(The Divine Goddess Balance)
It is moments like these that I miss smoking. Today is hot and just a little humid, and the air feels thicker than is typical of Portland. I love days like this. The air seems to rule over the land, slowing everyone down through its slight viscosity. It has been almost a year now since my last cigarette, but when I smoked it was always most satisfying on days like this. I remember the way the smoke and the air itself felt equally pungent, the heaviness of each breathed in simultaneously. The way the smoke would hang in the air after each exhale, the perfect whorls and loops suspended like clothes drying on a peg. Draped is the right word here; the smoke was draped around me like a self-made shroud, still as death until I broke the spell with some mundane motion.
I have given up many things recently, things that I once loved. Things that I could write about with equal depth and nostalgia. Smoking was not a great lover, but it was a great love of mine. Yet somehow I have reached a point in time when I have felt it necessary, imperative even, that I jettison some of my great loves from my life. Not all of them, of course, but the self-destructive ones. The ones that hold me back, that steal my health, that wrap me in a shroud at times so transfixing that I forget any sense of momentum or ambition in my life. These had to go, finally.
If I were to list my lost loves here, I would only be serving to reinforce how much I miss them. For many years, I loved to hate myself. Bad habits, bad boyfriends, bad jobs, bad houses, bad health, bad choices. Sometimes when I look back at the last 25 years, it feels like the only thing I could ever fully commit to was self-destruction.
Yet I also spent many years ardently believing that the world was unfair. I felt entitled to a better life. I looked around at my friends and family and I wanted some of their good habits, good friends, good choices, for myself. I felt that I deserved them, merely because I saw some similarities between us. Why did my sister always seem to have more friends, better boyfriends and better jobs than me? She must lead a charmed life, must have been blessed with some better karmic juju. Do you know this feeling? This feeling that somehow, or sometimes, life is just so unfair?
I believe in balance- very strongly. To me, balance is the ruling force in our universe, the divine figure- give it whatever name you want. Balance is what answers our prayers, what protects us from harm, what saves us from ourselves. No one can make bad choices forever, no one can suffer innocently, infinitely. Now, I haven't quite worked out all the different permutations of balance in our known universe. Maybe there is a karmic wheel of life, and some things just can't be balanced in one short lifetime. Maybe there is a heaven and hell, which forces us to balance our worldly deeds with other-wordly suffering or joy. Maybe we turn to dust upon death, and the only the thing we are truly responsible for is the way we treat others, reflected in the relative ease of passing into oblivion surrounded by loved ones. Maybe the answer lies in the fact that I just don't think we know all that much about the universe, after all. But none of that really matters, which is why I'm not sure why some people spend so much trying to figure it out. What matters is this: balance is inherently fair. Balance is the very essence of fairness. Balance is literally what the scales of justice represent: not fairness, not equality, but balance.
The crappy thing about balance is that it operates on its own time scale. This is incredibly hard for most people to understand or accept. That's why we demand justice, why we experience outrage when something is not fair. Life may not be fair, but I do believe it is balanced. And if we can learn to cultivate patience and acceptance, if we can learn to experience the world on a different timeline, I believe we will be blown away by the omnipotence of balance. Truly, this divine being knows all, sees your sufferings, and hears your prayers. But balance also sees your joys, and knows they cannot last. Everything is impermanent: a reality many people are happy to point out when you are going through hard times, but loathe to accept when things are good. "I will love you forever," "I will never leave this place," and "This is just who I am" are just a few examples of the kinds of statements people make, completely disregarding what they know about balance. Of course all these things will change in time, and probably not the time you would expect or feel willing to accept. Your perfect relationship might fall apart spectacularly just as you also lose your job, are diagnosed with an illness, and have recently moved to an unfamiliar place. This is not smiting from the divine figure of your personal religious persuasion, this is just balance reminding you that for many years you had a great relationship, a solid job, excellent health, and a strong support network. Unfortunately, you really can't have it all, all the time.
This used to make me feel incredibly hopeless. What's the point if everything goes away in time? If I can't take home the trophy, why play the game? Hence the commitment to self-destruction alone.
Here's what I'm discovering: hard choices bring good things. This seems to be the relationship of balance in my life. All these years, I have been taking the easy way out, not really trying for anything, and feeling unfulfilled. Likewise, it is easy to see how I have made the easy choice when things were good, to keep them just as they are for as long as it lasts. Like catching a beautiful butterfly, putting it in a glass jar, and waiting for it to die. I'm scared I'll make the wrong decision, and so I just watch the things I love die, or kill me slowly. It was really, really hard to give up smoking, but that single decision has brought many other things into greater balance in my life. It has helped me better understand my emotions, and deal with my feelings in a healthier way. It has helped curb my depression, regulate my eating habits, and rely on my friends for guidance and support when I used to turn to a cigarette to calm me down. As I continue to examine my life and jettison things that self-destructive, I find that more and more of my life is available for good things.
