Diana Davis

March 13, 2003

Meditation

These are the stories I tell myself in my head.

 

I sprint towards the starting line where the JV girls are lining up. Their New England Championship race is about to start, and I’m hoping I won’t miss my chance—I’ve been planning on this for two weeks. I arrive breathing hard, but grinning what I’m about to do.

“Give me your hand,” I say to Desi. Immediately she extends it towards me, palm up. My goodness, what trust. These girls’ parents are lucky that the strongest thing I put in my body is Flintstones chewable multivitamins. I uncap my bright red Sharpie, take her little hand in mine, and carefully draw two dots, then a long curved line beneath: a smiley face. “During the race,” I say, “look at this, and remember why you run. Because it makes you happy! Because you love running! Because it’s fun to run!” She smiles and takes back her hand.

I repeat the process for the other eight girls, taking each hand in mine, smiling into each nervous face as I trace the rough marker tip across each precious palm. “Carolyn,” I say, “don’t worry about it; just smile! Just like the smiley face, see?” I pull her palm up to eye level so that the marker face is beaming into hers. Carolyn nods, smiles, looks at me, and then takes back her hand to stretch her quads one more time.

At this point, I realize that there are still five minutes before the gun goes off. Suddenly, an idea: I’ll give the other runners smiley faces, too! I notice that the teams to either side of Exeter both have red in their uniforms. Sure—why not? The Exeter girls are busy doing a cheer, so I move on down the starting line.

“Hey!” I announce brightly to a girl from NMH. “Do you want a smiley face on your hand, to remind you why you run?” She is taller than me, with blond hair and long arms, and she looks down at me quizzically: Why would someone with Exeter on her jacket talk to the NMH team? And why would an Exeter person jump up and down and try to psych up runners from NMH? So when she warily holds out her hand, I draw her a big red smiley face, exclaiming, “Because you like to run! Because it makes you smile! Because running in the woods is exactly what you would like to be doing right now!”

The other girls on her team begin to notice me, and though they too are initially skeptical, one by one they smile and approach me, waiting for their turn. A dark-skinned girl holds out the back of her hand, and I want to tell her that the red will blend in there and she won’t be able to see it, that it will show up better on her palm. But then I remember that what I’m doing is actually for their minds. As long as each girl imagines that smile as she runs, it doesn’t matter if anyone else can see it.

So I re-cap the marker, wave joyously, and bounce on down to the next team, then the next, and the one after that. Before long, every JV girl with any trace of red on her uniform has a red smiley face on her hand. The Sharpie goes back in my pocket, I melt into the sidelines, and the gun goes off.

 

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Jocelyn Theriault. She was tall, and she was beautiful, and she was the fastest middle-school runner in New Hampshire. And when I was in fifth grade, she was the captain of our cross country team.

Now, I was new to the sport, and new to the school, and I was very, very slow. I run three miles now in less time than it took me to run two miles then. So, needless to say, I did not have much to do with Jocelyn Theriault—until the day of the State Meet.

It was our final championship meet, and the races were over. Jocelyn had just won the “A” race by a large margin, and I had just placed 53^rd in the “B” race. As it happened, I was sitting by myself in a soccer goal, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drinking milk from a Sesame Street thermos.

Then, sitting beside me in my soccer goal was Jocelyn Theriault, heroine, goddess of running. And what she told me, I will never forget. “Keep running,” she said. “If you just stick with it and keep running, I think you could be on the A team.” I nodded dumbly, watching her golden curls swish back and forth as she jogged back across the field.

The A team! The top seven runners, middle school varsity—but me? I was short; I was chunky; I was slow; I was nothing like Jocelyn Theriault.

Well, you know what happened: I did keep running. The very next year I made the A team, and I haven’t been off varsity since. But that isn’t the end of the story. You see, I considered Jocelyn my idol—I said to myself, in my head, “Jocelyn Theriault is my idol.” But soon, I learned that idolatry is bad: “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” Idolatry is thinking about people, and that is the business of small minds.

