounter. One which you end with an apology for the oversight and a warm genuine hug. Then, you duck out of the conversation to meet an elder in your family who is holding court on the other side of the garden.

There are so many more things like that but none are the reason why you feel a material change in the atmosphere when you exit Karachi airport. You were a young adult when you left to study in New York. Coming back to your family house—your mother’s house—always feels like time travel. It’s a slight reversion, at least in the beginning, to the dynamics of being a daughter in your parents’ house. Especially with a parent who has waited the entire year for you to come home. Who has planted flowers timed to bloom with your arrival. Who, from her bedroom right next to yours, looks to see when your light turns on in the morning so you can spend time together. And who has spent a month in advance making sure everything is perfect for your arrival—flowers in your room, fresh bed covers, your favorite sweets in airtight jars and a flask of water by your bedside, a face wash she’s seen in your New York bathroom. Your every need preempted. When you sit together for a morning cup of tea and you shift your position, she worries you are leaving the room. Nobody, you feel with certainty, will love you quite as your mother does. Her yearning is a bated breath and makes it hard for you to breathe for a few moments.

The last few years, particularly the last few trips, have felt different. Ten years ago, every trip started with the feeling of a deep plunge into sub zero water, the body eventually acclimatizing and reminding itself of how much it enjoys that temperature. The moments of transition into the water during these last few trips have felt easier, less cold, even seamless. You realize a lot of it has to do with time, growing up, boundaries, love and acceptance on both sides. It feels so simple but you know how much hard work and growth went to get you to the point you are now.

The surprising thing that happens once a slightly different relationship is established with the place that was once your only home is that you realize that this water is deeper than you originally thought and once you allow yourself stillness, you can experience life in this ocean in ways you had not expected. Previous trips had been rushed comings and goings that left you slightly shell-shocked, filled with half-forgotten memories of simple things like where your clothes were, did you have something here or there, which friends saw you duck in and out. In a bracing against the yearning these trips inspired, you decided to visit twice a year—a decision that has changes things in a subtle but discernible way.

A shorter time between trips allows you to ease into them quicker. The layered complexities of where you grew up do not feel as all-encompassing. Your native tongue, which you worried was getting locked inside you for lack of use, flows easily once you are immersed in its usage. Relationships are quicker to pick back up as you say “I’ll be back soon.” You meet some family, you meet many friends, you perch on the edge of a balcony looking out at the school where you spent formative years of your life and the sea that rests like a blanket beyond its walls, you give a talk there. You eat pakoras and laugh with your mother as you try to organize and digitize 50 years of photo albums. You place a gentle hand on her shoulder when she tries very hard not to cry at the sight of all those she loved and lost. You take her out to shop with you and you see her quietly taking you in and perhaps even pretending for a few moments that you live here and you are running errands together—and you do not bring up the fact that you do not. You dive into large family gatherings filled with people; some who have known you since you were a child, some who have known you for less time and some, who like you, are feigning remembrance. You sit with your dearest friend at a cafe you always visit and laugh and cry over cups of coffee and a breakfast that stretches into brunch, even as the boundary of lunch looms. You take nightly walks in a loop that you hold dear. You remember what a gift it is to call two places home, two places where you blend into the streets. albeit for different reasons. New York brims with difference and so you blend in so easily amongst people, outfits and outlooks. Karachi welcomes you as a part of a collective where coming home means being absorbed into a community where you look and sound like many others.

And then it is time to go. But you’ll be back—and you mean it.

The Story

Looking over her shoulder was the wasteland of her past and yet, she knew, with absolute certainty that no future would exist without it.

An opening line can make or break a story. I was thinking about this as I read a series of essays recently that talked about how authors think about the creative process when it comes to their writing. In a completely different context, the acclaimed Belgian-American Psychotherapist Esther Perel often talks about how our lives are driven by stories. The stories we tell ourselves, the ones we believe in, how we relate to each other, our preconceptions about the roles we take in our lives.

She caught a glimpse of the old woman through the trees, and before she could blink, she was gone. Like she was never there.

I’ve also been thinking about my work as a creative. About how the things we buy tell us a story about who we are as individuals. And, by extension, who we are as a society. Sustainable products, for example, are a story about valuing the earth. Products free of animal testing tell a story about how we value other living things. Analogue products may tell many different stories including the need to disconnect or the need to slow down. Holding back on consumption also tells a story about a more intentional perspective, about waste or simply about inflation. We are surrounded by stories. Steeped in them. The story is a bridge—where our rich inner world meets our outer world.

Like you, throughout my life I have told myself, and been told many stories. The hardest stories, I think, are the ones you've been told are true that turn out to be fables. And by the time you learn this, you're so deep inside them, or perhaps they are so deep inside you, you can't tell the difference between story and fable until time or circumstance forces some perspective.

