(Unanticipated) Cushions, and How They Affect Us.

Let’s take a minute and appreciate our cushions.

I got into a conversation today with a professor on the topic of whether I will decide to travel to Madrid for the month of August. It is seemingly the perfect opportunity. One of my very best friends is living there temporarily and has offered me a place to stay, so the cost would be relatively incredibly cheap; I just learned my full-time position will end August 1st; my lease is up August 1st; and Mr. B’s Spanish class in high school (taken with same good friend) has given me so many fond memories that the positive associations with the place are astounding.
This isn’t the first time a felicitous opportunity of this kind has come knocking on my door. For that reason, as well as the obvious sadness of turning down something so potentially amazing, I’m desperate to convince myself to go for it.

When I told this to the professor — his name is Russell Epstein, and he is wonderful by the way — he agreed. “Go! Have I convinced you?” I sighed. I’m not sure. I’m so thankful for his encouragement. (If I don’t get it from people like him, I don’t know from where I would.) But there’s a small but undeniable wrinkle: where will this trip leave me when I come back? How will I manage the rest of the year after spending all this money at the start of it?
As the kind-hearted soul would be apt to do, Russell then began to brainstorm some ways that I could make it work. Ask your parents for money? Eat lettuce for the year? Get the CCN to host a benefit dinner? The quick spiral into ridiculousness made the inevitable impracticality of the idea seem even more clear. I admitted I couldn’t ask my parents for money. In fact, they are the ones who ask me for money. I just don’t have a cushion that could support me throughout the rest of the year

The closing sentence of my friend’s email, received earlier that day, went through my mind. “sometimes reality gets in the way of dreams.” And that, combined with Russell’s obvious change of expression, made the sadness of the reality even more heavy.

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What is the word that describes the state in which something is so close in reach, but yet unattainable despite all your efforts and wishes?

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Cushions can exist everywhere and for everyone. They aren’t just issues of privilege and power and social standing. They are the issue of whether we forego future worries in making decisions that might otherwise be perceived as too risky. And in that, they are also what allow us to persevere through tough but rewarding situations. The cushion is when you are working tirelessly on a big project and, when a sudden mishap threatens disaster, you call your parents to give you the boost you need to regain your cool and finish the job well. A cushion in my own life centers around food. When I was hardcore vegan, I became insatiably hungry. Thoughts of food and how to get full took up too many of my thoughts; it was tiresome to even walk; and I was in more ways than one overwhelmed. So I introduced a cushion: just once a week on average, a moderately sized serving of chicken. It was just enough protein to keep me going through the rest of the week. It alleviated my desperation. It allowed me to shift my focus from one of an inflexible and future-minded “where will I get my fill?” to one that allowed me to enjoy and explore more deeply the various other events of my day. Just that little thing, every now and then, made all the difference between a dire condition and a happy one.

The last thing Russell told me was, “more opportunities will come,” in what I believe was his way of helping me not get weighed down in the lament of this possible opportunity not taken. More opportunities will come, I know, and that itself can be a cushion of its own. If not Madrid, there is you here, with me, sharing my experience of not being in Madrid. There is the reticent calm in acceptance of things we can’t fully control. There is the appreciation of the mundane; the awareness of the steady and natural boosts of goodness from the world; and the constant motivation to do what we can to change the lived world and attainable dreams of (at least some) deserving others.

I thank my mentors and my advocates. Even those who don’t see themselves as this in name. They have been the cushions that have not just sustained me, but brought me to places further than where I knew existed. They have kept positivity alive. And their reliable presence has been showing me, slowly, that I might just be ok if I take that big scary risk.