***The Long View
When I was becoming an adult everyone around me provided suggestions for “how to handle it when…” I spent my childhood years. My friends and I wrote on our notebooks along with our journals that which you wanted, to try and do, to become, to own and to hold. We girls tried different names lets start on our “first” names, we ended up “married,” wore “big” clothes, generally did everything we can easily to avoid being who i was; little girls we were young.
It wasn't different with the boys, just different jobs, no name change and different responsibilities. We all had the aid of those around us. Teachers, parents, aunts, uncles, headmasters, principals, ministers of all types and creeds told us basically the same things: Do your very best self by following the designs laid down by our forebears. Take the following step, avoid getting a surprise. No one wants a surprise.
When I was ten my mother's cousins sat around me – I remember an end circle, but that had been more how I felt than the way they were arranged I suspect – and, talking over my head, decided where I would visit college, what I would do for how long before I married to their version of the suitable match.
I took notes. I listened (it made no sense), smelled their breath, their perfume, their shoes, and, inside invisible notepad around my heart vowed to try and do nothing the course notes said. Nothing.
What a terrific set up that had been for a willful rebel, for the kid whose mission ended up being fly distinct. All which often I did (flew under) and none that supported me anymore than following their objectives can have.
Now inside age of Facebook I see everyone married to everybody else – transcending age and gender – all goals and paths, top to bottom laid out in not too elegant prose. (If my mother's cousins were anything, we were holding elegant.)
It feels just like freedom I could almost be fooled into thinking there may be less planning today and much more “happy being me.” Instead I think not really in terms of “more” and “less” but in exactly the same. For instance, a couple weeks ago I spoke with a little daughter man of 25 who (I think) was looking to impress me together with his plans. He said he previously just landed work with a well-known company inside the tech field, he was being paid to become trained (and incredibly proud of that) and that he claimed being willing to benefit that company for 35 years. He had their list of his steps to more advanced skills: twelve months entry level, 3 years field work, and ending somehow in management after 35 years.
I ought to admit my head swam and I might possibly not have gotten all his details correctly. Why would anyone put himself on this sort of journey. I didn't hear discovery, I didn't listen to enjoyment. I heard entrainment, a version of responsibility. I was baffled – for words, among other things.
After spending a great deal of the summer researching trauma and loss, fear, recovery and memory – and why would anyone study that unless they believed they would grow from the understanding of those close around them (that will be me!) – I did observe that I was paying attention to fear. I was learning about unacknowledged choices, unrecognized chances and also a life lived inside barest of minimum tracks.
Of course I see myself in him. The fear of failure, the holding tight as to the is known. We can all correspond with some degree to your young that are starting out with whatever we call “chances of the lifetime,” basically we know something about lifetimes along with the longevity of denial. Denial possesses his own life. It can go and much more. It can hide from the smallest cracks, probably the most reasonable choices, by far the most sensible moments.
Who among us don't even have a story of a dream unfilled, a follower denied. Not all of mine were chances lost, most were gains – but why not consider the mini-moments of denial, the little efforts release, the possibilities I thought I couldn't handle because I wasn't suitable or didn't deserve. There are those moments that will to each individuals every day. How can we meet and greet them. What plans should we make to stop them, what skills can we fall back on to justify choices? How can we treat our moment of green thrust? Do we make room?
Being here, where I am now, having parried with choices, with denial, with feeling positive and negative about myself, I can see the well- lived, the half-lived, under and also over the bar, within or minus the spectrum, the amount to which I have been me, myself. It has become clear to understand when I stray, when I strain. It was not very easy then. I thought strain was part of it. Part of the path – strain for being on it, strain being off it. I was often loaded with self-conscious confidence, judgement of where I was, where we were holding. Lots of judgement, being a chocolate sundae, so great at the first bite, a little sickening on the last.
I not have the story that Mark Twain told of being amazed the amount of his father had learned in this type of short time – when he got older and saw the wisdom of his father. I don't feel anyone meets your needs or wrong. I think there are many of confusing choices. There always have been high always will likely be. That's why we're here. Not to own an easy life but to bump on ourselves, to generate our marks like wrinkles and also those of people who get being known for something. To keep ongoing is enough. Putting one foot while watching other, keeping our eyes and our hearts open, the wind in this face. As James Taylor wrote, “It's enough for being on your way, enough only to cover ground, it's enough for being moving on.” But to get a life “well lived,” we have been tasked to mindfulness, to feelings. (not emotions – that's another article) We want the most beneficial for ourselves along with order to obtain that, we must give ourselves the very best – and accept it.
