On "Wanting" and "Happening": The Easter / Passover Edition

Happy Easter!

I woke up this morning to find that my flatmate's (J's) blind and deaf dog had "escaped" from J's room (where Freckles is kept, through the use of a child safety gate) and had mistaken our living room for the great outdoors, leaving me numerous presents to clean up, as J is away in Boston. I wasn't really upset -- the dog can't actually see where she's using the bathroom and had been doing quite well until today -- but the incident did make me slightly late to drive the bus for "breakfast run" (i.e. private school kids wake up on a Sunday morning to feed and clothe New York City's homeless) and, furthermore, seemed to echo with a theme I've been thinking about lately.

Back in March, when my job was killing me and I came to the realization that all-nighters were not just a high school / college phenomenon, a student sent me an e-mail, with the revision of an assigment that I had mandated to be due on that day. He writes of the rather hurriedly compiled attempt, "I know this is what neither you nor I wanted, but it happened.... Sorry."

The next night (I actually didn't realize how closely these incidents coincided till just this moment), a rather clean breakup happened (to me?) that, nevertheless, left my heart chafed and fraying at the edges for a little while, as these things do. During the initial discussions and throughout the aftermath, both I and the other party reverted to excuses that more or less boiled down to the line my student had given me. "Neither of us want this, but so it must be... for the greater good... for the best... as it happens.... Sorry."

Today, breakfast run finished later than it usually does, so I listened to a Mass on the radio while I searched for a nearby church that I had looked up the night before in case of that very occurrence. I had meant to go to a non-denominational service, but somehow -- after serendipitously finding parking on an Easter Sunday morning -- ended up at a Catholic one. I haven't been to a Catholic service on my own since freshman year at Amherst; it was not, precisely, what I had wanted, but I figured that it would, as it were, "do." But this is what I love (and occasionally don't love) about Catholic churches. Ultimately, they're more or less the same. Although the service I was listening to on the radio took place at a different location than the church I was in, when I entered, exactly the same song was being sung -- it was as if I was able to pick up right where I had left off.

Now, being religious, I am often wont to attribute the coincidences in life that I don't understand to God's work. In this vein, I attributed my happening upon this church that allowed me to have a somewhat steady Easter Sunday church experience, despite my being terribly late, to some greater purpose -- greater good, as it were -- that I cannot fathom and may not always correspond with what I "want." Yet I wonder about the ways in which we as humans (wherever we fall on the religious/non-religious scale) use the excuse "this is not what I wanted, but it happened" to disguise our choices and allow us to do exactly what we want -- the very opposite of what we maintain -- by allowing us not to shoulder the consequences of those choices. We prioritize our lives and often conflate our needs and our wants, choosing steadily along the way and eliminating the time and opportunity for other choices that are not as high on the priority list. Yet, when unfavorable events "happen," we excuse ourselves as if we had not chosen some other greater want (or 'need') that created the adverse effect in the first place.

Now, of course, we cannot see all the ripples, effects and after-effects of our choices and our wants. But often the ones we excuse are the ones we are able to see; the others, unforeseen, catch us so off-guard that we struggle to rationalize them afterward, rather than beforehand. As for Freckles, the blind and deaf dog, I was the person who opened the door of J's room while J was gone, and reinstalled the child safety gate was the only barrier. As such, I am partially responsible for Freckles' error; it is much easier for a dog to push down a child safety gate than it is for a dog to open a door. It is true, neither Freckles, nor Jess, nor I wanted Freckles to interpret the living room as a world green with morning possibility, but it happened, and I stayed late to clean up the mess. I didn't need to consign the event to any greater good, though it fit rather serendipitously into this narrative; I did need -- and manage -- to forgive Freckles, and myself.

May you all have a wonderful week. Any thoughts or comments are, as usual, appreciated.

Much love,
Katherine