Belonging to the World

When uncertainty and intentionality collide

A while back, I read a book called Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor.  It’s about some traveling they did to Greece and France, separate and together, over the course of a few years and the shifts that came about in each of their lives along the way.  It’s a good book.  I’m not going to get much more into their story other than to say they were each searching for the story that fit for them in a new phase of life.  Ann was moving from college into choosing a vocation and starting married life, trying to find her place and calling in the world, struggling with depression along the way.  Sue was moving from young woman and mother into later life, exploring what it might be like to become a novelist, and trying to figure out how to embrace that new part of herself.  They were trying to figure out how to belong in the world as they changed, and as the worlds they knew changed.

Ann finds a few quotes that speak to her along the way, as does Sue.

Here’s one of Ann’s, from David Whyte:

You must learn one thing:

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all other worlds

Except the one to which you belong.

I lost my health coaching day job, a job that I held for ten years, five and a half years ago. Just before my severance package payments ran out, I ended up finding a new job in the same field. I’d been burnt out in the old job, but at the time it seemed like the only option. Despite what felt like an absence of other viable options, I found myself asking if I really wanted to go back to the world that I left when that door closed.  Even now, five years into the new job, I find myself asking if this is the world where I’m supposed to be. It seems like it should be easier to get out of a world to which I don’t belong, but it turns out that it can be pretty hard to figure out which world is the right one to embrace fully.  How do you exit a world that’s defined your days (and paid your bills) for over fifteen years? I’m not sure I want to give it up, not entirely, but there are days when burnout speaks louder than anything else. 

This is one of Sue’s, from George Sands:

The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now.  Another I is beginning.

No matter what world I discern is the right one to inhabit, (and let’s be honest, many of us have pieces of ourselves in a few different worlds, and maybe there’s room for accepting that for what it is when necessary too. Just not when those pieces are drifting so far from your center that you feel pulled apart) with each step I take into this unfolding life, I’m going to be different than the person I am today.  Every person’s life, even though the core remains steadfast, is an ever-evolving work of art, even when it feels like it’s a big mess and nothing is working.  I’m not interested in trying to live in a world that makes me feel like a shell of myself, or pushing aside the things I value just to pay the bills. I’m also not interested in leaving a world that helps me add my gifts to the story of the people when I can interact with it in ways that work for me. In each phase of life, whether from young to old, or from corporate & tech startup health coach to writer of books, or from caregiver to one who is cared for, I want to embrace the world that makes me feel alive and at home in myself.

Here is a quote that’s stuck with me, some words from Christine Chitnis from an issue of the magazine Taproot, which has nothing to do with Traveling With Pomegranates. But I tend to come back to the idea she articulates on a regular basis. 

Life is beautiful and difficult, full of joy and sorrow.  Happy endings are often just for fairy tales ~ but that doesn’t mean life isn’t beautiful. [Making/creating/writing] is what keeps me afloat.  It brings me into the moment, focuses my thoughts and allows me to lose myself in the art.  And no matter what, there is beauty in that simple fact.

Let’s think about the art mentioned in the passage above as life itself. What if we could lose ourselves in the art of being alive? Even when we are feeling adrift and unsure of what worlds we need to inhabit, what if we could keep doing those simple things that focus attention, like slowly kneading bread in the late afternoon sun or noticing a tiny creature’s footprint on a snow-covered log or savoring the act of witnessing a tangerine and violet sunrise adds another layer of depth to a day? Would it help us identify the worlds we’re meant to inhabit? Would it help us continue to evolve into the people we are always becoming?  Would losing ourselves in the art of living be a door into the more beautiful world that is always there when we remember to notice it?

I think the answer is yes. The uncertainty of life on earth collides daily with our capacity to be intentional about how we spend our days, uncertain or not. 

P.S. I’ll be away on vacation from June 23-July 5, so you won’t hear from me during those days, hence the extra post this week. I’ll be back with some more musings on collisions, and possible some guests as well, mid July.

Also, if you’ll be in the St. Croix Valley area, or need reason to be, Valley Bookseller is holding a Local Author Showcase on July 10 at the Zephyr Theater in Stillwater, Minnesota. Join myself and 11 other local authors for a meet and greet, and grab a few signed copies to keep you in your summer reading. 1pm-2:30pm