Emotional Agility

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” - Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

Hello dialogue artists,

and thanks for that great Zoom experience last night. Our dialogues are already part of Calgary’s culture. I’d like to suggest emotional agility as a goal for our next stage of growth. This TED talk by Susan David https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_david_the_gift_and_power_of_emotional_courage?language=en

Susan David: The gift and power of emotional courage | TED Talk

Psychologist Susan David shares how the way we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters: our actions, careers, relationships, health and happiness. In this deeply moving, humorous and potentially life-changing talk, she challenges a culture that prizes positivity over emotional truth and discusses the powerful strategies of emotional agility.

www.ted.com

includes profound insights that can give us wings. To develop our very own Calgary version of emotional agility, we can use our imagination for creative writing. Last night I mentioned an idea whereby we would find a writing partner who could help us develop a story based on one of their own memories, with a character in the story based on the writing partner herself (or himself). For example, Odile might be willing to be my writing partner for a short story we would co-author, based on a memory she has from her teenage years. To illustrate what might take off if we did this, I’ll append below a short story “Memory of a Loss,” based on something my father told me (my mother was no longer available to be my writing partner, alas) about something that had happened to my mother in 1944. We can do better than this, and I use my story here only to illustrate the concept. By co-authoring stories in this way, we can use our emotions, including our negative emotions, as sources for fine short stories and with experience we can steadily enhance our emotional agility within the Calgary dialogue network.

Will we actually be able to achieve this? We would have to run the experiment to know the result. I have an idea for starting the next story based on this idea, and I may be able to get started next week. Meanwhile, if anyone would like to volunteer to be a writing partner with me or with someone else, just let us know.

Arthur

Short story by Arthur Clark

The Memory of a Loss

In the spring foliage, the breeze made a music as light as Mozart’s. She paid little attention to that or the squirrel that bounded away from her as she came in from the car. Mary-Ann would bring in her purchases. Mary-Ann was her aide and a friend, who drove her everywhere.

She had to rest before dinner. That was all. The shopping was a big effort for a small pleasure. Everything these days was like that. It was what she had left.

“Here’s your purse, Alice,” Mary-Ann said and placed it on the couch beside her. Usually she would bring her purse in from the car herself. She was forgetting so many little things.

Closing her eyes she recalled a snowstorm seventy years ago, far away, in Oklahoma City, February 1944. Her first-born son is an infant and she’s brought him to Rogers Air Field to be with Franklin. They’ll have a few weeks together before Franklin will be sent overseas with the Ninth Photo-reconnaissance Group.

Everything is new – being a mother, being a wife, being a South Carolina girl who’d been enrolled in law school for a year before everything changed in 1942. It’s new and it’s happening very quickly.

She scarcely has time to think about the possibility that Franklin might be killed overseas. Even if she thinks about it, she will never mention it to him. You just don’t talk about it.

Pearl Harbor had changed everything. The Japanese attack had come on December 7 two years ago. You would never forget that date. It would live in infamy, the President had said. Within a week the United States was at war with Japan and Germany and Italy. Maybe she would have had a career in law had it not been for Pearl Harbor. In November 1942 she and Franklin married and she dropped out of law school. The honeymoon was overshadowed by the radio broadcasts. Briefly they’re in New Haven when Franklin is in basic training, then she’s back in South Carolina for several months, then takes the train to Oklahoma City.

It’s been snowing more and more heavily while she goes for groceries in town. She’s gotten off the Number 17 bus with the little cart. It’s harder now to move it through the snow than it had been two hours ago. She walks from the bus stop on Regina Avenue to their apartment a few dozen yards away. In the kitchen she takes the brown bags out of the cart and sets them on the table.

“Did they have any of those potatoes?” Franklin asks as he comes into the kitchen. “It’s a good thing you’re back, he wants his mother.”

Alice is not responding. She’s looking at the grocery bags on the table and at the empty cart. He wants to give her a hug but she isn’t responding at all.

“Where’s my purse?” Her hands go to her head. “My purse! Where’s my purse?”

“I’ll call the police right away. Where…?”

She’s out the door, running back through the snow. She sees a bus pulling away. The Number 17 will be back before long. She stands and waits, restlessly. She’s going through too much. Every minute it’s something else.

It’s dark and the sound of the planes overhead taking off and landing is gone. In the daylight it seems there’s one every ten minutes. Franklin will probably be on a Liberty Ship when he goes overseas The vision of a ship being hit by a torpedo, going down, flashes through her thoughts. Stop it. She should work in one of the shipyards. Everyone has to do their part. But she’s raising a son. Well her parents can take care of him while she works. She can work in one of the yards on the coast in South Carolina and visit her parents and her son every weekend.

The Number 17 is arriving. She can see it half a block away. Maybe work in the shipyards. She’ll think about it later. She’s got to find that purse. She’ll ask the driver if he can call all the drivers on the Number 17 route. She must have had that purse when she got back on the bus with the groceries. Yes, it comes back to her now. She had lifted the purse from the cart and put it under her arm as the bus driver helped her get the cart onto the bus. The bus driver was an older man, or at least he seemed old to her. She wouldn’t say that. She tries to keep to herself amid all the attention she's getting from men on the military base. The Number 17 slows and comes to a stop. The door of the bus opens.

“I think you left something.”

It’s the same bus driver. He’s extending his arm toward her, holding her purse.

“Alice?” Mary-Ann touches her shoulder.

She’s dozed off.

“Are you ready to go to dinner?” Mary-Ann asks.

“Is Franklin here?”

“I’m here,” Franklin replied. He was sitting in an armchair just behind her, his walker in front of him. “How did the shopping go? Did you make any major discoveries?”

It was sundown now. The weather could not have been more beautiful than it had been today. Mary-Ann drove them the short distance to the dining facility and activated the front door for them to enter. They would see Sam and Jennifer at the dinner table in just a few minutes.

On one of the tables in the atrium was a flower and a note about one of the residents of the community who had died the day before. They lost someone almost every week. You didn’t talk about it because there were so many things to talk about at dinner. The woman who had died yesterday was someone Alice remembered but hadn’t seen for months. There would be a memorial service next week.

Alice and Franklin went into the dining room. Sam and Jennifer were already at the table, waiting for them. It would be a lovely evening.