The Adjacent Possible Never Stands Still- Nancy Hillis MD & Bruce Sawhill PhD
The Adjacent Possible Never Stands Still
As some of you may know, our daughter is studying at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Old Castle St Andrews
Scotland
Like many aspects of the adjacent possible, this would have been very hard to predict not that long ago.
But our daughter’s choice of the path she took is not just unusual because of how far away from home she is (5,090 miles, approximately) but because of a backstory regarding Bruce and Scotland.
Long before Kimberly (Kimy) was born and way before Bruce ever met Nancy, Bruce traveled on a remarkable scholarship trip right out of high school that involved traveling around the world, seeing the canonization of an American saint at St. Peter’s in Rome and walking on a live volcano in Hawaii, among other things.
The trip involved fifteen people from three countries, five each from the USA, Japan, and the UK. The centerpiece of the trip was two weeks in Australia with Australian students, a kind of multinational goodwill gesture that emerged from the ashes of World War II.
One of the other students traveling on the trip turned out to be from Scotland, and Bruce took an immediate liking to her. He found her intelligent, articulate, and beautiful in a profound and absolute way that only a first true love could be.
For two years they wrote assiduously back and forth and Bruce assembled the resources to go see her in the UK. Doing so involved selling a sailboat that Bruce had spent two years building and with which he had harbored dreams of becoming the youngest person to sail across the Atlantic.
Given those pre-GPS and tracking beacon days combined with a small homemade sailboat that he christened Dulcinea, after Cervantes’ impossible dream makes one shiver in retrospect at the very good chance the voyage would have been disastrous and somebody else would be writing this blog post.
Life buoy
Heartbreak
Just like the possible sailing voyage that never happened, the voyage to see the object of Bruce’s heart’s desire was also a shipwreck.
The reunion was strained and uncomfortable, and a week later the parents of his erstwhile girlfriend sent him packing on a solo and sorrowful train voyage through the islands and highlands of Scotland, staring out of a rain-streaked train window glumly at a starkly beautiful and forbidding landscape.
Rail bridge, Scottish highlands
Bruce’s life eventually moved on after much grieving.
But Scotland remained marked by sadness, the site of one of life’s great disappointments, like the monument to the great defeat at Culloden, where the Scottish Jacobites met their demise at the hands of the British in 1746.
Return
Fast forward to decades later, when our daughter accepted an offer to attend the University of St Andrews. Of course we were going to go to St Andrews with Kimy and help her get settled in.
Privately, Bruce wondered how this was going to sit with him, whether it would be a dagger twisted in the heart, a turn of cruel fate, or whether it would feel like a different person and a different life. Scotland is a small place—Couldn’t Kimy have decided to go somewhere else?
It was an experiment whose result was almost impossible to predict in advance. It was easy to imagine it going either way.
Fortunately, as it turned out it was easy and natural to be in Scotland again. Nancy and Bruce had a fabulous time meeting other parents and seeing the gorgeous medieval town of St Andrews, Kimy took to her new life seamlessly, and we returned home happy.
In one’s creative life, there are many turning points and disappointments, some of them great.
Sometimes disappointments become so ossified they become part of the landscape, no longer questioned, just avoided and walked around like some large feature of the geography. The lava hardens, what was once a fluid landscape is now solid and immobile.
Scottish highlands
Reimagining
We shall not cease from exploration,
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the palace for the first time.
= T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
The lesson here was that, purely by accident, an opportunity was created to re-question a memory that had become fixated. And the surprise was that it had vanished over time.
Perhaps there are memories like this in your lives, setbacks that were enormous at the time that have become embedded in your consciousness that are now moveable, transparent, or even entirely vanished.
The only way to find out is to check, to run the experiment.
The adjacent possible is not permanent, it is fluid and constantly reconfiguring.
With gratitude from our studio to yours,
Nancy & Bruce
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This is not FB. Suppose I will find out in a minute if this goes through, Nancy. As I read this lovely article about Scotland I am simultaneously watching Queen Elizabeth II’s “final journey” through Scotland on the way back to London, for further parts of her funeral. This is nearly surreal! As you can see I am behind on my reading. Nevertheless, the Scottish and Irish background on one side of the family are extremely strong and can be traced! As can the one’s on the other side to Merry Old England and England only! My son has the red hair and is built like a big Scotchman who should be throwing. “telephone pole” end over end. Irish people typically have darker hair. My Dad, last name “Spencer”-yes, ‘those” Spencer’s are traced far back and then to this country and onward. There have been a number of good artists in the family. Other’s are just really, really smart with math, etc., which is way to left-brained for me! I am so pleased that you are having such a good time and such high acceptance of your recent book! Congratulations. Keep on with your journey. I have been waylaid with another weird diagnosis, this time rheumatoid arthritis, which is a lot worse than I thought it would be and all-encompassing in weird ways, such as attacking one’s organs, not just skeletal and joint areas AND it causes one’s teeth to ‘rot’ & literally fall right out of your head. Oh for joy! That is also happening to me. I am still and always will be still mourning the death of my darling daughter, Jenna Rose. Time passes and my mind will stay fixed on her-much like the North Star, it seems. I remain keenly interested in what you are doing! It is a delight for me to follow. Take care of yourselves and I hope to hear and see more! Thanks so much, Nancy and Bruce. Warmly, Terri
Ah yes, I fell in love with a Scottish lad when I grew up in Rhodesia. I came to the States and he graduated from St Andrew’s then came to the States and we went to New Zealand for a year. Sadly, he had met a rather wealthy English girl and they got back together leaving me broken hearted at the time but happy now. We even send an email every couple of years to see how the other is doing. Life is funny!
Congratulations on yet another award winning book, and thank you for all your knowledge and passing it on to us. You have me tremendously in teaching me how to trust myself, something that has been hard won by me, but at last you have show me the way to believe and trust in myself. You are a great teacher, and I will always be grateful for you.
Nancy and Bruce , I love your stories especially about Scotland. Stories about romance, heartbreak heartache and renewal. The cycle continues. Thank you for so much for sharing.
Also congratulations on another lovely book award!!! Life is good! Take care.
I enjoyed this article and I always read your articles. I am also an artist.
Dear Nancy
& Bruce. I too loved Scotland and always hoped to return, but alas, can’t now. The main theme of your story as I read it is that Transformation can make miracles happen! I have just ended one friendship unhappily end when I was at my son’s funeral, among his many close friends in attendance, was one special friend I had met but not known that well. He came up to see me and asked if I mind if he call me the following week. Of course I agreed 1nd he has been phoning me ever since several times a week for hours at a time! This has not only brought Jamie back to me in a lovely way, but where might it go from here?
Nancy and Bruce,
What a beautiful story! Thank you for sharing. That is one of my favorite quotes from T.S. Eliot! Best wishes to Kimy! May she grow and thrive in beautiful St. Andrews!
Love,
Duane
What a beautiful and inspiring story, and congratulations with your book The Adjacent Possible
“And know the place for the first time.”
Transformation waits. A bit like revisiting an old start, stashed (for some reason) in a place hard to see. A decision to revisit, to view the past through future’s eyes. Now, the ugly painting hangs in foyer. insert smile emoji here.
A beautiful and affecting story. Thank you Nancy and Bruce!
Dear Nancy and Bruce,
Incredible and inspiring story. We never know where life will take us or the children we give birth to. As Kahil Gibran said many years ago..”Our children are the arrows, we are the bows, from which they fly forth, Hopefully straight and true to the mark”. I may have paraphrased that a little., because I read it when I was 19, but, it immediately came to my mind when I read your and Bruce’s and Kim’s story! much love, Diane