This is the story about being good, this is the story about being respectful, this is the story about being successful. It doesn't matter who you are, you have a story—multiple stories—that have made their home within you. Some are lightly touching you as we speak. This is not to say that stories are manipulative; they are inert. Stories are nothing in themselves. They exist when someone breathes life into them. They have the ability to open the door to possibility, imagination, and a life that may be different from the one you are sitting quite comfortably in right now.

She felt as the plane descended into a bitterly cold city, that the glimmering lights called to her in a new beginning.

It was here. Then it was gone. Such is the way life unfolds.

I grew up in a place rich with stories in many languages. As a child I was lovingly told stories about bears in woods, a slightly depressed donkey, and monsters. There were lessons of character in stories about unity, truth, courage and mettle. My childhood, and I imagine yours too, were filled with stories about how to live a good successful life.

For some time, when I was very young, I attended Catholic School. First, I will say, the Nuns who taught us were very determined. I went in with illegible spindly handwriting and came out with perfectly form cursive. All within ages seven to nine. Very efficient. This makes it sound like a typically Nun-run Catholic school but it was actually a really interesting education. We did start some mornings with Vespers but we also learnt Classical Dance, had choir and Activity classes with all sorts of crafts. I have a distinct memory of creating a disco ball with a series of things that did not start out looking like said disco ball. But the class that really stuck with me was called “Character Building” and its lesson was that the foundational characteristics you choose to fortify yourself with are akin to the foundation of a building. These qualities were often things like honesty, integrity, respect. The seriousness of building yourself brick by brick upon a strong foundation was impressed upon us many times. And the idea that if you didn’t, your building (you) would fall down without fail.

An opening appeared that allowed her to take a tentative step into the pause of possibility.

The only way out was through.

Growing up amongst a slew of male cousins, the story was: it is much more fun to be a boy. So, I climbed trees, roughhoused, played sports and cut my hair very short when I was 11. I was a tomboy. Once, someone in a park mistook me for a boy and it was the highlight of my little eleven-year-old day. Even then I enjoyed slipping in and out of concrete spaces. Then, as I inched towards fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—no pun intended—I grew taller by literal inches. I felt a little bit like a giraffe—very gangly, limbs in all directions.

Don’t get involved with boys was the story as I was growing up. As a teenager, I seemed to be a magnet, for the kind of trouble that is and isn't trouble. Quiet valentines, clandestine meetings, fumbling hand-holding at the back of a bus, tempestuous fights. It was a decided stumble through early dating that left me feeling all sorts of pointed feelings when very little was actually happening.

As she forced herself to fit into small places, she found pieces broke off to live their own secret lives elsewhere, in the cracks, in the dark and in the light.

There are stories about being good and responsible. Good has clear instructions; it was a straight and narrow line. But on either side of the very rickety Bridge of Goodness—a bridge whose builder was of unknown origin—is the chasm of bad reputation and a life of waste. Stories of how easy it was to fall from the bridge permeated every aspect of being. Responsibility is the wanted ending to the story. It is the reward of being good.

There are stories of excellence, mettle and hard work. A steadily ascending ladder with predictable outcomes (spoiler alert, there are no predictable outcomes) that began with a certain kind of education, a certain kind of career path and a certain kind of marriage. And I should add—a certain kind of privilege.

My favourite stories though, even as a child, are the ones that allow for dreaming. Stories that explore worlds powered by realities or imagination that, when I was young, I didn’t quite understand. That I sometimes still don’t understand but feel like an inkling of a different life. You know those stories. Filled with wonder, some dread and the kinds of rewards that don't start or end on rickety bridges of goodness.

I have always had a rich inner life. I consider it a survival mechanism and I have always been this way. Nourishing the ability to dream, to think analytically, intentionally and to create relationships that foster the world I would like to see is core to who I am as a person. Dreaming is a match that was lit inside me when I was very young. It illuminates the possibilities of ways of being that may be very different from my own. That light burns inside me insistently still. This kind of dreaming is not an optimism that discounts the realities of life or turns away from hard things. It orients me to the important things. Hope is an intentional orientation. Krista Tipett, the theologian and host of the much-loved podcast and show "On Being" has spoken about this in a way that I return to often:

“Hope is distinct, in my mind, from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open-eyed and wholehearted with the darkness that is woven inescapably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be.”

The space between how things are and how they could be—those are the stories I am interested in. The lives we want to lead are in that space between. I believe before we are able to see things become real, we have to have an inkling, a tiny lit match of what it could be. By engaging with stories of other people, other places and other ways of being, even imagined, we create a map of possibility that is not anchored in fear, but is a considered orientation of hope.

There is no end to the stories we are told throughout our lives, no end to what we can absorb. Stories of marriage, partnerships, financial boundaries, risk, reward and how to live a life. They range a gamut of themes and emotions—of love, guilt, religious constructs, fear, delight, joy. I believe listening to all these stories is one way we dismantle unfixable structures, to take down scaffolding for ideas that don't serve us or make us smaller. By breathing life into stories together, we no longer traverse a rickety bridge to perceived goodness on our own. We sail across an ocean to possibilities together.