“Why is My Life Like This?” Is the Wrong Question

30 miles out to sea… the little comma-shaped island is Nantucket.

Thinking too much about things. It’s a lifetime habit I have not yet entirely broken. Thinking has its place and I’m pretty good at it, truth be told. But as powerful as my brain happens to be, my heart is even better.

When I seat my Self there, I am at my best. I can easily know what my gray cells can never deliver.

I’m grateful for my brain, don’t get me wrong. And all the other parts of me, as I explained in one of my favorite Thanksgiving blogs. But what is the lesson I learn again and again— when I feel the need to know “why?” Ask my heart.

A few days ago, I started to write a blog in honor of Thanksgiving. I was having my long anticipated (and partially dreaded) solo Thanksgiving. Once I knew neither my children nor my sisters could be with me, I turned down several invitations in order to carry out the holiday my heart knew was right. Me and my cat, Boo Radley, a 12-pound turkey and a few fixings, and solitude.

I started the blog, and it was rolling out as a kind of “this is my choice/ here is what I’m doing/ this is good/ let me explain myself/ allow me to excuse myself for being the windswept hero on the clifftop with tangled hair and a fistful of crumpled poems.” I digress. Plus, there are no clifftops here, nor are there poems to be crumpled. The thinking blog I started to write… well, it was horrible.

Analysis and a careful breakdown of pros and cons is not going to answer the questions that sneak into my head late at night since arriving in my new life/job/home/island ten months ago. The questions run like this: Did I do the right thing? Why am I here? Is this going to work out? Have I made a terrible mistake? Will I be able to afford this? Are there any men on this island? Why is my life like this?

Wrong questions.

And I know that. The minute I feel my brain firing like that, I roll my eyes. They roll all the way back into that brain and frown at all those neurons freaking out and having a panic party. If eyeballs could enunciate, mine would probably say, “tsk, tsk, tsk.”

So when that happens, I make myself a nice cup of tea, light the candles, and remind myself that there is learning happening.

Because—this is my life and why am I here if not to learn? Yes, and grow. Yes, and trust the universe. Even when things seem objectively nuts, both out there in the world and in here in my confused state.

There is not much more to say, except that it seems pretty obvious to my cardiac muscle’s figurative counterpart that there is a reason for all of this.

I am an introvert living a literal and metaphorical insular life. I am on an island, but I think obsessively about how to get off of it to see my children, the world, tall buildings, friends. Doing so is not easy. Residents are very often trapped here by weather. And if you have a demanding job, well, you are mostly doing that, anyway. So what is in store for me here—to learn and become? Here where I am trapped by ocean and wind?

Wind-blown after a short walk in my neighborhood on Thanksgiving.

I’ve never liked wind. It has always made me extremely uneasy. So now I live in the birthplace of all wind. The place wind gets trained to be a Superwind. The elite wind mall, bragging a variety of winds never before imagined. Isn’t that interesting? Perhaps I am here to be blown away.

My life, though still clearly privileged by any objective standard, is extremely pared down. I have downsized to 500 square feet of coziness. I am blessed to have a place I can even remotely afford here in Nantucket, and so why the dark thoughts? I love where I live. Why do I feel insecure? I let myself worry about meaningless what-ifs until I remember I don’t want a big house. I don’t want a mortgage, a lawn to mow, an oil tank to replace. I can spend my Saturdays writing a blog, exploring the beach, or the Whaling Museum, or walking through town with a friend as I did today… instead of cleaning, calling plumbers, and repainting the bathroom. Much is possible.

A pared-down life on an isolated windy island is life as I know it, for now. It is exactly where I need to be, and my heart is learning why.

 

I Don’t Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

Last things often precede first things. The last night in a familiar home precedes the first night of a new life in a new place. The last oatmeal cookie precedes the first taste of a new cookie never imagined before. The last time ever I saw this place, comes just before the first time ever I grew wings and tried a new life in a new place with new people doing new things.

That’s where I am today, Christmas morning 2018. My cozy, beloved home of several years felt like “life as I know it” just weeks, maybe even days, after moving in. I’d moved out of a house I lived in for over 25 years—my marital home, no longer marital and then, no longer my home. And yet I truly believed, up until the moment I decided to move out, that nothing would ever feel “right” again. But guess what? It felt perfectly right.

Staying put was right until leaving was right. Goodbye became a big hello.

Ease and comfort, the familiar, are like a plush blanket that, with a deep breath, I push off myself. I stand up and walk to a door. This door was not there before. Curious and brave and a little scared (and shivering a bit because the blanket is gone), I fling open the unknown door.

My door…

Don’t get me wrong. I created the door. Now I have to use it. So, wearing my scarlet cape and witch’s hat, I will leap through it and suddenly the fear of goodbye becomes the gift of hello.

I’m leaving where I’ve been. I mean, really leaving! It’s a big deal for me. I’m not just moving two towns over, either. I’m moving a whole state over and taking a boat to an island. I’ll settle in on the island of Nantucket like a seed in fertile soil. I’ll grow and give and I’ll learn and thrive. I can’t wait to connect deeply to people and to the ocean, and to sink in to parts of myself that have been muffled by the familiar and safe.

I used to fling myself off the cliffs of opportunity all the time, without fear, and here I am again.

So much of what changes in our world is outside our control. The anxiety about how our leaders let us down every day, putting us in harm’s way, throwing our best outcomes away in favor of their personal gain—that is something I face head on in the middle of the night, a pillow clutched to my stomach as I coax sleep back towards me.

But there is no anxiety about my own personal changes. I choose them just as they choose me. Starting a new job, making a difference in the lives of people, forging a new and creative path for myself and my new employer—I have every confidence in those truths. I am not afraid.

What did you once fear… then embrace? What did you once imagine would never come to pass, only to welcome it as a natural next step, hardly remarked upon in the perfect flow of your timeline? Was there a day you dreaded, only to find that when it came, it lay the greatest of gifts at your feet?

My new Nantucket tree ornament.

The best thing about my move? It never occurred to me. My job? It was not something I would have imagined or considered. The feeling of lift-off reminds me of flying dreams I’ve had through my life. I’m ready to say: Hello.