thinking about saving people
sorry for the several rants this week- this will most likely be my last one until January :)
I am able to fully envision the scene without knowing too many details when my mom tells me on the phone that my dad is holding a small palm-sized bottle of liquid telling her if he can see his sister right after surgery, perhaps the water will be the thing that saves her. It is barely a couple of ounces of holy water from Tirupati he brought back from his recent trip to India. After he landed at JFK, he asked my mom to drive him straight to my apartment in Bed Stuy to show me a video of him announcing to his batch mates from his college that I do “standing up comedy” and then, as he frantically tried to turn the video off, it was revealed he said things about my family that aren’t necessarily lies but also not not lies.
In thinking about these moments, I am reminded of two things. One: is that my dad may not have lived back in India for almost 40 years now but the language barrier between his home and where he has lived for more than half his life will stand the test of time. And two: the desire to save when it is not in our capacity is all too familiar.
My father and I are similar in this way of wanting to dole out our energy to protect ourselves. It is not because we are holy people. It’s not because we are self-righteous or even deemed as “good people” but, perhaps, we do it with the hope that our attempts in providing as much as we can wash away the wrong we’ve done. Perhaps, it will balance out the mental confusion we cause by wanting to do too much or maybe the effort to save will erase mean things we’ve said in the heat of the moment. I am not sure.
The idea of fully saving someone feels more like a myth than a reality. It also is subjective. I guess I approach this without a religious standpoint and so without thinking through that lens, I fail to fully believe being 100% saved is a real thing. So maybe using the word saved is moot.
But, sometimes, I lack a better term to describe what I am trying to do. A lot of friends tell me I keep people in my life and continue contact as a mode of my savior complex. I would say my father performing white lies about things we are doing here in the states is saving face. Neither one of these necessarily feed our egos. Most acts of being deemed as trying to save someone are debasing. When I hear my dad believes holy water from Tirupati will save his sister despite his sister’s two of three children being doctors, I feel deeply sad about how we believe we have control of saving anything. But we both know that and so we conflate actions of hoping for a better outcome with an effort to save.
Shit happens. People fight. Jewelry falls in gutters. Things light on fire. A cat scratches up the couch while I’m not paying attention. Folks fall sick. Some mornings, we can’t get out of bed.
What can be saved and, as a certain friend of mine asked me recently, why am I trying my best to operate through heartbreak by providing kindness- why save it at all?
The walls in my bedroom are lined with an oddball collection of VHS tapes, birthday cards, faded news clippings, photo booth strips, and band posters. There is a lava lamp near the corner where I put up my electric pink guitar. There are ceramic cats and a clay sculpture of Nosferatu’s head. It is, essentially, a portrait of an eccentric neurotic. A cross between trying to save my youth and saving myself from wanting to bang my head into my dresser from loneliness. Every corner something silly or sentimental to remind me to hold on or laugh so hard I forget what I was drowning in prior.
When people tell me I cannot save someone no matter how kind, forgiving, and open I show up, I want to tell them that isn’t my intention. My humiliating intention, I think, is an offer of respite from whatever negativity is happening internally or between us. An offer to move forward and a pulling out of all stops to remove even an ounce of pain. Perhaps that is what the bottle of holy water can do. It most likely won’t heal any form of illness. Dousing anyone in it won’t save them from feeling anguish ever again but, maybe… just maybe it can offer a moment of thinking about something kinder like hope.