I don't know if it is ever really possible to achieve a state of perfect balance in this imperfect form of human, but I think it might be a more worthy and fulfilling goal than simply trying to take home the trophy. Its ok to concentrate on meeting one goal at a time, but don't be shocked or hurt if that goal isn't attainable in your time frame. Maybe you just need to let that one go for now, and focus on other things in your life. In time, the divine goddess Balance will probably surprise you with an easier way to achieve it.
For me, that one goal has been Love, for a long time. Yet I have been blessed with several great lovers in my young life. Since ending my last relationship, I've been spending far too much of my time trying to find it again, with no success. So, I'm setting that goal aside for now, and trying to focus on making the hard decisions that will lead to good things. And trying in a heartfelt way, to be open and accepting of a time scale other than my own.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Transformations
Tearfully saying goodbye to my baby brother as he departed for his new life as a freshman at Montana State University this weekend, I uncovered a profound new truth: every single member of my family is currently undergoing a significant transformational period in our lives, simultaneously. This is a strange coincidence, and yet not actually very coincidental. In fact, the reality of this truth only reinforces my heartfelt belief in the interconnectedness of our lives. The five members of my immediate family are physically (geographically) closer to one another today than we have been for over 5 years. Inevitably, our coming together means that we affect one another more profoundly; as my brother begins his life at college, my sister is starting her life as a married woman, my parents are embracing an empty nest and approaching retirement, and I am finally experiencing life as a working professional.
Transformation, then, is on my brain. Whenever I think about transformation, I always find myself preoccupied with one question: how do you recognize it as it is happening? Although some transformations are clearly demarcated, by a rite of passage or a traumatic experience perhaps, most of the time they are only truly defined through hindsight. Looking back at our life, it is easy to say that this job or that decision, or a certain relationship, was life-changing and marked the beginning or the end of a transformational period. But day to day, life usually just feels like one long noon: it is difficult to see the sunrise and sunset because nothing ever really feels that spectacular.
Often in these past few months I have found myself looking back at my time in Argentina and seeing very clearly the moments that made me stronger, more capable, and more prepared for my current circumstances. I can see the moments of realization- precisely when the lessons were taught and my struggles to put them into practice since then. Many people think that living abroad is so clearly and inarguably a life-changing experience that each imagined moment seems poignant: bursting with transformative power. Yet I can attest to the expat's reality: life in another country feels just like life anywhere when you are living it. It is like rearranging the furniture in your room: the perspective is different, but the boundaries are essentially the same. Yet now, looking back, I can see that I packed a lot of life lessons into a relatively short period of time, and kick-started this current time of transformation in my life while still in Argentina.
So what, exactly, is the nature of this transformation in my life? Well, I think it has something to do with entering the professional world for the first time in my life. I have begun to interact with others in a different way. I am more confident in my abilities than I have felt in years, maybe ever. I find myself reading "career literature" in my downtime- professional development that is suddenly voluntary. I have started to prioritize my time, with meeting deadlines and performing my job well suddenly a higher priority than hanging with friends or pursuing an unrelated hobby. I procrastinate less. I don't necessarily count down the days to the next weekend, although that still happens sometimes. I've legitimately started to think about my future more than one year at a time. I have a day planner, and I use it. I bought a shirt from Ann Taylor (albeit from a used clothing shop). And for the first time in my life, I am making enough money to afford to live alone.
While I am experiencing a slight sense of unease about many of the changes above, I am incredibly excited about the prospect of living alone. I have never, ever had a little space all my own. Until now, the closest I ever came was a rented hammock on a beach in Goa, India. The idea of living alone has been very frightening for me in the past. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my loneliness. But recently, something has changed, and I can't wait to find my own place. For some reason, I now find the idea of isolation with my own thoughts exhilarating.
I think one reason may be that I am ready to write. From about age 10, my answer to the familiar question: "What do you want to be when you grow up" has been consistent: a writer. Although I entertained the idea of journalism, I know my strengths (if any) truly lie in creative writing. Yet since graduating college, I have been so focused on the simple act of surviving that I simply haven't had time to write. Now that I am finally earning a decent wage teaching, I realize that living in a crowded house with three roommates, a giant dog, and one dirty bathroom directly outside my room is perhaps not the most ideal creative environment. I need to find some supplemental income if I'm going to make living alone sustainable, and I am hoping to find a way to make writing a part of the process. It's time to pick up the dream, dust off the cobwebs, and infuse it with some true energy and dedication.
