May was a good reminder that sometimes I shouldn’t tie everything to goals, a lesson I am constantly learning. Intense – that is the best word I can think of to describe this past month for me:
- I spent time in North Carolina visiting my family, and celebrated my brother getting engaged(!!!),
- I got fully vaccinated, which basically knocked me out for an entire week,
- I started teaching yoga in person again, which meant hours of crafting flows and making playlists and remembering how to cue and project and lead an hour-long class, in a mask no less,
- I returned to my office for the first time since February 2020, and discovered that I am still full of social anxiety but also had some lovely and genuine in person interactions with people who have only existed on my screen for the past year,
And of course all of the other bits of life that are going on all the time, like training for my first sprint triathlon, like spending time with Bobby learning how to make our little blended family thrive, like occasional (and dramatic) emotional breakdowns that require phone calls to my mom and ice cream to cure. Like trying to read really difficult books in the midst of really difficult life.
Sometimes I love the challenge of books. I love reading that forces me to focus on every word, underlining constantly, to fully grasp some idea or image that’s not my own. Other times I love easy-to-read books that can be trite but familiar. And occasionally I struggle to match the right book to the current moment.
This month would have been a great month for re-reading old favorites or picking up new fiction, but instead I forced myself to finish all 789 pages of Jill Lepore’s history of the United States, which I started in February. It was a struggle, to say the least, and unfortunately I don’t think I was able to comprehend the fully depth and breadth of what Lepore accomplished with this book when so many other things were filling my brain. It’s one I will most likely re-read the next time I look for a good challenge, but heading into June, it’s all beach reads for me!
#15: These Truths by Jill Lepore
As the back cover of the book describes, “the American experiment rests on three ideas—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?”
This question of whether “we the people” have lived up to our declared mission is the framing for Lepore’s history of America, and the answer is a resounding yet hopeful “not yet.” Lepore covers major events we all think we understand with astounding detail and introduced me to so many aspects of history I didn’t realize existed at all, all while staying laser focused on this thesis. Reading the book left me exhausted, but optimistic, and eager as ever to be part of the change.
The most resonant piece of the book for me was the prevalence of truth versus lies. In 1644 the Puritan poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, published a pamphlet arguing against censorship of any book before printing on the ground that “truth could only be established if allowed to do battle with lies,” and that people are more than capable of discerning between the two when allowed to think for themselves. This belief in human’s ability to reason has been challenged, bent, and broken, ever since.
The book ends abruptly, as history does, when it butts up against the then present day of Donald Trump’s election. In her epilogue Lepore places responsibility squarely on the new generation of Americans, on you, reading this post, to reckon with the same realities and distortions of those before us, and to forge our own path forward.