See the waterfall

“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all.” –Jock Falkson

I once designed a three-day conference on diversity for a professional organization whose members are school food service personnel—by their own definition, they are the cafeteria ladies who serve food in schools across the nation.

The conference was an opportunity for them to raise questions and concerns about the increasing diversity they were facing, both among their work force and in the schools they serve. It was a rich, full weekend of honest dialogue. And one of the issues they raised was one I hear often among English speakers about their increasingly diverse workplaces: “When our workers speak Spanish or Hmong, I feel like they’re talking about me and I don’t like it. I want it to stop. I think they should have to speak only English at work.”

After hearing them voice their discomfort, I responded gently: Is it within the realm of human possibility that you are not the center of their universe and that they, in fact, might have something better (more interesting, more relevant, more fun) than you to talk about? After all, as Falkson says, “at 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all.” Perhaps we’d be better served if we realized that before we reached 60?

That’s a prelude to the real story. Ultimately, in the end, it is a story about the waterfall over which Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house is built in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. But it gets there by way of a high school reunion.

This past weekend, I got a fantastic surprise, an email from an old high school friend, one of my favorite people then—we had spent those years hanging out together, running, playing in the marching band together. My lord, man, we even survived Elvis’ death and disco together!

We cut quite a rug on the lighted dance floor together, like upright, slightly frenetic synchronized swimmers gyrating and flinging each other around to the tunes of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer—a dance done for the benefit of others, ultimately. If I’m ever nominated to the Supreme Court, I’ll deny all knowledge of ABBA.

I hadn’t heard from Steve for many, many years—decades, even—so many years that we had to start over, not remembering what we knew about each other’s life since those happy days of teenage life, and—to be honest—not sure what we even remembered from those days, either.

Our reconnect was all going so swimmingly well until he asked a simple question: “If there’s a 30^th reunion next year, will you go?”

Huh?

Excuse me, the young inside Me thought, you must have the wrong person. You must be mistaken. I can’t possibly have graduated from high school 30 years ago; it’s simply not possible.

After going quickly through the requisite stages: denial (I’m not old enough!), anger (I’m too old!), bargaining (please let me lose weight and get my eyebrows done first), depression (I’m old!) and acceptance (I’m old, which means I’m still alive, hallelujah!), I recovered from the shock long enough to put Steve on hold and get a personal trainer on the other line to set up intensive daily sessions since I’ve only got 18 months to get into the best shape of my life, to regain that athletic, thin, blue-jeaned body of thirty years ago so I can act nonchalantly like I’ve looked like that all along. Only 18 months to get rich and build the dream house and buy that red Ferrari and whatever else people do besides eat themselves into a coma with Ding Dongs when they’re trying to impress people whose names they can’t remember and who have not figured into their lives in even the smallest of ways in the past thirty years.

Another high school friend and I were emailing afterwards about the reunion—“I’ll go if you go”—and we both had trouble remembering the names of many of our classmates. So if I don’t remember their names, why be so intent on impressing them, I wonder? Is it possible that they don’t remember my name, either, and that they don’t much care if I’m a size 8, or if I have grey hair or if my eyebrows are reacting to gravity and eating my eyelids?

I’ll deny it’s connected to the impending doom reunion, but my daughter Emma and I started going to the gym this week. Yes, it’s just a coincidence. And we signed up to go on a mother/daughter Outward Bound hiking and climbing trip for a week this summer. It’s been 32 years since my last weeklong Outward Bound trip when my friend Meg and I practically ran with 40-pound packs and no discernable body fat the fifty miles from Table Rock to Mt Mitchell. Ah, those were the days when food was simply a fuel source and not a reward, comfort, revenge, or expression of self-esteem.

At this rate, I’ll either be fit or dead by the time that reunion rolls around.

And, finally, to Fallingwater.

Fallingwater is recognized as one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s best works. In a 1991 poll of members of the American Institute of Architects, it was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture." It is considered a supreme example of his concept of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition. That’s what the guidebooks say.

When I look at this house, I admire his desire that the inhabitants become part of nature, not separate observers of it. I get that. And I think there is much about it that is beautiful, I do. But when I see that overhang of concrete, I’m always first struck by the fact that while you can hear it, the very water that the house is named for is unseeable from the house itself.

The house was designed in 1935 for E.J. Kaufman who, when presented with the plans, said, "I thought you would place the house near the waterfall, not over it." Mr. Wright said quietly, "E.J., I want you to live with the waterfall, not just to look at it, but for it to become an integral part of your lives."

He did build the house around a favorite rock of Mr. Kaufman’s, one on which he loved to sun himself. That rock forms the big stone fireplace inside. And from the Great Room a set of stairs enables you to walk down and stand on a tiny platform in the middle of the stream.

I don’t doubt the genius of this house, dubbed “the building of the century,” and I’ll admit to more than a modicum of ignorance about Wright’s work, but here’s my take on it: he didn’t build the structure for the person living in the house, but for the observer and maybe, even, for himself. You can’t see the waterfall from the house. Standing where we are, looking at the house with the water below, we can see what drew Kaufman to this spot in the first place. Sitting in his built-in cantilevered concrete orange cushioned dining nook, he could do no more than hear it. The occupant, the person living there, is secondary to Wright’s vision, ultimately.

I wonder how many times I have done that, building a life that is revered from the outside, but that is overshadowing and hiding my waterfall, the source of all my energy? Who am I building my life for? For the person living in the house, or for the observer—for me or for those high school classmates, for the waterfall or for the architect?

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

Take yourself out of the center of the universe—it will free you up and will let the universe turn more easily.  And in a metaphoric and literal sense, let others speak whatever language makes them feel whole and human—it doesn’t detract from your wholeness and your humanity, but adds to it.

Build your own Fallingwater, one where you can see the waterfall, where there are no concrete overhangs shadowing the very source of who you are, the “there” that attracted you to yourself in the first place, that water falling.

Build your house for you, not for observers who, by the way, are not looking anyway.