To that end, I found a great apartment downtown: application pending. Every ten seconds or so, I find myself making a little silent wish that it all works out. I love to daydream about a quiet morning breakfast on my own balcony, writing before heading out to teach for the day. I love to daydream that I might be just as capable of becoming a successful writer as I have so recently discovered I am as a teacher. If I learned anything really helpful in Argentina, it is that fear in my life is usually a signal that I am doing something right, and I should push through that nervous energy. I was petrified before my first lesson in Mendoza but only because teaching was unfamiliar, unknown. My dream of writing professionally is like an old friend, but the active pursuit is new and terrifying. Yet where there is fear, there is energy, and where there is energy, there is potential. Fear can be your greatest ally in life and herald the start of incredible transformations.
To my little brother in Montana, myself and everyone out there undergoing a time of transformation or transition: remember to let your fear empower you. Remember that things can never improve until they change.
Transformation, then, is on my brain. Whenever I think about transformation, I always find myself preoccupied with one question: how do you recognize it as it is happening? Although some transformations are clearly demarcated, by a rite of passage or a traumatic experience perhaps, most of the time they are only truly defined through hindsight. Looking back at our life, it is easy to say that this job or that decision, or a certain relationship, was life-changing and marked the beginning or the end of a transformational period. But day to day, life usually just feels like one long noon: it is difficult to see the sunrise and sunset because nothing ever really feels that spectacular.
Often in these past few months I have found myself looking back at my time in Argentina and seeing very clearly the moments that made me stronger, more capable, and more prepared for my current circumstances. I can see the moments of realization- precisely when the lessons were taught and my struggles to put them into practice since then. Many people think that living abroad is so clearly and inarguably a life-changing experience that each imagined moment seems poignant: bursting with transformative power. Yet I can attest to the expat's reality: life in another country feels just like life anywhere when you are living it. It is like rearranging the furniture in your room: the perspective is different, but the boundaries are essentially the same. Yet now, looking back, I can see that I packed a lot of life lessons into a relatively short period of time, and kick-started this current time of transformation in my life while still in Argentina.
So what, exactly, is the nature of this transformation in my life? Well, I think it has something to do with entering the professional world for the first time in my life. I have begun to interact with others in a different way. I am more confident in my abilities than I have felt in years, maybe ever. I find myself reading "career literature" in my downtime- professional development that is suddenly voluntary. I have started to prioritize my time, with meeting deadlines and performing my job well suddenly a higher priority than hanging with friends or pursuing an unrelated hobby. I procrastinate less. I don't necessarily count down the days to the next weekend, although that still happens sometimes. I've legitimately started to think about my future more than one year at a time. I have a day planner, and I use it. I bought a shirt from Ann Taylor (albeit from a used clothing shop). And for the first time in my life, I am making enough money to afford to live alone.
While I am experiencing a slight sense of unease about many of the changes above, I am incredibly excited about the prospect of living alone. I have never, ever had a little space all my own. Until now, the closest I ever came was a rented hammock on a beach in Goa, India. The idea of living alone has been very frightening for me in the past. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my loneliness. But recently, something has changed, and I can't wait to find my own place. For some reason, I now find the idea of isolation with my own thoughts exhilarating.
I think one reason may be that I am ready to write. From about age 10, my answer to the familiar question: "What do you want to be when you grow up" has been consistent: a writer. Although I entertained the idea of journalism, I know my strengths (if any) truly lie in creative writing. Yet since graduating college, I have been so focused on the simple act of surviving that I simply haven't had time to write. Now that I am finally earning a decent wage teaching, I realize that living in a crowded house with three roommates, a giant dog, and one dirty bathroom directly outside my room is perhaps not the most ideal creative environment. I need to find some supplemental income if I'm going to make living alone sustainable, and I am hoping to find a way to make writing a part of the process. It's time to pick up the dream, dust off the cobwebs, and infuse it with some true energy and dedication.
