Disclaimers as Mirrors

Essay: The price tag of stories

Hello. This is Unframed.

This week my backyard rained a beautiful parade of orange and yellow leaves from the giant crepe myrtle tree. That’s the same tree gifted to me 20 years ago by a neighbor. I remember her generosity along with her utter awkwardness with all things tech. I was single, a web designer and a first-time homebuyer who knew nothing about planting. She knew nothing about websites and needed help, so she helped install a small, one foot shrub in the perfect spot I claimed for it in exchange for help with her website.

Several weeks later, I received a response to a previous e-mail chain she sent to me and other neighbors. In her response, she outwardly condemned and criticized me to all those included on it. I was initially shocked and confused until I realized she had apparently neglected to drop me from the e-mail chain, by mistake. I remember the rage, confusion, and disgust when I read her words and I wanted to immediately rip that tiny plant with my bare hands out of the ground and dramatically throw it onto her porch in retribution. I chose not to. She ultimately apologized for her technical faux pas and admitted her poor choice of judgement. She moved out of the neighborhood shortly thereafter and we never spoke again.

About 15 years later, she contacted me via social media and apologized again, saying she had never forgotten how unfair it was of her to judge me. I thanked her, said it was indeed harsh, but admitted to her that the things she said about me were actually correct— that I was young and naive at the time, quite unbalanced in my day-to-day… and that I also hoped she had developed better e-mail skills.

All these years later, the price tag of this story is that I cannot look at that giant crepe myrtle in my yard without interpreting a deep contrasting sense of revolt and pleasure. There are days that tree feels like a warm embrace, cradling my mornings and afternoons with gratitude and there are other days when its memory taunts me with awkward feelings. I realize the absurdity of having so many feelings toward a tree, but unfazed by my feelings or perceptions, it not only blooms religiously, it has grown beyond 30 feet (10 meters) into the largest, oldest and healthiest tree in my backyard. Clearly, beauty has no inherent story to tell. It allows us to use it to tell our own. And it can dance between both pain and pleasure.

The known and the unknowable stories represented by this last week’s presidential election for our country remind me of the back story on my crepe myrtle. Between hope, confusion, disgust and the painful recognition of judgments made, even those judgments of oneself as being a victim, no one can control anything but themselves and their own actions now. The stories we hear, interpret and tell mostly fail to paint an accurate picture, though we believe they do. We get swept away in the emotional upheaval that judgment brings without firm confirmation of what is true or what might be down the road. Yet not knowing or being certain does not preclude that we should not embrace a higher moral ground, to be idealists, battle on, and stay on our own path.

I watched the final episode of the Apple series, Disclaimer tonight. The plot forces its viewers to become the judgers of the truth. Along the journey, however, we as the audience are exposed for being complicit in favoring one voice over the other. It is a perfect depiction of the irrevocable damage that can cause harm by believing stories told to us and acting upon them with vengeance. I too, am guilty as charged. This week, I became judge and jury, throwing the gavel down in condemnation. I immortalized my perceptions like trophies without examining them. Though completely human and natural, I finally was able to ask: “What is in me that is creating such a visceral response?” Anger. Fury. Righteousness! “But what is underneath that, really?” Fear. I’m afraid for my country, the world. “Fear is normal, but how can I responsibly and humanely respond within and without? How do I be with this going forward?”

I stared at the crepe myrtle today, reflecting on its dichotomy of pleasure and pain over the years. Suddenly, a downy woodpecker landed in quick succession — a first branch, to a second branch, then he paused uncharacteristically. Camera in hand, I lowered my lens and paused in unison. He glared directly at me for a moment, turned back to the branch and began his focused, jackhammer pecking that I’m accustomed to seeing. There are many symbolic interpretations of woodpeckers that ring true, but industrious in his own right, the woodpecker is to me, a symbol of change and responsibility. He cannot afford to interact much, but instead, focus on what is ahead, what he needs to do and how he needs to do it.

I pulled in the images of the woodpecker. It seemed organic, my decision. My post-election disclaimer (turned mirror) would be replaced with a commitment to this statement made in a 1913 journal article, more famously quoted as “Be the change”:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” - Mahatma Gandhi

"Inspiration arrives like a passing shadow, momentarily illuminating thoughts we had yet to fully understand. These reflections—whether captured in verse, essay, or prose—are fragments of that light, moments framed by the mind’s lens and the quiet whispers that stir a pause."

All photos ©www.juliettemansour.com