JUST THE WAY YOU ARE

I recently read an article on Oscar Wilde from the Times of India. 

"Wilde valued individuality above almost everything. He saw conformity as a kind of spiritual sleepwalking. In his view, living authentically was the highest form of art." 

A few short years ago I taught a certain student I'll call Zena. 

The quiet of my home dissolved the second she crossed the threshold, her scarf a flash of marigold yellow against the dark wood trim, bringing the outside air in with her like a draft from an open window. 

She didn't walk to the piano so much as spring toward it. Settling on the edge of the bench, she played, her whole upper body dancing to the cadence, bangles clicking against the keyboard. 

Later, when she studied writing with me, she abandoned the table entirely. She sprawled out on her stomach across the rug, ankles kicking in the air, her purple gel pen moving in quick, furious swoops across a legal pad. 

She didn't write in straight lines; her thoughts spilled into the margins, loop-de-looping around the edges as if a single page couldn't hold everything she was trying to get out at once. 

At the time I was writing an article, "What Do You Do When Your Muse is on Vacation?" So, I asked her that question. She didn't think twice. 

"Why let something as fickle as inspiration hold you back? You're a writer! MAKE something happen! And if your inspiration does decide to show up while you're working, tell it to get in line. You have writing to do." 

~*~ 

When she went off to college, the bright colors began to bleed out of her. The marigold scarf was replaced by an oversized gray hoodie; the wild loop-de-loop purple ink yielded to rigid lines typed into a screen. 

She was still Zena, but her voice no longer sounded like it belonged to her. The wellspring of her own odd, brilliant thoughts had been capped, replaced by a careful chorus of borrowed ideas. 

She spoke in a rehearsed cadence, quoting headlines she hadn't written and holding opinions she hadn't forged. 

"Most people are other people," Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis. "Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Watching that high-spirited mind retreat into groupthink felt like watching a window freeze over from the inside. 

The break came on a Tuesday in my living room. She sat stiffly on the sofa and unceremoniously dropped a divisive, buzzword-heavy slogan into the quiet air between us. 

It wasn't an original thought; it was an ultimatum wrapped in a catchphrase. The sheer dualism in it snapped something in me. 

Before I could catch myself, I matched her heat with my own, volleying back words I wished I could pluck right out of the air the moment they left my mouth. 

She left, and the silence she left behind was heavy. 

~*~

For years, Zena frequented my sleep. My subconscious kept hauling us back to the drawing board, trying to solve an equation that wouldn't balance. 

Then came the final dream. 

We were back at the piano, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the wooden bench. The sheet music open between us was a duet - her hands taking the primo, mine anchoring the secondo. 

She played her measure alone, clear and distinct. Then I played mine. Then, without a word, our hands blended across middle C, fingers running together over the keys like dancers taking the stage. 

Across the top of the yellowed page, the title read: I Love You Just the Way You Are.

It was a quiet, unearned grace. 

The challenge wasn't to change her back, or even to agree with the chorus she had joined. It was simply to hold space for the girl with the purple gel pen while accepting the woman sitting beside me on the bench. 

I'm still working on it. I recently saw a T-shirt ad featuring a grumpy cat clutching a coffee mug, the caption reading, Jesus loves you. And I'm trying. 

That about sums it up. Loving without condition is holy work, but down here in the living room, maybe the trying is the love.