So I stopped using the word “idolize” to think about people, and gradually the idolatry became more like just normal admiration. I realized that the girls I had idolized were just people, too. I stopped using the word “idol” in my head, gradually calling such people “role models” instead.

And then this year, it came back. I was a captain of the cross-country team, and Allison started using the word “idol” around me. “Diana, you’re my idol,” she’d say. “Allison!” I’d say, “don’t say that! You’re not supposed to say things like that!” And she asked me why not.

Why not, indeed? Well, for all her beauty and speed and godliness, I never really got to know Jocelyn Theriault. She was one of those lofty people, high out of reach. And that, I think, is the danger of idolatry. Because idols are perfect; idols are untouchable. When I run around the track with airplane arms or superman wings, that’s not perfect, but it’s very real. I want to be real, because I want to connect with people. I have found that the element of awe tends to squelch connection. But I want connection, because I want to show people a happier side of life.

So to remind myself of the power of words, I tell myself this story in my head.

 

I walk down the stairs to Academy G and pause. The door is ajar, and through the opening I can see Mrs. Coogan standing at the table, talking to a student across the room. I take a deep breath and roll my eyes, considering how silly I’m about to look. But I have gotten this far, and so, as with every other time I’ve done something like this, I know I’ll go through with it. Mrs. Coogan told me that she asked her students to skip into math class. My guess is that few of them do, so I’ve decided to do it myself. I smile brightly, open the door wide, and skip through it.

“Hey, Mrs. Coogan! I heard it was time for math class! Aren’t you excited?” I am skipping around the far end of the table, and the smile on Mrs. Coogan’s face has erased every trace of fatigue. One boy, leaning back in his chair, is looking at me as though I’m doing something strange. I stop, turn around, and look directly into his face. “Hey! Especially you! Are you excited?” He smiles, so I skip on out towards the door. “Have a nice math class!”

 

This is one of the stories I tell myself in my head because it’s so clear that I didn’t have to go through with it, and yet I did it anyway. If I had decided, standing outside that door, that I would look too silly, that seniors don’t come skipping into Lower math classes, that Mrs. Coogan wouldn’t like it if I disrupted her class—nobody would ever know. I had a class to go to. It would’ve been much easier, much less risky, to just go to my own class. But I skipped around Mrs. Coogan’s table first, so I remind myself with this story in my head.

 

In the stories I repeat, I have tried to make people’s days more interesting, to make them excited, or engaged, or happy. But honestly, doing stupid, silly things takes a serious amount of self-confidence, and to have the confidence to do these things, I have to have some amount of control over the situation. I have to have some kind of power, and preferably some element of leadership.

When we win track meets at Exeter, we sometimes do a cheer that goes like this: “Whose house? Our house! Whose house? Our house!” The point of this cheer is clearly that this is our space, and we have controlled it. Similarly for me: when I’m in control, I can run around and be energetic and try to make people smile a little bit more. In a track meet, it’s pretty clear whose “house” it is, because the high score wins. But in my head, I decide when I’m in control. If I believe that I’m in a position of power or leadership, that’s all it takes for me to have confidence, no matter what is “actually” the case.

Something that few people at Exeter know is that I have a tendency to pass out. Yes, pass out, as in “faint,” as in “lose consciousness and fall down on the ground.” This tendency runs in my dad’s side of the family; he and both of my siblings faint, usually prompted by some discussion of a medical nature. There’s a great story that goes like this: Karen and Scott are in their kitchen. Karen drops a large, heavy object on her foot. Scott passes out.

 

This story illustrates the inherent temporal nature of fainting: There was no biological reason why Scott had to faint; he fainted because of what happened in his brain when he imagined the pain of the heavy thing falling on Karen’s foot. For me, it’s not heavy objects—it’s stories. When I hear a story about someone getting stung by a swarm of bees all over his body, and I hear the description of how his face and throat and air passages all swell up and slowly it gets harder and harder to breathe—I pass out. Similarly, when I hear a story about someone getting hypothermia, how her feet start to freeze and one by one her extremities shut off—I pass out.

