Aabservations

Tag: blog

  • Identity as style

    I didn’t always have a blog.

    Twenty years ago this week, I boarded Air China flight 982 and left the USA for Chengdu. I didn’t expect that $550 one-way flight to take me from Chengdu to Beijing, and then London (and sometimes the Norwegian arctic circle to spend Christmas with my in-laws). But when you get a one-way ticket, you are expecting to not expect where you go next.

    A day after I landed I wrote my first Aabservation – before they were called that – about my impressions of China. Over the months, my writing style changed. Now, when I ask ChatGPT to “write a blog about [x] in the style of lizaab.com,” it sounds uncannily like me – even with my love of the em-dash.  It’s nice in the new age of robots to have a human style.

    As I celebrate 20 years as an expat and immigrant, it’s time to look at what makes us us: our identity as style.

    Style, in my mind, is how we interact with others and the things around us. It’s how we speak, how we listen, and who we listen to. It’s how we write and draw and sing and dance. It’s our gait and how we hold our bodies. It’s how tightly we organise our time, how fastidious we are at tidying, how open we are to new routes and foods. It’s the choices we make in our homes, furniture, clothes, shoes, hair, and coffee making devices (or – gasp! – lack of coffee making devices).

    When I read boring obituaries, they tell me how the person died, how old they were, and what jobs they had. When I read magical ones, like those by Ann Wren at the Economist, they tell me how the person lived – their style.

    So what determines a person’s style?

    In part, it’s choice. I choose to write in this style, drink my coffee black, and wear my hair the same way for the past two decades.

    That doesn’t mean it’s fixed. Our choices change over time; we experiment with a lot of styles as kids and teens, but we never stop experimenting. What we like changes.

    In addition to choice, though, style is also given to us. Three main things outside of our control constrain our choices: the people around us, money, and our bodies.  Our style changes over time as those three elements change too.

    We are happiest and most ourselves when we like our style, when it resonates with us, when we feel it’s ours. So what gets in the way?

    People around us

    We know that our culture affects how we conduct ourselves. Mary Schmich’s 1997 “Wear Sunscreen” column noted to “Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.” Indeed. I was quicker, more assertive and less patient when I lived in New York than when I lived in California. Now, we live in Angel Islington in London because we love the style of the people here – international and open-minded, professional and driven, but calm and not competitive; it rubs off on us, and we hope on our kids. We also chose our boys’ school for its style, too: it aspires for them to be independent and curious, kind, brave and responsible; and so they are.

    Families too have a big impact on your style. Upbringing for sure, but your partner and your kids massively affect how you conduct yourself. There’s a reason the cheesy pickup line “Hey baby I like your style” makes sense. My husband Oyvind and I used to be very spontaneous; when our eldest was born, suddenly we had to plan. Everything. Get childcare for every minute we weren’t with our son, organise meals, schedule life. We’ve adapted to a structured life. But it’s heavenly when we wake up on holiday without any clue what we’ll do that day.

    We probably choose our jobs more for style than we are willing to let on, and our workplaces certainly affect our style. I remember a senior banker saying he wanted to go into finance when he saw the mahogany doors. After working from home due to the pandemic, I only looked at companies with buzzing in-person offices when I was finding my next job. The office environment clearly affects your style. You might be a silly, casual, slouchy person at home, but at the office, you will sit upright and wear a suit if the job demands it. In turn, if you find yourself, telling your kids to come to dinner, “because (a) it’s getting late and (b) it’s getting cold,” those presentations at the office have affected your style.

    Money

    Some styles, like slouching or speaking in bullet points, are free. But many ways of interacting with the world cost money, sometimes quite a lot. Maybe your ideal style involves living somewhere trendy, or giving to charity, or travelling to exotic places, or subscribing to posh publications, or eating organic, or wearing nice clothes. But it’s just not in your budget.

    How you spend money is a big aspect of style. When I give career advice, I always include Pay as one of the “7Ps” to consider. If you have the choice, it’s important to make enough money to fit your personal style.

    Money isn’t always in your control, of course. Certain careers pay more than others, investments can go up or down, an unexpected health, family or financial issue can cost a fortune, maybe you’re studying or chronically ill or a new parent with no income, you just bought a home and have no cash left, or get divorce – something happens. Money crimps your style.