To that end, I found a great apartment downtown: application pending. Every ten seconds or so, I find myself making a little silent wish that it all works out. I love to daydream about a quiet morning breakfast on my own balcony, writing before heading out to teach for the day. I love to daydream that I might be just as capable of becoming a successful writer as I have so recently discovered I am as a teacher. If I learned anything really helpful in Argentina, it is that fear in my life is usually a signal that I am doing something right, and I should push through that nervous energy. I was petrified before my first lesson in Mendoza but only because teaching was unfamiliar, unknown. My dream of writing professionally is like an old friend, but the active pursuit is new and terrifying. Yet where there is fear, there is energy, and where there is energy, there is potential. Fear can be your greatest ally in life and herald the start of incredible transformations.
To my little brother in Montana, myself and everyone out there undergoing a time of transformation or transition: remember to let your fear empower you. Remember that things can never improve until they change.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Catching Up
This blog really started seven months ago. Seven months ago, I boarded what I'm convinced was the world's most cramped jumbo jet and flew 7,000 miles (or so) from my last known residence in Buenos Aires, Argentina to my hometown of Portland, Oregon USA. I had another blog while I was living and working in Argentina (www.algomasargentina.blogspot.com), but the distance between my life in Argentina and my life in Portland felt much greater than a mere 7,000 miles. It's a whole different moonscape. Somehow, it just didn't feel right to continue pouring out a steady dribble of everyday insights when most of my friends and family (the vast majority of my audience) were once again within shouting distance.
I think it was the right decision. I would have a hard time looking at pictures of myself in various South American locales now anyway. Yet over the last seven months, I have discovered quite a few things. Not least of which is the fact that through my travels, I have somehow established a whole world of friends and family at various far-flung ends of the globe who are suddenly very far away, and who find the everyday insights of life in Portland to be just as fascinating and foreign as my South American adventures appeared to my stateside loved ones.
So this blog is for you: R in Mendoza (you can stop sending me text messages asking if I'm dead now!), F in KSA, K in Rome, J& M in Mendoza, P and E in Santa Barbara, M and K in Denver, S in Mexico, J, L, S in Japan, L & N in Virginia, S and N in Eugene, R in India and all the other wonderful, warm and well-traveled friends who I am blessed to know, love and miss in my everyday adventures here in Portland. You don't have to comment, you don't have to follow, but if you ever feel nostalgic for the adventures we've shared together, I hope you can come here and feel a sense of intimacy or insight that makes the distances between us seem less daunting.
But this blog is also for me. I really miss the forum of a blog. I've been writing in journals these past seven months (or more often book margins and dirty restaurant napkins), but I find it's just not the same. I have a tendency to get lost in my own darkness when I'm writing for an audience of one. Even if this blog only provides the suggestion of a public forum, I think it will help me stay positive about my experiences, even when I'm feeling blue. That's another thing I've learned recently: there is a beautiful element of projected hope experienced by a blogger, or anyone who makes their insights public: even the possibility of a solution arriving from outside ourselves is often enough to allow us to solve our own problems.
So that's it! Now, we just wait to see what sort of things fall out of my atrophied mind. I wish you all fortitude for your return visits.
I think it was the right decision. I would have a hard time looking at pictures of myself in various South American locales now anyway. Yet over the last seven months, I have discovered quite a few things. Not least of which is the fact that through my travels, I have somehow established a whole world of friends and family at various far-flung ends of the globe who are suddenly very far away, and who find the everyday insights of life in Portland to be just as fascinating and foreign as my South American adventures appeared to my stateside loved ones.
So this blog is for you: R in Mendoza (you can stop sending me text messages asking if I'm dead now!), F in KSA, K in Rome, J& M in Mendoza, P and E in Santa Barbara, M and K in Denver, S in Mexico, J, L, S in Japan, L & N in Virginia, S and N in Eugene, R in India and all the other wonderful, warm and well-traveled friends who I am blessed to know, love and miss in my everyday adventures here in Portland. You don't have to comment, you don't have to follow, but if you ever feel nostalgic for the adventures we've shared together, I hope you can come here and feel a sense of intimacy or insight that makes the distances between us seem less daunting.
But this blog is also for me. I really miss the forum of a blog. I've been writing in journals these past seven months (or more often book margins and dirty restaurant napkins), but I find it's just not the same. I have a tendency to get lost in my own darkness when I'm writing for an audience of one. Even if this blog only provides the suggestion of a public forum, I think it will help me stay positive about my experiences, even when I'm feeling blue. That's another thing I've learned recently: there is a beautiful element of projected hope experienced by a blogger, or anyone who makes their insights public: even the possibility of a solution arriving from outside ourselves is often enough to allow us to solve our own problems.
So that's it! Now, we just wait to see what sort of things fall out of my atrophied mind. I wish you all fortitude for your return visits.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)