who we are
By Pam Linn
I recently spent way too many hours in a lawyer’s office answering questions, most of which I had already answered in writing. Filling out the “rogs” (lawyer speak for interrogatories, basic fact finding to you and me) had taken many nights. I wasted weeks trying to find documents requested by the insurer of a negligent driver who broke my hip long ago.
This fact-finding mission required that I muck out my files looking for 10 years of tax returns and medical records. Any member of an HMO knows patients don’t even see all their records, and the few they do see are handwritten by a physician who flunked longhand in third grade. Penmanship that now may as well be Sanskrit. My regular physician (primary care provider) couldn’t even read it. No wonder 170,000 luckless victims die of medical mistakes here every year.
Ever since downsizing my living quarters, I keep only what my accountant says to keep and shred the rest. Who has room for boxes of receipts and bank statements? Besides, my limited space is given to negative and slide files, newspaper clippings and whole sections from as far back as 1988. Talk about irrelevant.
My best reference source is a collection of old daybooks. The stack of four-by-six appointment calendars takes up less shelf space than a good dictionary and testifies less to an orderly mind than to an anal retentive personality.
Still, in thumbing through them, I discovered where I was meant to be on any given day since 1994 and telephone numbers of people whose names I scarcely recall. But what struck me most was how many fun things I’d planned to do and then missed; the dates, times and places listed with a line drawn through.
At the time, I’m sure I said I’d really like to do that but I just don’t have time. Isn’t that what we all say? I have too much to do. But did I? What did I actually accomplish that was worth missing something really interesting? Did I really have too much to do? And what would happen if I didn’t?
Looking back, there were a whole bunch of tasks I could have skipped, postponed or just pigged up and refused to do. I see this same frustration in my daughter who says every Saturday morning that she has so many things to do, she won’t have time to ride her horse or go for a hike or just play with the kids and the dog. Well, what are weekends for anyway?
Once when I was totally stressed out-on serious overload-a wise doctor told me that first I should learn to say no. Practice the next time someone asks you to do something, he said. In the nicest way possible, just say, Sorry, maybe next time. Then make that your “found” time and do something fun with it. Or read a book, listen to music, do yoga or just look at something beautiful. A painting, a flower, the landscape, whatever makes you feel peaceful.
My younger sister has mastered this even though her teaching job demands a lot. She can say no and not feel guilty about it. Awhile back she told me in connection to this insurance thing that it might be worth something just to have it over with. But I’m sure claims adjusters and attorneys, those masters of professional foot-dragging, count on this ploy to wear out their claimants.
I had been warned that the attorney who would take my deposition might test my patience with redundant questions, tax my memory with minutiae and just plain wear me out and make me want to get it over with.
However, the attorney was polite, even friendly, admitting the interrogation might be somewhat tedious. I must admit I liked him, though trust may be going a bit far. We’ll see. But what the process of reliving the accident and all that came after it clarified for me was how few of the things I say I have to do really matter to anybody.
The truth is, some of us tend to justify our existence by how much we do, what we accomplish. And when we get worn out, we feel a failure. It’s as though being really busy is our raison d’être. I guess we mix up what we do with who we are.
Let’s see now. When I shut down my computer, I won’t refile my papers or do the recycling or restitch the rip in my granddaughter’s bedspread. Instead, I think I’ll go sit on my garden bench and enjoy the fall color. A birch and a cottonwood turned bright yellow, three maples in apricot and crimson. And my favorite, a smokebush literally aflame, a wonder of nature.
Of course, I should go down and pick the apples and pears hanging ripe in the orchard. Or maybe not.