    So you adjust how you live and find something good in it. And you go back to focusing on the elements of your style that are free: like how you relate to others, and speak, and hold your body, and dance.

    Bodies

    Well, you dance if you can. Because, darnit, your body is the third and harshest impediment to style.

    When I was in high school, I had all caps handwriting, and exclusively took notes in perfect lines on unlined paper. I loved looking at my handwriting. It was really me: clear, distinctive, intentional, careful. My senior year of college, I got a repetitive stress injury and lost the use of both my hands for over a year.  I could no longer grasp the pen tightly enough to write in that precise way, and ever since have had to write in sloppy, looping scribble that I can barely read myself (I call it “encrypted”). I don’t see myself in my writing when I handwrite notes. I’ve lost my style.

    I don’t have a great answer to how to manage when your body says no. I am currently recovering my health from Long Covid, which has crimped all my styles. When I imagine my life again after my recovery, I like to imagine how I’ll be doing things: the lightness and humour, the hopping energy, the spontaneity and curiosity and exploration, holding myself upright again all day with confidence, launching an outstretched hand into a throng of new people, hustling after the bus bopping along to some music in my head.

    In the meantime, I guess I’m not alone in adjusting to a style that isn’t what I’d chose. We all have our ideal natural styles we aspire to. The styles we actually adopt are constrained by the people, money and bodies we have.

    Twenty years on from that Air China flight, I have tried a lot of styles, and have a good idea of what resonates with me. I like to listen to others more than I did in my 20s, and am more patient (at least with others; I’m still working on being patient with myself). My New York accent is mostly gone and my American one is diluted by my Norwegian husband and British kids. I’ve paused reading the news and now listen to BBC science podcasts. I mostly type with my thumbs on a phone instead of writing long emails or journals. I hold my body a bit more relaxed these days.

    But I still make cartoon cards in the same style I did in high school. I still can’t sing well, but my kids can’t fall asleep without my rendition of “day is done gone the sun” that I learned at summer camp. I still hate tidying, or being late. I still abhor clothing and shoe shopping, and have used the same mascara brand for 20 years since I can’t be bothered to research a new one. I still love IKEA furniture, and public transport, and can’t wait to be well enough to cycle again. And I still drink my coffee black, even though these days it has to be decaf.

    Flight CA982 is still taking off later today, from JFK to Beijing. I don’t have a ticket this time, but my one-way journey carries on, with me and all my style on it.

    I still have no idea what to expect next.

    Stay seated,

    Liz

  • The Bravery of Trees

    If you need a role model for bravery, look up at trees.

    Every autumn, they take the leaves that define them, that give them energy and life, and just drop them, confident that they will come back again.

    It wasn’t always this way. As trees expanded to colder climates, they had a problem: ice.  When the ground freezes, so does the water in it. There’s water, water everywhere but not a (liquid) drop to drink. Leaves evaporate water, so to conserve water, you need to lose the leaves. (Being leafless also helps conserve energy during the dark months and reduce storm damage.)  They bravely know that even without their leaves, they are still trees.

    I have thought of the bravery of trees often.  Two summers ago, I got Covid for the third or fourth time, which left me with the whole-body energy-limiting illness of Long Covid. I took time off work to recover and then ramped back to full time, only to find that my body wasn’t well enough for it. So, I have stopped working to focus on recovery. I sit now, resting. I’ve had to give up a lot of things beyond work too that define me and give me energy and life.

    A tree without my leaves.

    Doctors prescribe “deep rest” for this illness to give your body a chance to heal itself. So at least once a day, I go outside, without my phone, to sit. Ideally I find a spot of sunshine by the canal where we live in London.  You can call it meditation or mindfulness, but basically, I do nothing for as long as possible.

    As I sit, the trees sit too.

    And like me, they aren’t really doing nothing.

    I’ve recently learned just how brave trees are, beyond just losing their leaves, in Tristan Gooley’s mind-opening book, How to Read a Tree.

    Trees bravely seek light. They don’t do it in a calculated, conservative, bureaucratic way, though. They are entrepreneurial risk takers: they grow a hundred branches out to see which ones catch enough light. The ones that get sun grow leaves; the ones that find shade are cut off from the rest of the tree and die.

