We haven't written about default rules for a while. I still read other peoples' with great interest. I think there's a lot of wisdom and saved energy in default rules. And yet I'm still sheepish, somehow, about this interest. Why do I think self-improvement is shameful? It's my strongest, clearest, most constant impulse. I'm not sure it's responsible for my being my best self -- if I'm honest, my best self shows up when I'm not paying so much attention, it comes from authentic curiosity and a tendency to blurt. But the quest to be better feels like growth, and it feels like clarity, and it feels like open-mindedness, and it feels like humility. All these things are worthwhile. So I should be unconflicted about my interest in default rules and studies on positive psychology and lists and self-help systems. Why do I feel like I shouldn't speak of it?
It's just so cheesy. There's so much stupid fluff out there. There's so much vagueness, and flowery powderpuff groovy lameness. There's so much hyperjocked up biz-speak buzzword caffeinated go-out-and-conquer "coaching," by mediocre thinkers who believe they are visionaries. There's so much BAD WRITING. It makes me feel like the audience for self-improvement is a bunch of suckers, and I feel sheepish for being among them. (Some exceptions: Gretchen is smart, if disarmingly earnest. The positive psychology blog is at least heavily footnoted, even if sometimes a little bit chirpy and buzzword heavy.)
So that's why I haven't written about my default rules lately. (And you're thinking, geez, Sherry, self-improvement is the incessant drumbeat with you. You write about it ALL THE TIME.) But today I was reminded of one of my biggest default rules: Just Show Up.
You might remember that last year, one of the students I coached died in a car accident. Good lord, friend. I was not prepared for that. I was not prepared for what I would feel. And I'm ashamed to say, I was not prepared to lead my team. I'm ashamed of that because I spent a lot of time worrying about that part, worrying about how I should look and act, how to model strength and grace and grief "the right way" for the other students on the team. I didn't know my team well enough, I didn't know myself well enough, I didn't know Nick well enough, I'd never experienced sudden loss before, I didn't know what to say or feel or do, and I thought everyone else was feeling things deeper or harder or more rationally or different. I thought that in my blundering incompetence and inexperience I would somehow do more harm to good people who were sad who I really didn't want to make any sadder.
If I could have avoided the whole thing, just kept my eyes on the floor, mumbled a little, sent a card, and spent a bunch of days crying on my sofa, eating cheese and watching bad television with a dog on top of me, that's what I would have preferred, because that was all I was sure I could do. But I was the coach. I had to go to the campus memorial service, and talk to the deans, and arrange a team session with the counseling office, and show up for that. And when the campus arranged for a bus to go down to Nick's hometown for the funeral, I had to go.
Megan, have you ever hovered around the outside of a cocktail party conversation, waiting to get up the nerve to talk to someone you half-want to meet, but half-fear? You wonder if you should interrupt and say hello, but as you stand there watching them and waiting for your moment you start to talk yourself out of it, because on second thought, you don't know what you would say anyway, and they probably want to keep talking to those people, and why are you even here? Now imagine you are a coach of a team and a first year student has died, and you don't know how to be a leader or even really how to be human, you don't know what the rules are here, and you are standing in a church basement after a memorial service, waiting on the outskirts of a conversation with the dead student's red-eyed parents. The feeling, that sense of inadequate trepidation. As I was shifting from leg to leg one of my students came over to me and said, "should I get the others?" I nodded. And he went and got five or six of the other team members, all uncomfortable in their suits and dress shoes, and they lined up behind me. If I could have chickened out, I still would have, Megan.
And then a person turned to me, one of the deans, and drew me in to the conversation. "Let me introduce Sherry," he said, and I stepped forward and my team shuffled up behind me and Nick's parents opened up their arms to me and to the team and said, "Thank you for making our son so happy." What grace they had, these two parents. All the self-consciousness I had, all the stupid insignificant words I had been fixating about saying, silly speeches I had dreamed up and dismissed, all that kind of disappeared. They told me that Nick never took his sailing team jacket off, that he had been telling them all about the team the night that he died. And we had a real conversation, all of us, about our shared memories. That conversation changed my life in so many ways -- it was a gift to me and to all the team; it changed our sense of ourselves and of one another. I wish I could explain it in a better way, what finally sunk in there in the church basement. I got how much it mattered that we showed up, ill-fitting suits and inadequate words and all. You don't have to fix things for other people, or even know what to do. You just have to show up, and you can figure out the rest later.
I've stayed in touch with Nick's parents and I look forward to each time I talk to them. It's hard to explain how people with whom I have such a morbid connection can be so uplifting, especially because they don't sugarcoat the difficulty of their experience. I used to be afraid of sadness in other people, like it was a contagious illness or something, like I could either catch it or make it worse. They have taught me a different approach: acknowledging, and sharing a little bit. Today they came to campus for a regatta we host, which we renamed this year in honor of Nick. The new coach invited me to say a few words at the skippers' meeting. I talked about who Nick was and what he taught us, about taking delight in what you do, learning what you don't know and teaching what you've learned, seeking out beauty and supporting your friends. I thought I'd be able to give my little speech to the sailors without crying, but I wasn't. But I think I'm finally getting that it isn't the eloquence of your speech or the composure you have when you deliver it. It's being brave enough to show up without knowing exactly what to say, and letting grace happen when it will.