Making peace

I've been feeling more relaxed lately, happy, even. Why is this so perplexing to me?

Maybe it's because at the same time that I am feeling happy, there's a lot happening in and around me that is stressful, worrying, uncertain, unfair. A couple of thoughts for tonight...

I've been realizing the extent to which so many women, myself included, go out of our ways to accommodate the people around us. Otherwise strong, independent, and fantastically capable women can have this surprising tendency to put up with a large amount and broad variety of nonsense, particularly from men. For me, it's part of my desire to be self sufficient -- don't ask for anything, try not to need or want or expect anything. And somehow I manage to feel guilty and intrusive and even unreasonable if I do need or want or expect something from someone else. I want to give without taking. But alas, this is not healthy or sustainable. I'm learning to be attentive to myself and to speak up for myself, but it's really hard.

I've also been thinking tonight about the idea of peace. I've heard that peace isn't the absence of conflict but the presence of something better -- perhaps love, patience, intent in practice. And that's really ringing true right now. Accommodating other people endlessly and avoiding conflict actually decreases peace. I think that in my marriage, there was little conflict at all, but at least part of it was avoidance of conflict rather than true harmony. That's damaging stuff, a destroyer of inner peace and ultimately also interpersonal peace. So I've been trying to be more honest even where it's difficult, and what I'm finding is that it's creating peace, which, incredibly, makes space for happiness. Lovely.

The Plan

In short: there isn't one.

Or at least that's my take on things at the moment. It seems that so much time is spent trying to determine what should be, what is meant to be, the one and only one right way. But I don't think there's just one, I don't think life is a previously charted trail that we follow with our maps and GPS. I think we are made for adaptation.

So many of my friends and acquaintances have been going through, "This is not how I thought it would be", lately. Maybe it's a particularly American malady, but we all seem to have had some expectations of what life would hold for us, and we're finding ourselves surprised that it's not at all what we had in mind. But how could we possibly have anticipated it? In wonderful and devastating ways, life doesn't match our expectations. And I think that's because there's too much moving and variable, and we can't possibly account for it all -- even in a society as efficient and measured and predictable as the US.

I'm thinking of how this interacts with the idea that God has a plan for each of us. I think a lot of people want to think that means there's a certainty, a pre-ordained purpose to every minute happening in their lives. But it seems that even as we adapt to changing situations, the plan God has adapts to us. That doesn't make us purposeless or take away the meaning in the everyday, I think it just makes us flexible and hopefully responsive to the real, in-motion world we inhabit.

On the whole, I am grateful for this arrangement. My life is not at all what I expected, and certainly not what I would have planned. But I love it.

Water

I took an extra-long morning walk today because it's just too beautiful for words outside. I did my normal route down Clark Street in Andersonville with a stop for a coffee on the way, then felt this irresistible urge to see the lake, so I walked down to Foster Beach. The lake was stunning today, bright blue and constantly throwing small, choppy white waves toward the sand.

And it made me think, it's amazing how magnetic water is for all of us living beings. We depend on it, we are made of it. It has such raw power, so much teeming energy. It comforts and nurtures, disrupts and breaks. It's no wonder that the way we as humans understand the world has water in such a central role, as such a broadly applied metaphor. In Christianity, we have baptism. And perhaps more useful than thinking of it as a cleansing is thinking of it as an invitation of the fluid, rhythmic, transformative power of water into our lives. The recognition of life as dynamic, not static. Of the need to be responsive to the undulations of something bigger that we're part of, rather than trying to harness for our own purposes something that's not within our own power. I stood and looked out across the lake, at the waves breaking near my feet, and was overwhelmed by gratitude for the water and for the joy of living in a world with such beauty and potential. It's better than any world I could dream up and control myself, and what a gift it is to be part of it.

What it takes

Lately, somewhat surprisingly, I have been finding more of the joy in life. And I'm finding that there are a lot of paradoxical forces at play, so it's hard to pull principles or nuggets of wisdom from what's happening around and inside me. But I do feel that I'm growing, and I'm becoming happier and fuller, even as I try both to grasp what's happening and not to grasp to quickly or tightly at anything during such a time of change.