 

This is not because I’ve had some traumatic experience in my life regarding hypothermia or bee stings—the only experience I’ve actually ever had with them is through stories. It’s just that when I hear the stories, I project them onto myself. When I listen to the details of hypothermia, it starts to happen to me: I feel like I can’t move my toes, like my feet are falling asleep, like the blood in my arms is slowing down and my body is coming to a stop. My head pounds; my thoughts become disconnected, and the recurring theme is: I think I’m going to pass out. And then, I do. My reflex to imagine such a traumatic situation is so innate that I cannot prevent it from overwhelming my mind, so much that I essentially become whatever I am imagining.

 

I become whatever I am imagining. Why can’t the world be like that? People say that the imagination is a very powerful thing, and I believe them. I believe that imagination is powerful because it is my imagination that allows me to think that I can make the world a better place. When I was little, grownups would say things like, “Children have so much imagination; it’s sad that we lose that as we grow up.” But I don’t think we lose our ability to imagine as we grow up; it’s just that imagination’s function changes.

 

When we are little, “imagination” is a synonym of sorts for “make-believe.” When we grow up, it’s true that we don’t imagine like this anymore; we don’t play pretend, but our imaginations are still alive and well, because we worry, and we get stressed, and we get bored. Things like worry, stress, and boredom all start in our imaginations, because they stem from our perceptions of a situation. It’s like my control complex, where if I think I’m in control, I am: If you think you’re stressed out, you will be. Thus perceiving situations differently is precisely the key to countering stress, and that takes imagination.

 

I bet that some of those girls on the starting line were nervous. I bet some of them were thinking about how the varsity had just won, thinking that JV needed to win, too. I bet some were thinking about how they were ranked pretty high in that race, and how they wanted to place in the top 15.

 

And I bet that some of the kids in that math class were thinking about how they hadn’t understood the homework, or how they hadn’t put a problem on the board in a week, or how they had a test during Y format. I bet some of them were thinking, oh no, I have to sit through this whole math class and I hate math.

 

Why do that? Why have this kind of view on the world? When I see someone not smiling, I see no reason why they should stay that way. Maybe I live in an imaginary world, but I see no benefit to worry. I see no downside to being excited about what I’m doing, be it racing or going to math class. So I when I see someone unhappy or apathetic, I want to do something about it.

 

Does it work? I don’t know! It’s a bit self-serving to say, “My goal in life is to make people happy.” Because really, if you don’t want to be happy, I can’t make you, because happiness, as they say, comes from within. In fact, I’ll probably seem pretty annoying if you just want to run your race or do your math homework and I keep bothering you with excessive displays of energy.

 

The truth is that I’m not always so energetic; there are days when I’m tired, or discouraged, or annoyed with the bureaucratic system, and I’m not even making myself happy, much less the rest of the world. But even on those days, I try to connect with people. Because although happiness comes from within, people need connections. Newborn babies shrivel up and die if they’re not touched enough when they’re born, and I think the same thing happens to the rest of us. If we don’t connect enough with other people, our souls shrivel up, and it is very difficult to be happy.

 

If you think that I am oversimplifying the world, you’re right. I oversimplify because that is the way I think: I take statements that I know to be true, and use logic to see how they relate to a given situation. For example, from these two statements: “People need connections,” and “Babies die if they’re not touched,” I reasoned that interpersonal connection must promote emotional health in the same way that touch promotes physical health in babies. I bet you believed me—it makes sense.

 

A system of thought based on logic becomes a bit more consequential when it determines my actions, rather than just an abstract theory of behavior. For example, consider this statement again: “Idolatry is bad.” You may remember that this conclusion stemmed from the accepted truism, “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” If idolatry is that bad, then I have to stop idolizing people, and I surely can’t have anyone idolizing me. My simplification of life into axioms led directly to a change in my behavior. Clearly, this is quite powerful.

 

If you think about it right, life can be a lot simpler than it seems. Worrying isn’t going to make you run faster, and sulking isn’t going to make math class any shorter, so why complicate your life with worry or boredom? My logic yields a very simple answer, which goes like this: Smile! Just smile—believe me, it’ll make you feel better. Especially if someone else is smiling, too. I don’t know for sure if it will work for you, but it works for me, and I think it worked for Jillian.

