Words of wisdom heard today

Sometimes when you are feeling at your lowest, you are lucky enough to hear someone truly wise.  Because of the meetings I go to regularly, I think I may have an above average chance of that happening, but today was spectacular.

I was in a bad state, even after meditating a long time, in a swirl of negativity.  I got to this meeting, and the woman speaking who has been in recovery for close to four decades reminded us that we don't sculpt ourselves.  Instead we allow ourselves to discover and become who we are.

This may sound simple, but it's not.  Or rather it may be simple but it's not easy.  To allow oneself to become whomever one is supposed to be means letting go of All preconceptions either of one's own or from outside as to what/who one Should become.  That's really hard.  It's also crucial to allow whomever one is to emerge - even if that is fluid, the shoulds still need to fall away for the multiplicities of one's own to dance to their own unique beat.

I spoke with this woman after the meeting, and she said that what I am going through right now is grieving, not self-pity or depression (except inasmuch as that is part of the grieving process) and that grieving has a life of its own.  She said ever since her mother died eight years ago, her life has rearranged itself.  A few years ago she was telling a friend that she wished she could have her life back, and her friend said: this is your life.

Yes.

Maybe, she said to me, you're not supposed to be a workaholic anymore.  Maybe this is the new way.

This is your life.

Like they said to the unsuspecting subject in the show back in the day....

This evening I had a conversation with Rik who directed the reading of We live in financial times, and the 'plan' had been to talk about that, which we did a bit, but then the conversation veered off into an unexpected direction talking about educational outreach and ways I could bring my vision of teaching theater to fruition in our community, especially bridging the great East and West of Broadway divide (that seems utterly senseless to me on a million levels, but is a holdover of racism, classism and every kind of stereotyping on both sides of the divide - I know this because I live on one side and teach on the other).  This is truly exciting and allows my excitement about teaching at Hunter to have another possible outlet.  The more the merrier.

I just now spent hours working on my grandmother project, pouring over old poems of Jani's, answering questions I had about her life through them.  Matching it against the writing I have already done - seeing I got some things right by wild guessing and some things wrong.  Staring at photos of her with her first husband that I never met.  Seeing what I could discern from these photos about the nature of their relationship, trying to remember that in those photos she is only 20 years old.  People looked more mature then I think, their hairstyles, clothing and such, so if you saw that photo without knowing, you would assume she was in her mid-late twenties, not the child she was, holding a baby like a kind of trophy but clearly without even the vaguest clue what to do with Barbara Jane, her first child.  The poem of hers I found about giving birth to Barbara is all about pain.  Seriously, just pain.  I mean I know childbirth is painful and all, but wow.

Reading Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily about her parents (Lessing having also been born the same year as both my grandmothers, but still alive) talks about how great it would have been if people like her mother had never had to have had children.  She talks about how great it is that women can go through life without children these days and how horrendous it would be for women to leave work and go back home to raise the children, because then they'd be like her mother from whom she spent her whole life trying to escape.  Her mother who basically said, as did/do many, I could have been this or that or the other thing, but then I had children and all that was over.  Basically the women's version of "I coulda been a contendah."

To walk through these poems, Jani's writing, Dick's photos, etc. is to walk through so much sadness.  Jani did try to reach her potential and in many ways did but at such a personal cost (not aided by her battles with various addictions).  Dick (Betty) never did.  But what does that really mean?  That's a whole other question and as it is 4am and I've been working most of the night on this, I'm going to wrap up this post and report back on that later.

Here's to the unexpected turn in the road, the rip tide, the brisk wind, whatever it is that blows you off your chosen path (chosen by whom?) onto the one you're actually on...walking by faith, even when (especially when) you don't believe in a damn thing.