The decision to strike out on my own is one that I know will be one of the biggest and most influential of my life. And people's reactions to it, both the reactions I know and the ones I imagine, as well as my own reactions, are mixed. There's sentiment that I'm selfish, cruel, immoral, a quitter, out of touch with reality. And there's sentiment that I'm strong, brave, self aware, caring. There are feelings both that I've done wrong and that I've been wronged. And I'm realizing that it's not all one way or the other. I think there's probably some truth to all of these characterizations. Which means there's plenty of reason to be humble and also plenty of reason to believe that I'm no better or worse than anyone else.

When it comes down to it, I believe I've made the right decision. I think in some ways, I have only very recently discovered some parts of myself, or at least allowed myself to acknowledge them. And right now, where I am is where I believe I'm supposed to be. Not where I ever expected to be, but I have this sense that it will be better than I imagined.

It's funny how even those of us who are known for self-sufficiency, confidence, and ability can still crave the approval and affirmation of other people. In an odd way, even though I'm generally not concerned with conforming, I still want people to like me. And so making a decision that both made my need for other people evident and put me in a less approved-of status was hard. Although it is a decision that I made for myself for the sake of my own happiness, that it has required such humility and sacrifice of me makes it extra hard to peg it as a wholly selfish act. Is it selfish to want to be happy? Is it selfish to decide that being happy requires more than a minor adjustment to my life? Is it selfish to decide that what is best for me is something that hurts someone else? Is it selfish to decide these things after giving my word that I would never make such an adjustment or hurt that other person this way? Maybe. But maybe there's some distinction to be made between selfishness and self interest.

In a strange way, I think I've come across as pushy, willful, and stubborn, while at the same time I've somehow failed to get what I want or need. And maybe there's some logic to that -- when I'm truly happy, there is not a lot I feel the need to demand, and I'm more circumspect. But when I'm seriously unhappy, I want more, and I am more apt to be less reasonable about less important things, which can come across as really selfish. But true, healthy self interest, what I've been trying to learn recently, makes decisions with emotional awareness. Emotional awareness is perhaps the thing I've been most lacking up to now: awareness of my needs and desires and their legitimacy, as well as those of other people. Wholeness as a person requires understanding and acceptance of who each of us truly is, not who we think we should be according to our ideals.

I think there's so much to learn, and so much I'm learning already, and it's humbling to realize how much I've missed. There are other people whom I admire greatly who seem to know some of these things so much better than I do. It makes me feel stunted, but also energized at the realization that there's so much more opportunity to grow. I feel tired sometimes when I think about how much work life is, how much it requires of each of us if we want to be truly fulfilled and purposeful. There's really no coasting toward contentment, it's something we make room for and help create.

Protagonist

This morning I began with a nice walk in my neighborhood and breakfast at the coffee shop nearby, then came back home to get to work on the to-do list I didn't get very much crossed off of yesterday. There's something about morning solitude that gives me such energy, and today it was extra invigorating to breathe the cool, rain-soaked air after the overnight storms.

And as it has been doing so much recently, the solo walk got my thought process up and running and helped bring some emotions up to the surface. While I was doing dishes, I was having one of my recurring lines of thought about the way that I can't control other people's responses to me, their version of my story or of the role I've played in their story. And it bothers me that I may be remembered as a negative player in others' stories, and I'm afraid I'll be seen at best as a psychologically flawed character and at worst as an unqualified villain. Some sort of unsympathetic caricature. As much as I know that I have to do what is best for me right now, it's difficult to cope with people I've known and cared about for so long suddenly cut off and possibly viewing me this way. It's difficult not to have editorial control over my image or the ability to speak for myself. I know I have to let this go, to accept that what's really important is the narrative that I still have the leading role in -- my own life -- but it's going to take time to figure out how to live that way.