 

 

 

It is 8:00 on Wednesday morning and it is V format, and Jillian and I are in the Periodicals room, doing math. We are sitting together at the far table of the Periodicals room, doing math as we always do every V format. I am an upper and I am the tutor and Jillian, a senior, is what she likes to call the tutoree.

 

For me, the Periodicals room and math tutoring are inseparable. At this point I know that if I sit down at a table in Periodicals, by the time I leave, I will have answered someone’s math question. I think it is safe to say that there are very few problems in the Exeter math curriculum that I have not done in the Periodicals room.

This is because I love to teach math. I just love to teach math—it’s what I do. Most of my friends know this about me, and Gloria even gave me a nickname: Diana the Math. We’ve got Richard the Lion-Hearted, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander the Great—and Diana the Math. I like it.

So, one fine V format, we are doing a probability problem involving five R’s and three P’s: how many different words can you make? Jillian has no idea: Five factorial times three factorial? Eight choose five? Eight permute three? Is it permutations, because you’re changing the order, or is it combinations, since some of the numbers are the same? Naturally, Jillian is getting frustrated. I can tell, because she is writing AAAHH! next to the line of R’s and P’s. So I turn to her and say, you know, Jillian, probability is not about _nP_r or _nC_r or even the exclamation point. When it comes down to it, probability is all about ice cream.

Ice cream! she says, looking at me incredulously. Well, yes, I understand her disbelief. But, I tell her, think of the R’s and P’s as scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. Does it matter which specific scoop of vanilla ice cream goes where? No, she replies. Well, if you just care what the cone looks like, and all of the scoops of each flavor are interchangeable, then those are combinations. But if you started numbering your scoops of chocolate ice cream, caring which specific scoop went where, then those would be permutations. Ah! she says. So they’re combinations! Yes, that they are. She erases the AAAHH! and writes “₈C₅” and “₈C₃” in its place.

So I explained to Jillian how probability is really all about ice cream. And you know what? She liked probability a lot better after that.

 

I tell myself these stories because they are times when I have succeeded in connecting with people, when I believe that I have overcome the fundamental separateness that divides us, when I have actually helped someone to stop worrying about the task at hand and start enjoying it instead. If I say that I try to spread happiness, that may sound altruistic, or patronizing. But for me, it’s not. It’s sincere. It’s just how I am, how I think, how I live. I don’t know any other way. One of my classmates at the Mountain School described me as such: “Diana taught me that being excited about everything makes everything much more exciting.” I love to live this way, and I see no disadvantages.

There is math, and there is running, and there is smiling and bouncing around and inciting laughter. There is being a captain, and there is being a tutor, and there is infusing humor everywhere possible. And then there is just the fact that I don’t do these things as an entirely selfless mission—I need to try to affect you, to convince myself of my own worth. I’m neither the valedictorian, nor the fastest runner. I have strengths, but other people have them, too—even stronger. So I want to know that I’ve made something of my time at Exeter. I want to know that I’ve made something of my seventeen years of life. I want to know that I have been useful for something.

I believe that if I make your day better, or if you smile when you remember something I have done, then I have accomplished something. I have made my mark on the world—and a positive one, at that. Like the butterfly that causes an earthquake half a world away, maybe my simple action will affect you, make you look at your life just a little bit differently. So when I talk to you, you’ll notice that I make eye contact. That probably in the course of our conversation, I’ll try to make you laugh. You’ll notice that I’ll stop whatever I’m doing, unconditionally, to help you with math. These are my subtle, usually subconscious ways of trying to infuse joy into your day.

 

I’m trying to be one of the people in your life. It’s a difficult task, because there are so many people you see every day whom you have not made part of your life. But for some people, I will achieve it. I want to be useful for something, and if I matter to you, I must be. And so I latch onto people—runner people, math people, teacher people, student people—and I look into your eyes and listen to you and make you laugh and try to be useful for something.

 

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