The misheard quote I try to live by

… and the difference it's made

Hello everyone—

I want share with you a quote that changed my life 16 years ago, when I became mom to 3-year-old Max.

I continue to hold onto it in this Sandwich Season as Max eases into adulthood, and as I process the experience of losing my mom and watching my dad age.

It’s from Seane Corn, an internationally known yoga teacher and activist, who in 2008 was interviewed on NPR’s Speaking of Faith. The theme was “Yoga, meditation in action,” and in that broadcast, I heard her say this:

Be fully committed to the process and hold no attachment to the end result.

You’ll notice that I didn’t put those words in quotation marks. That’s because they are the words I thought I heard—what I wrote down and posted on my bulletin board.

However, when I recently found the transcript of that show, I realized that Corn actually said something a little bit different:

“Dignify the human experience with love and have no attachment to the end results.” 

Either way—bam!

I don’t remember exactly what I was doing as listened to that broadcast 16 years ago, but I do recall the effect it had on me. It was as if I was sitting at the bottom of a deep, dark well and a rescue rope dropped down before my eyes. Something to grab onto.

Not to overstate it, but this was one of those moments that divides a life in two: the life I lived before hearing the idea and the life I lived after.

“Dignify the human experience with love and have no attachment to the end results.” 

—Seane Corn

My well

The well I sat in was a place of my own making, one filled with hopes and dreams and expectations.

Jon and I had gone to India to adopt Max in February of that year. As it happened, it was just as the subprime mortgage crisis was unfolding. We returned to Washington state with Max as the crisis began impacting the homebuilding company where Jon worked as controller.

So instead of staying home for a week to settle in with Max and me, Jon hightailed it back to the office.

Meanwhile, Max’s settling-in process was less than smooth. We had anticipated a period of readjustment as he adapted to being part of our family, to a new language, to new foods, new environment, new everything.

But we didn’t expect the tantrums, so many tantrums. These weren’t just a little boy lying on the floor, kicking and screaming. These were tantrums-in-motion, typhoon-like rages that caused me to fear for the safety of Max, myself and the house. I often held Max through these storms, trying to calm him while containing him and his huge feelings. Some days I held him for a combined total of four hours. Yes, I timed it.

Meanwhile, Jon was away at his office, dealing with crises. He was buried in data, all of it grim. Jobs were at stake, the company was at stake. He worked late, he worked weekends.

My dream of what it would be like to become a family of three broke down, transformed into a desire to simply survive.

So yeah, I descended into a well of disappointment. This was not how I thought our story would go.

But “thought” is hardly even the right word. I was dealing less with thoughts than with assumptions, deeply held despite all of the reading and research and training we had gone through in the adoption process. We had been told to expect challenges. We did expect challenges.

So I knew better, but I assumed we would experience more sunshine and roses.

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Letting go

Central among my assumptions was the idea that adopting a child who needed a family and showering him with love and attention would give him everything he needed to build a life that resembled the one we had known.

I envisioned a largely peaceful home life filled with trips to the park, easy playdates and cookie-baking. I imagined him in the future heading off to college and becoming some sort of white-collar professional, like Jon and me.

We were surrounded by people who seemed to share this assumption and others.

A fellow adoptive mom: Just give him six months, she assured me. Everything will smooth out. (It did not.) 

The school district: I showed up and said, My child is having all sorts of challenges—he isn’t settling in, he isn’t speaking, he isn’t doing all of the usual things. The special education director told me, Don’t worry, he’s just settling in, come back in six months. (He didn’t. So I did.)

Our pediatrician: When I expressed concerns, he responded with sentences that started with, Oh, Mom … . (I felt dismissed. Later I learned my hunches and concerns were right on.)

We were in for a long, drawn-out slog. And yet I held out hope that this slog would lead to success, would lead to a life I could understand, would lead to a life similar to my own.

But all that hope did was put a lot of pressure on me to make the outcome I imagined … happen. It caused me to try to control the direction of Max’s life, to “fix” his life, to “fix” our life, to turn my naïve assumptions into reality.

