You’ve probably heard the expression that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. So now I’m wondering if learning the same lesson over and over but not really learning it amounts to the same thing.
My husband and I are amateur jugglers. We know how to juggle. We have fun juggling. We love teaching anyone who wants to learn how to juggle. That’s the extent of it. About 25 years ago, friends of ours asked us to juggle in their wedding. “Sure,” I said, without skipping a beat. My husband wasn’t so enthusiastic, and started bugging me about coming up with some sort of routine. All that summer on the beach before the wedding he would say, “Nance, we have to have a routine. There has to be a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
I think I must have been going through menopause then, because every time he suggested rehearsing, I was lying down in the sand, not wanting to move. I would say, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll just juggle. We don’t need an act. We’ll be fine.”
The day of the big celebration came, and we still hadn’t actually done anything in the way of a performance per se. The ceremony was held at a place called Opus 40 in Woodstock, N.Y. It was 40 acres of quarry on multiple levels of exquisite, gunmetal-gray slate. The bride and groom were on one level, and the minister was on another, and all the guests were watching from yet another level. The water was bubbling below, and the setting couldn’t have been more beautiful. When the “I dos” had been spoken and the couple had kissed, the minister said, “And now Nancy and Joel, dear friends, would like to share their gift to close the service.”
Joel and I stepped forward onto a small outcropping of stone and began. And I — yup, me — the one who was too lazy to practice the entire three months, dropped the first ball tossed. It bounced three times until it finally made its way down into the water below, making the loudest echoey kerplunk in juggling history. And then, if that weren’t bad enough, their dear friend, Nancy, me, moi, the one who was too lazy and did not honor her friends, said in the loudest voice in juggling history, one word, just one word, and that word was, “F___!”
And it’s on their wedding video! There is a recording of guests arriving in their finest, couples hand in hand, wildflowers gently swaying in the summer breeze, the lilting music from three violins and two flutes, and me, the dear friend who was supposed to be capping off the celebration with a flourish, was swearing at top volume, the one word you wouldn’t want on your wedding video.
There is one tiny piece of good news, and that is that three months later, the happy couple got divorced (well, that’s not the good news) but the video is probably in a garbage bin somewhere.
After my faux pas, I was a little embarrassed but I thought, It wasn’t like we were hired or anything. We were just a bit of fluff to send people off to the fancy reception. And I managed to rationalize my guilt.
I had another one of those lessons that threatened not to stick, and this one interestingly involved juggling as well. This one was about 18 years ago. Joel and I were asked to juggle in a New Year’s Eve program at the Tisbury School. There was only one rehearsal at Grace Church. It wasn’t really a rehearsal. All we did was sort through boxes of costumes, pick out clownish, funny things to wear, and were told a magician was coming before us and a unicyclist was coming after us.
They said three minutes of juggling would be great. It seemed to be as casual an affair as you could imagine. Once again, Joel said, “Shouldn’t we have a kind of act”? And (I’m warning you, I don’t come out good here) I said, ‘it’s just kids. We’ll be fine.’
That night we walked into the gym and were shocked to find about 200 eager children and their doting parents ringing the entire floor and filling the bleachers. The entertainment began, and on our cue Joel and I burst onto the floor juggling our little hearts out. Everything was going swimmingly. But way past the allotted three minutes the next act didn’t appear. So we kept juggling and looking and juggling and craning our necks looking for the unicyclist. Finally I saw the woman who was the “director” gesturing wildly from behind the curtain for us to please keep going.
So Joel and I started to dance, big exaggerated moves trying to be funny. Did I mention we are not professional jugglers or performers? And that there was no laughter? While I continued to clump around the floor trying to be amusing, Joel picked up the pins and did something he had never attempted before, something he had seen clowns do on television shows. It was kind of a hyperbolic throwing of the pins, way, way, way up, and then fake-dropping them with a clown look of despair. But since he had never done it before, it wasn’t fake. It was real, and he was way too close to the edge of the circle, and the pins started falling everywhere, missing little kids by a hair. Mothers were grabbing their children and pulling them to safety. The giggles turned to horror, and Joel and I ran off the stage and out to the car.
On the way home, we were quiet. Finally, in my most defensive voice, I said, “They were the ones who screwed up. They left us out there dying a slow death. What were we supposed to do?”
Joel said nothing.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept asking myself why I hadn’t taken the whole thing more seriously. And who did I think I was blaming? And the next morning with shame for breakfast, I heard myself: “They’re just kids.” I had actually said, “They’re just kids.” After I beat myself up for about a month, I began to process the arrogance of that word, just.
And right then and there I vowed that there can be no “just” anything. That everything is precious, and everything deserves the full weight of my respect and honoring. And I thought I was doing pretty well, until yesterday, when walking in Gay Head, two enormous birds with huge wingspans flew right past us at eye level, and I said with such awe, “OMG, were those ospreys?” And then I looked closer, and finished the sentence with, “Or just seagulls.”
As Ram Dass used to say when he caught himself still asleep, “not cooked yet.” Looks like I have more marinating to do.
