I have always swum in the shallow end, metaphorically speaking.
I prefer comedy to drama.
Italian meals to French.
A fiery relationship built on lust to the tedium of an intellectual connection that turns romantic.
I love sex, food, exhausting exercise, dreamy sleep, recreational drugs.
My shallowness might explain why I was never in danger of addiction.
I dabbled to feel good, not to fill the hollowness of my soul.
My soul is too shallow to be hollow.
I’m not the only one who thinks I’m all surface.
Loved ones have accused me of shallowness too many times for me to ignore.
I realize, of course, thatshallowis an insult;deepis a compliment.
Most people have a mix of qualities from both sides.
Only yesterday, I returned $5 that a drugstore cashier had given me by mistake.
That makes me ethical (deep).
Of course, I was purchasing an expensive hair straightener, which marks me as vain (shallow).
You’ve conditioned yourself to gloss over or forget anything bad.
You refuse to let yourself feel pain."
I reminded her of an experience we shared in a hospital room.
She was with me the nightthe momentmy first husband, Glenn, died of cancer at 34.
I can picture myself at the side of the bed, holding his hand, feeling totally numb.
But I’ve forgotten what the pain itself felt like.
I chalk it up to a healthy self-preservation instinct.
“you’re free to switch off the negative.
You’re lucky, but it limits you,” Alison says.
Depth, apparently, is multidimensional.
My smart-ass friend Rebecca (deep) makes fun of me because I read tabloids and watch reality TV.
“You’re definitely lowbrow, although not shallow per se.
More like deluded,” she explains.
“Most people worry about their work and whether people like them.
You think your novels are the funniest books ever published.
You walk into a party and assume everyone will be interested in you.
But there’s hope yet for your depth.
Shallow people aren’t introspective enough to wonder if they’re deluded.”
Am I deeply deluded?
If so, at least it’s a step upor rather downfrom shallow.
I never used to care.
The answer, I know, lies somewhere at the bottom of my psychic pool.
But every time I take a stab at dive, it seems I merely skim the surface.
Wouldn’t I have learned a profound lesson from Glenn’s death?
The problem is, when I give a shot to think deep thoughts, I get bored.
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I wonder, What am I missing?
For clues, I sought out modern-day descendants of Socrates.
“Hello, Harvard University department of philosophy?
It’s Shallow Val calling.
What makes someone deep?
And how can I get there from here?”
To what extent are we responsible for it?"
The highs, the lows.
Is that deepor mentally ill?
Emotionally, it’s possible for you to’t delve without sinking," he declares.
But depression, he clarifies, is a higher brain function.
“Animals don’t wrestle with existential angst,” Steve explains.
“Human intelligence is a tool, a shovel.
The smarter you are, the deeper it’s possible for you to dig.”
I accuse Steve of romanticizing the despondent.
His idol, the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, was famously miserable.
“Mahler’s music paints a vivid picture of sorrow and hopelessness.
He couldn’t have composed it if he hadn’t lived it,” Steve claims.
“Personality is largely innate; we’re born with it,” she says.
Depth can be nurtured, and Schlesinger says psychotherapy can help people burrow into their emotional center.
“The question is, Why do you want to be deeper?”
To feel more, I tell her, to see more, write more compellingly, get more respect.
“But is your life less rich and meaningful than that of a deep person?”
“You have fun.
You are productive and stimulated.
you might shake off setbacks.
Depth is often about spending days delving into nuance.
Is that such a plus for a busy, active person?
Thinking can be overrated.”
I mourned in a shallow way.
I cried on and off for six months.
I spent hours sitting in stunned silence.
I talked a lot, too, often to other widows and widowers.
The shallow mourners, like me, experienced their share of grief.
Then we’d go to the supermarket because the kids needed dinner.
We tended to avoid questions about the afterlife and cosmic unfairness.
I truly believed the grade school-level philosophy I passed on to my daughters, then ages 5 and 2.
“Life goes on for the living,” I said, and meant it, deeply.
Perhaps I could redefine myself as deeply shallow.
Or, as Schlesinger suggests, “Instead of measuring your depth, measure your breadth.
Does your life stretch far and wide in terms of interests, people and ideas?
Maybe I shouldn’t be asking, Am I deep?
but rather, What’s important to me?
Is it thinking hard about nuance and being regarded by others as substantive?
Or is it counting my blessings, seeking new joy and living as happily as I can every day?
Ultimately, we all must follow our natural inclinations, whether lightness, darkness, shallowness, depthor width.
Anything else would be phony, the hallmark of shallowness.
So I won’t.
Come hell or shallow water.
Photo Credit: John Dolan