    They are good at finding light. In front of me right now is a young tree sprouting branches straight up, into the rays of light that fall just above the building shadow, even in the low UK winter sun. Along the canal, the branches reach into the glorious open space of light above the water; in time the pull of the sunshine is so strong that their trunks lean toward the canal. You can see it along sidewalks, as trees stretch toward the bright middle of the street.

    Many branches seek light out to the side. But just like it’s tiring to hold your arms out to your side, supporting branches sideways takes huge strength. So trees have a fix, which Gooley summarises as “more wood.” Look at where a large branch meets the trunk and you’ll see a reinforced “branch collar,” helping push or pull the branch up. This branch collar wood is so strong, apparently, that in olden days people used it for axe handles.  I love the idea that trees bravely take on challenges, like growing horizontal branches, knowing they will grow strong enough to deal with it.

    You can see the history of a tree’s bravery too, forever etched in its shape. Trees can only grow more or let bits die; they can’t move. And they usually only grow from the top; a branch that was eye level ten years ago will still be eye level today. So why don’t all trunks have those original low branches anymore? What happened?

    Just like the shaded entrepreneurial branches, some branches that they needed early in life no longer serve them and are gone.  Perhaps they were shaded by another tree. Or more likely, by their own newer branches. Trees are good at bravely letting go of things that no longer serve them.

    They don’t totally forget them though. You can see the “eyes” where lost branches used to be along the trunk. Trees respect their own history.

    The more branches grow up top, the more water and support they need from below. The trees’ solution? More wood! The trunk grows thicker every year to support more branches up above.  So trunk width tells you more about the tree’s age than its height does: trees grow thicker as they get older. As a rough rule of thumb, a tree grows about an inch in circumference a year.  Your hug diameter (wingspan) is about your height. So if you can just touch your fingertips together when you hug a tree and are 5’8” (68 inches or 175 cm), the tree is probably 60-70 years old.  As trees age, they get stronger.

    And they get particularly strong if they’ve been through some tough times. If something happens to the tree, especially to the apical branch that coordinates its branching behaviour, branch buds are at the ready to start all over again. Chop off the head of the tree, and they will sprout like crazy just near the base of the trunk as a Hail Mary. Wait a while, and you may see some of these crazy twigs grow into two or more trunks from the same root base.  (When done on purpose this is “coppicing.”) Trees are unafraid to start over.

    You can see this tree’s history of hardship just by looking at it, if you know how. Maybe as a baby sapling the tree got nibbled by a deer; so instead of one clean trunk, it sprouted a messy few.  You can see its happiness too: if you come across a tree shaped so perfectly it looks like a child’s drawing, then it probably had an uneventful, happy childhood with lots of sun.

    Our brave trees don’t stop when it’s easy. Trees go up to seek the sun, but the instant they break even a few inches above other trees or buildings, they are exposed to a huge increase in wind at their vulnerable top. The tree’s solution? More wood! Our brave trees don’t stop growing taller; instead they grow more wood around their base to secure themselves.

    Sometimes, all that reinforcement – their thickening trunk, their thickening base, their branch collars – isn’t enough.  The outside world just becomes too much and they get hurt. Maybe the wind became too much for it at some point; the tree might have splintered deep inside its trunk, which causes long vertical cracks. Or maybe a branch broke off under the weight of an ice storm. The tree’s fix? More wood! It will thicken the trunk around those injuries, keep calm and carry on. Now you know how to look, you can see these moments of profound bravery for the rest of their lives in vertical ridges or odd shaped reinforced lumps.

    Being brave means doing things that are difficult even when you are scared or they are hard; being “ready to face and endure danger or pain”.  It means preparing for the future, and responding to life as it happens. It means getting stronger in response to things being hard.

    It is how trees seek light, knowing they will fail most of the times, but putting out hundreds of branches anyway.

    It’s growing your trunk thicker each year to be able to take on more weight and support more life.

    It’s seeking sunlight, even when that exposes you to wind.

    It’s about reinforcing your base when you finally reach so high that you are exposed to those winds.

    It’s letting go of branches that helped you in your earlier life, and recognising when they no longer serve you.

    It’s being unafraid to start all the way over when it’s clear that things aren’t working out.

    And it’s confidently letting go of the things that define you most for a time, knowing that, when it’s all over there will be a spring again.