It's time for 10 navy beans in your pocket
Last night, I finished the 8th and final episode of Season 4 of the marvelous and ingenious PBS series, Astrid. I tried, I tried I TRIED to spool it out to maybe last two weeks, but it simply wasn’t possible.
Although Astrid is in French subtitles … which insists that I do nothing else but stare at the television for an hour … it ranks in my top four streaming shows of all time, easily rubbing shoulders with “Ted Lasso,” “The Mandalorian,” and “Stranger Things,” (because we all, at one point in time, have found ourselves in the Upside Down).
Note, as you can see, I’m all about the positivity and redemptive quality in shows. I’ve enjoyed a slew of other dramas, crime dramas and comedies, but they just haven’t cracked my hallowed Top Four.
A 10-second synopsis of this amazing show
Astrid follows the tale of a high-functioning Asperberger’s woman (she defines it as autism) who works in the archival department for the police in Paris. Since initially taking on the part-time job as a 16-year-old, she has basically memorized every fact in every case that’s ever entered the archive. She proves to be the connecting link for particularly cataclysmic, puzzling and shattering cases that a smart police detective, Raphaelle, takes on.
These are beautifully written characters, including William, also a high-functioning autistic individual who has organized a “social skills” weekly workshop for autistic people who are just trying to figure out how to deal with their “neurotypical” colleagues and roommates.
The 10 navy bean solution
As the show has progressed, the detective team has come to more heavily rely on Astrid, not always recognizing that the forced social interaction, loud sounds and jarring shifts in the discovery process are intensely draining for her. William recognizes her alarming declines and gives her 10 navy beans as a solution.
William tells her that she can put them all in one pocket and, as the day goes on, move the beans to the other pocket, based on the level of energetic expenditure she feels. A meeting might take one bean while an interrogation might take four. He does this so that she begins to consciously attend to the “draining process,” so that she’s able to give herself reprieve and rest before all of the beans end up in the other pocket.
As she gives herself that reprieve … as she does something in kindness for someone that proves such a stretch from her formerly closed-in world, she moves navy beans back to the originating pocket.
Why we need those 10 navy beans today
Since Tuesday of last week, those of us in the L.A. area have been undergoing a cataclysmic, puzzling and shattering case of our own.
As the fires continue to rage, thousands are at “ground zero” – losing our homes, losing our businesses, losing our neighborhoods – while others of us are on the outskirts, checking in, taking in evacuees, and texting in endless friend groups as to what we can do next and what’s going to happen next.
The airwaves are rife with information and misinformation, and the news reels never, ever stop.
The pettiest people of them all are looting and stealing from the families who are currently undergoing the greatest duress of their lives.
Rentals and homes on the market have doubled in price overnight with price gougers out to get all they can get from the people who were absolutely blindsided and have lost everything … people who might have been them had they simply lived in a different zip code.
There are people all around the world who feel true heartbreak for us. And there are people around the world who are snide, even pleased in a resentful, comeuppance kind of way because all that represents the “the good life” of L.A. is now on its knees.
It’s time for all of us to put 10 navy beans in our pocket.
For those of you who have written me such hateful comments about being “tone deaf” and “a silly solutionist who needs further schooling in the POLITICS of this all” … yes, I understand we are not in a war zone. Yes, I ache for the people in Maui and the recipients of the awful hurricanes and tornadoes (including Hurricane Helene) who have been unwittingly forced to endure devastating travesty and loss. Here, we still have supplies and resources available to us. And we’re in a free country with free speech, so I guess anyone is allowed to send hateful comments to anyone.
But what if we just stopped for a moment and realized that each of us only has 10 navy beans in our pockets?
People have lost their homes and, with it, the memorabilia of a full life. How many navy beans is that?
People who’ve owned thriving businesses for years are now returning to heaps of rubble. How many navy beans is that?
People have fled from their homes, only to return to find them ransacked by looters. How many navy beans is that?
People listening, watching, getting caught up in the rhetoric of “sides” … how many navy beans is that?
Watching hundreds of pets being shipped out of state to temporary care with hopes that their owners eventually reunite with them? How many navy beans is that?
Folks, no matter what your situation, no matter who you are or where you are in the world, we must give ourselves moments of reprieve from our demanding days – because the last thing we need is an alarming energetic decline in all of us.
I’m not saying this is ONLY about demanding days here as we – at different levels of involvement – deal with the catastrophe of L.A.’s firestorms. I’m talking about anyone anywhere dealing with a demanding day … because you’re the only person who knows how many navy beans are being transferred from one pocket to the other on your daily basis.
As a more minor example, on New Year’s Day I was Zambonied by a monster cold that dropped on me out of nowhere. I’m someone who never gets sick and because I know this about myself, I push myself to my very limits. I dealt with a really aggressive December on many fronts – my fault entirely for allowing it to have the teeth that it did. By New Year’s Eve, it felt as if I’d drained every reservoir in my system. Not one bean left in the pocket.
So, on New Year’s Day, my body took matters into its own hands; I was down for the count. For the first time in months, my health became a very front-and-center conscious event.
When the navy beans are all in the other pocket…
This doesn’t mean we shut down and say there’s nothing we can do. It means that we stay consciously aware of the psychological and emotional demands and drains in our day so that we know when we’re down to the metaphorical “one navy bean.”
This means that we put a conscious stop to the downward spiral and remind ourselves that if we don’t take care of ourselves in even the smallest way, we’re no good to anyone, let alone ourselves.
This also means that we not only look to moments of reprieve (a few big deep breaths if nothing else), but that we actively look for other ways to refill the original pocket through kindness first to ourselves and then, as we’re replenished, we shine that renewed light on others.
I remember a very wise man telling my friend, Cynthia Kersey, that the best way to feel reprieve and resolve was to seek out someone who was experiencing even greater loss than she was. By helping that person, her focus moved from her plight to helping someone else out of theirs.
Cynthia ended up building a world of difference for thousands of destitute families in Africa whose kids – with initially no hope on even attending grade school – are now graduating from colleges around the world.
Give yourself a reprieve.
Be kind to yourself.
Do something in kindness for another.
What can you do today and the next day and the next day to get those beans back to the original pocket?