Then I heard Seane Corn say that sentence:

“Dignify the human experience with love and have no attachment to the end results.” 

And I realized I had to stop looking for ways to get Max and us to that future I assumed was out there.

Corn’s words gave me permission to recognize that I had no idea where our crazy ship was headed. Something shifted in me.

I started to let go. I started to get more present.

Post-it notes photo by Brands&People on Unsplash. I think my actual Post-it note with the quote is in a box somewhere.

A quote for all seasons

That message I heard back in 2008—which I tacked to my bulletin board and now carry with me in my mind—is about being present, staying in the moment. It’s the idea that life is not about the outcomes. It is about the process.

And there are so many processes! I’ve returned to the quote again and again in our parenting journey, not to mention during this past year or so of daughtering, of walking through life’s transitions with my parents: their move and downsizing, my mom’s passing and my dad’s health challenges.

Add to that our move into their house, Max’s move out of our house and, tomorrow, his graduation from high school.

Nothing has gone as I assumed it would go or planned. More and more I’m seeing all of these transitions less as end results than parts of a larger journey.

And if, as Corn suggested back in 2008, we fill that journey with love—dignify it with love—shouldn’t the destination work itself out … eventually … anyway? 

Similar song, second verse

Recently I heard the writer, teacher and activist Parker J. Palmer say something that I think expands on the idea I heard from Corn, something I might not have been entirely ready to hear back in 2008. Speaking with Emily P. Freeman on The Next Right Thing podcast, he said:

“I think somewhere deep in the spiritual journey for me is this notion that there’s something off-kilter about working in order to achieve a particular outcome. Better that you be called or even driven by a sense that this is my work to do whatever the outcome may be …” (italics mine).

Whether we’re talking about parenting or caregiving or vocation or home renovation, what I’m coming to realize is that journeys take time, and often we don’t know where or how far they are going to take us.

Palmer went on to say:

“We live in a culture that's always asking, ‘So what results are you getting?’ We live in a culture that's always saying, ‘So you planted those seeds, let’s pull them up right now to see if they're growing yet.’ And I think in the process we kill a lot of stuff off.”

(You can hear the rest of the interview in the episode titled “Finding Vocational Clarity.”)

Journeys certainly don’t happen on our schedules. And I think all the milestones we’re offered—developmental, educational, career, relational—set us up to plan for outcomes we have no control over.

What I have learned is that looking for results too soon and comparing our results with others’ serves little purpose beyond breaking our hearts.

Better that you be called or even driven by a sense that this is my work to do whatever the outcome may be.

—Parker J. Palmer

In my case, I could never have imagined it would take 16 years of hard parenting before Max and I would start to click in a whole new way—and I sure didn’t expect this to happen after he moved out, a couple of months before high school graduation.

And I had no expectation when we decided to move back to my hometown nearly four years ago that my mom and I would experience healing in our relationship as she prepared to leave this world.

But these things happened and are happening—outcomes I didn’t plan for, hope for or even imagine. As I see it, they came about only because I kept putting one foot in front of the other and tried to stay present, tried to stay loving, because I didn’t know what else to do.

What I’m learning from this season of endings and beginnings—and from the powerful words of others—is that perhaps the best I can do is this:

• listen for and discern my callings,

• stay in the moment as much as possible,

• love my way as well as I can through whatever life deals us, and

• celebrate the treasures that emerge whenever, wherever and however they do.

Blessings to you all,

Sarah

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Share your thoughts

Do you have a quote you live by?

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A reading recommendation

Over the past year I have been thoroughly enjoying Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, both in audiobook and paper form. The writing is witty, and the characters are delightful.

The plots follow four residents of an English retirement community who solve crimes that stump local law enforcement.

These books honor the fact that seniors carry with them treasure troves of knowledge, skills and life experiences. They also deal with challenges of aging, including societal and their own children’s expectations, health problems like dementia, dealing with technology, etc.

These are indeed books for Sandwich Season times.

Today I noticed that the first book in the series, The Thursday Murder Club, is on sale on Amazon … so I had to share.