Soolaimon: A Middle-Aged White Lady's Guide to Peace

At some point in your life, you may realize you’ve wasted a good chunk of it waiting on something specific to happen so that you can feel a certain way, or live a certain way.

Or maybe you knew you were waiting the whole time, and those years just…kept passing. Feeling like you're holding your breath and demonstrating infinite patience as you wait for the moment when you can finally do the thing/feel the thing/buy the thing.

You know, the thing.  

Sounds as asinine as it is, but a lot of us do it. Hell, a lot of us have done it our whole lives:

“I’ll buy new clothes only when I’ve lost X amount of weight.”

“I’ll go on that overseas vacation another year when I have more time.”

“I’ll replace this beat-up furniture once we move in a few years. No point spending money on a house that reminds me too much of tough times.”

Last month, I wrote about agonizing over buying a cheap shirt. So you know I’m having issues with furniture right now.

What if you’re waiting for someone to finally see what you need them to see? To see you for who you are, warts and all?

To appreciate the hard work and sacrifice that went into what you’ve accomplished, instead of saying things like “must be nice”.

Maybe just to acknowledge what happened to you…or what they did to you?

It’s been a lifelong pattern for me, and in my own life, I can think of several people. You probably can too.

And to be fair, I’m probably on someone else’s list. (See? I can be self-aware.)

But when I thought about it, it occurred to me: why the hell do I even need it?

Cause that’s the bigger issue, isn’t it?

You ever get a song in your head that just will not leave? Even if you play the song to get it out of your system, it just stays with you for days, maybe weeks?

Well, for whatever reason, for me that song has been Soolaimon.   

Seriously. A middle-aged white woman living in the Midwest, fixated on a Neil Diamond African-influenced chant.

(As Whitman wrote, I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Interestingly, the word Sooliamon isn’t even a real word. Diamond made it up because no word really had that oomph he wanted. It's loosely taken from ‘salaam’ - peace be with you/hello/goodbye/welcome.

Fifty-some odd years later, it’s stuck in my head after rewatching Song Sung Blue on a recent flight.

If you haven’t seen it, you definitely should. The music was so infectious, I was grooving along in my seat, hoping nobody was mistaking my subtle chair dancing for a stroke.

Jackman’s character was consumed with entertaining, but it wasn’t because he wanted the attention per se. He wanted to ‘shepherd’ people towards the powerful feelings the music stirred in him.  

I know that feeling, known it since fourth-grade music class when I fell in love with the idea of playing music, but absolutely not the execution of actually learning it.

Reading notes, practicing scales, and remembering finger positions frustrated me to tears, but my mother wouldn’t let me quit until I’d at least given it an earnest try.

I never did quit; instead, I ended up at performing arts school, studying music and hanging out with theatre kids for four years.

I never took it anywhere professionally (story for another time), but the experience taught me a valuable lesson in surrendering to performance until you become the thing you’re trying to be.

You know, Stanislavski-ing your way through life.

God of my want, want, want… Lord of my need, need, need…

I take that line as a plea for help from whoever or whatever is up there, whoever knows the difference between the two, even when they feel the same.

Look, I’m not someone who needs a lot of external validation – just ask anyone. (Wait…is that contradictory? I digress.) But there are always a few (i.e., friends and family) where no matter what, you’re just never gonna be on the same page with them on everything.  

Some people will never give you what you need from them. It doesn’t matter how many different ways you’ve tried to explain it, and I don’t care if you have allllll the receipts to back it up – they will still refuse to acknowledge reality, because they’ve simply decided no matter what, this is what happened. And this is who or what you are.

You’re never gonna have that magical conversation that will change that. They’ll make sure of it.  

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I give a tinker's damn what people think about me. What irks me is when reality is ignored, and knowing if people knew the full context, they'd see things differently.

But you know what? Even if they did, it probably wouldn't change anything. There is a chasm of difference between being right and being understood.

Neither of which leads directly to peace.

So, in true Stanislavski fashion, you practice the thing until it is the thing. You don't wait until you can feel peaceful - you deliberately choose it, even if it's raining hellfire around you (not literally, of course...that would be a level of Zen that even Lexapro probably couldn't attain).

You choose it until it simply becomes who you are.

Before I get a bunch of angry emails full of "it's not that easy, you know" - yes, I do know. Actual clinical depression, anxiety, trauma responses, and the like are real medical issues for real, licensed professionals.

Aside from that, choosing to live in victim mentality is still a choice.

I've been through some things. You've been through some things. That's life.

But I'm not a victim or a survivor of mine. I'm just...me.

And 'just me' has decided to be defiantly okay with everything.

Seek for the way, way, way...taking me home...

I’m 51. I notice every “wonderful” little sign of aging, every new hair on my head that isn’t brunette. Every new ‘that didn’t look like that yesterday’ moment in the mirror.

I also know that aging is a privilege, and if I can look back on my photos from my twenties and realize ‘damn, I felt so ugly back then when I wasn’t” then I know in the 20+ years or so I have left, this is as good as it's gonna get right now.

Might as well enjoy it.

And when I hear that slowing down is “inevitable”, that the age spots are coming, that one day I’ll need help tying my own shoes, I choose willful ignorance.   

I choose peace.

Soolaimon.

On second thought, maybe I’ll make up my own word for it, too.

Whatevaimon.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.